In his bid to become a Massachusetts senator in Washington, Scott Brown portrayed himself as a man of the people.
“I’m Scott Brown, and this is my truck,” he began his campaign ads, standing next to his green GMC pick-up with 200,000 miles on the odometer. He even drove up to the polling booth on Tuesday in his now-famous vehicle.
Last night I attended a local branch meeting of the Industrial Workers of the World, which must come as close to summarizing my political outlook as any US organization I know.
I'm a relative newcomer to the group, but in a short space of time I've found the process of "running one's own affairs" to be unlike anything else I've experienced in a "democratic republic" such as ours, particularly in the skills and expectations it instills participants over time.
Suffice it to say, if anybody stood up in a meeting and said, "I'm Scott Brown, and this is my truck, so let me be your leader," it would not go over very well. It is instructive that such a thing could ever be taken seriously in a society which prides itself on governance by the people.
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