Juggling Multiple Balls in the Air

I really am enjoying this year in South Africa. I feel very much at home and my circle of friends is expanding with the different activities I've been involved in here. My singular focus has been the dissertation, but I also have to remember that there is an election year coming up and I need to be positioned for that now. So, I spent Monday working on my "unofficial announcement" that I will be running for the 1st Congressional seat again in 2012. I ran in 2006 and 2008, but took 2010 0ff to concentrate on my Ph.D. work. Now, as my dissertation work is starting to shape up nicely, I hope to be Dr. Ishmael by the time the election rolls around next year.

The field for 2012 will be interesting. I hear that the incumbent, Jay Inslee, will be running against Rob McKenna for Governor of the state of Washington, which leaves the 1st CD seat open for the first time in recent memory. Now that is good timing for someone who has worked so hard for so long to win that seat, namely me! But, others are cropping up on the horizon like: Joe Marine (who ran in 2002), James Watkins (who ran in 2010), and possibly even John Koster (who ran for the 2nd CD seat in 2010 and 2004). But, I like my chances. My name recognition is second to John Koster, and I have no real negatives at this juncture. You really need to run at least twice to get name recognition high enough to win.

Now that I have informally announced, I can run my Congressional Exploratory Campaign until I have raised the limit for "testing the waters," and then I will officially declare and register with the FEC. There is much work to assemble a team between now and then, and that means I need to start that process right now even though I'm still in South Africa.

I have a cadre of Stellenbosch students and professors in the Political Science department who are keenly interested in my campaign as South Africa is maturing as a democracy and they look to the way the US conducts theirs to learn who to do and what not to do going forward. It is, if you will, a case study in democracy for them which is why they are so interested.

The municipal elections here in South Africa took place this year (last week), with federal elections in two years. Although the major party in South Africa is the African National Congress (ANC), the party of Nelson Mandela, the second most powerful is the Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA runs the Western Cape province where I reside here, and is held in high esteem. They were recently re-elected to serve another 4 years with a 79.4% mandate. But, the interesting thing is that the main issue of this election cycle was "service delivery."

What, you may ask, is service delivery? Well, it is the cumulative grouping of all government services to the public. They use it to measure how well your garbage service works, how good the roads are, how effective the schools are, and every other measure of customer service the local government provides to its residents. It is something that all levels of society (from the richest to the extremely poor) can measure as it effects their own lives, and the party that does the best job of it gets elected for another term. Pretty basic, right? Well, why don't we do it in the USA?

Can you imagine how the US Congress would fare if the residents/constituents of each Congressional District (and all combined) measured service delivery? A more simplistic way of stating it is that the Congressional approval ratings are truly in the tank. Depending on the poll, the approval rating is between 12% and 27% for the Congress as a whole. Now, if you were to measure service delivery, it would be even lower still! You see, service delivery is about what they have actually accomplished to improve the lives of their residents, not just spouting dogma about what it would be like if they had their party's way.

What do you think of your service delivery from Jay Inslee? What has he done to improve your life? Nada. Zip, Zilch. Has the nation's fiscal situation been improved? Are you getting more out of those government services that affect your life for the taxes you pay? Heck, they can't even balance the budget! They cannot so much as speak with civility towards each other, so how do you expect them to work together to provide any "service delivery?"

Of course, the key to service delivery is that it not be built on an ever increasing national debt. A balanced budget amendment would also be required so that the old adage, "a chicken in every pot" wasn't used. How about the government sending out a "customer survey" on how happy the taxpayers are with each department of the government? Can you imagine one from the IRS? The House? The Senate? The Presidency? Imagine a government who took these customer service survey results and had to respond to them with actual programs to improve the service delivery they offered their clients! Now that is a world I would be proud to call my own!

Okay, enough about politics, so back to writing my dissertation....