Press
Getting creative to give us someone worth voting for
BY DEBRA PICKETT SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST - March 26, 2004
What was it, exactly, that was so disturbing about those 9/11 commission hearings this week? Was it the absence of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice? Or the awkward spectacle of former Gov. James Thompson verbally sparring with former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke? Or Clarke's own apology to the victims and their families, notable primarily for being the first time anyone has actually said, in relation to the devastating attacks, that "your government failed you"?
The bipartisan commission, which has struggled mightily to get the facts about how the attacks happened, is doing important work.
But, somehow, it just doesn't come across that way when we catch a glimpse of them on TV, sniping about who is on which side of the political aisle. When it comes to the real questions at hand -- How the hell did this happen to us? And how do we make sure it never happens again? -- they seem about as passionate as a bunch of office workers trying to track down a lost file folder.
The year of the creative thinker
The hearings remind me of Anita Hill's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991. Watching those grumpy old men badger the soft-spoken, slightly mortified Hill, I thought, "Wow, those guys just don't get it."
It turned out that a lot of people felt that way. In the following year's elections, the number of women in Congress jumped from 28 to 42. They called that "the year of the woman."
And, ever since then, I've been hoping to get my hands on another year. Maybe a "year of the CTA rider" or a "year of the apartment dweller" -- some other political moment that would feel like it was somehow connected to my life and the lives of people I actually know.
I'm feeling it even more now. Because those ex-governors and Washington insiders, the ones charged with investigating the violent catastrophe that wiped out more than 3,000 lives -- average age: 40 -- in a single day, they just don't seem to get it.
They have a commission, hold some meetings, convene a hearing, write a report. They look at interagency communication and intelligence practices and the way the national security apparatus functions. Like their golfing buddy Tom Ridge, they are looking to combat terrorism with a lean, mean, fighting . . . bureaucracy.
The problem isn't that they're politicians -- or not the whole problem, anyway. It's that they're politicians cut from exactly the same cloth as the politicians who got us into a lot of the messes we're in today. What was it, exactly, that was so disturbing about those 9/11 commission hearings this week?
It was the complete absence of creative, original thought.
Which is where Tom Tresser comes in. Tresser, a Chicago marketing executive and theater producer, is the organizing force behind the Creative America Project, a national effort to get, um, some different people to run for office.
Calling all cool kids
Tresser's project was inspired by the work of Richard Florida, the Carnegie
Mellon professor whose book, The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books,
$15.95), defined "technology, talent and tolerance" as the keys
to American success -- and economic progress -- in the coming decades.
Florida has a number of criteria that define the "creative class" of
people who hold these keys, but, basically, they're the
types who
live in Wicker Park.
Tresser wants to mobilize these people not only as an economic force -- how many coffeehouses and graphic design firms do we need? -- but as a political one.
He'd like to see the creative class -- those cool kids who wear their cynicism like one more made-by-indigenous-people fashion accessory -- engaged in the electoral process. And not just voting, which would be a big-enough change, but running for office.
"Artists and creative professionals are nontraditional thinkers," he says. "They're problem solvers. And those are skills we need in the public space. We need those minds applied to public policy."
The whole thing sounds kooky -- particularly when Tresser says, "Imagine a candidate giving a press conference . . . and then doing a poetry reading?" -- except that it seems to be catching on.
A New York political action committee called Downtown for Democracy is tapping the same demographic to raise money for the November elections. Organizers say they're on track to put $3 million to $5 million into campaigns for "creative class"-friendly candidates, including Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson Jr.
Tresser plans a series of workshops this summer to start recruiting even hipper candidates for the 2006 election cycle.
And, until then, he's inviting artsy types to "start exercising their political imagination" by creating a "vision statement for a more creative America" and uploading it to his group's Web site.
Creative thinking in politics? Maybe it's worth a try.
Check out www.creativeamerica.us for more information.