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The day in
2003 when I walked into the Watauga County Board of Elections and
changed my official voter registration from “Unaffiliated”
to “Democrat” signaled what had become for me a moment
of personal commitment to the future of my beloved country.
I had always
considered myself an “independent” voter and was registered
that way. I grew up in Cherokee County in north Georgia in a family
that was never very political. My first presidential election was
in 1956, when I voted for Eisenhower. (I remember my “I Like
Ike” button!) In the election of 1960, while I was a student
at the University of Georgia in Athens, I voted for John F. Kennedy.
Political party meant very little to me. The personal philosophy
and vision of the candidates were much more important.
I rationalized
that being an independent voter was a refusal to follow blindly
what either of the two major political parties were advocating.
Highly partisan people seemed to lack objectivity, and I wanted
to be objective.
I moved to Boone
in 1965 and developed friends in both political parties. One of
those friends, a man who was known locally as “Mr. Republican”
for his devotion to the Republican Party and its candidates, admitted
to me once, “I support my party, but when I’m in the voting
booth, I vote my conscience.” That said a lot to me about how
“party people” balance the dilemmas of blind loyalty and
the good of the country.
My decision
to become a “party man” for the Democrats was a crisis
of conscience arising out of what I saw as President Bush’s
decision to invade Iraq early in 2003 on trumped up evidence, those
fictitious “weapons of mass destruction.” In the weeks
leading up to that invasion, I had many conversations with another
staunch Republican friend who did not believe that his president
would take such a drastic step as starting a war with a country
that did not threaten us.
“If President
Bush invades Iraq,” my friend said to me, “the Republican
Party will have no long-term future and will decline over the next
several decades.”
Bush did invade
Iraq. The long-term future of the Republican Party is still undetermined
as a result, but I found I could no longer remain “independent.”
For one thing,
there is actually no “Independent Party” in the United
States, with clear leadership or a written philosophy or platform
or a system of accountability. There’s just a large mass of
“unaffiliated” voters like me, waiting passively to see
what candidates and what programs will be offered up to us by the
Republicans and the Democrats.
“Independents”
have no real power to influence those candidates and those programs.
In other words, being an “independent” voter began to
seem to me like an excuse for taking no stand at all. I’ve
admired some independent candidates for office in the past, like
Ralph Nader, but being an independent just doesn’t get you
very far in this nation.
I imagine there
are a lot of loyal Republicans right now who choose to keep quiet
about what’s going on – the war in Iraq, the growing deficit,
the whiff of scandal coming out of Congress. They are partisan Republicans,
but they also have consciences. And too many Democrats took the
easy course during the time Bush was drumming up the war, some because
they thought it was the right thing to do and some out of cowardice.
As a new Democrat myself, I want to hold those weak Democrats to
an accounting. I want to see them stand up and fight for what’s
right.
That’s
why I changed my registration to Democrat. I felt I had to do something
to try to help our country move away from the precipice President
Bush wants to take us over. That was the crowning reason.
I just hadn’t
thought much about Republicans being for the rich and Democrats
being for the poor. But now I do think about that. It is so clear
to me that the Republican Party really does intend to end Social
Security and Medicare. “Survival of the fittest” is what
Republicans seem to believe. If you aren’t able to make it,
you can just disappear. They would like the homeless to just disappear.
The protection
of the environment is another issue that has brought me to the Democrats.
I remember when Lauch Faircloth became senator. He had hog farms,
and he got legislation passed to protect his hog farms, just the
opposite of what the environment needed in that part of the state.
His self-interest always seemed much more important to him than
the public interest.
I’m very
encouraged by the development of bio-diesel and its potential for
causing less air pollution and for helping us be less dependent
on foreign oil. I was very proud last April when the Watauga County
Democratic Party passed a resolution supporting the development
of bio-diesel as an alternative energy source.
I’ve taken
a stand with the Democrats because Democrats support the common
good and not just the interests of the rich. I’ve taken a stand
because we’re in a major crisis as a nation, and I believe
the Democrats will reverse some of the disastrous policies of the
last five years.
I urge other
“independents” to consider that by being aloof you are
allowing others to set policies and determine the direction of all
our futures. By joining a party, you can make your voice a part
of a powerful chorus, you can work for reform, you can be active
in a great struggle that I, for one, could no longer stay out of.
Brooke Johnson
retired in 1991 as area director of New River Mental Health Center.
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