I appreciate Steve’s comment attached to yesterday’s entry, but I couldn’t disagree more. He wrote, in part:

the Legislature as a whole barely approaches the level of despicable [from the underside] and exists at the same level as an amoeba as in living cells collected looking for direction.

I’m not exactly sure what triggered his rather extreme statement, but my reaction is that it’s both incorrect and dangerous. Incorrect because it utterly fails to address the realities of the legislative process, and dangerous because such a dismissive attitude discourages others from every jumping into the political fray or even trying to understand how it works and what can be done to impact it.

I have my own view of the Hawaii Legislature, which is large enough to be complex, small enough to be accessible, and open enough to allow people–regular people–to make a difference. The setting throws together 76 self-selected people of widely varying abilities, backgrounds, and experience, motivated by a mix of ambition, a sense of “service”, ideology, different and often conflicting agendas, and commitment to certain constituencies and interests, overwhelms them with reports, requests, research, lobbyists, requests for assistance from people with personal problems often unrelated to state policy or agencies, surrounds them with somewhat vague ethics rules and standards of conduct, then gives them a strict schedule for making decisions, all while largely open to public view, whether via the media or up close and personal with reporters, lobbyists, issue advocates, and others wandering the halls throughout the work days and nights, each with their own opinions what should be done and who should be vilified for not seeing things the same way.

Then of course there are the rest of us at the Legislature, the staff who are relied on for advice, research, organizing, scheduling, and doing all the practical things that are needed to make hearings happen and move bills and resos through the process in a timely fashion. There are the attorneys to pore over the minutia of legal prose, the custodians who maintain order, and on and on. There’s the weight of history and precedent, the pressure of elections past and future, the endless requests for appointments and meetings.

And somehow various levels of leadership have to move matters along through the ever turbulent political seas within the 60 official days of the session spread out over three and a half months. For those in key positions, whether political or technical, elected members or staff, it’s a marathon at a sprinter’s pace.

It’s an amazing political process and, unlike Steve, I’m amazed that it manages to produce as much as it does, and I have to give credit, sometimes grudgingly, to those who not only survive in this maelstrom but manage to be effective within it.

In the end, I admire those who play this political game well, even on those issues where the top players are on the other side.

Hey, if you think regular people can’t do anything, check out what a couple of smoking advocates have done with their regular visits to legislative offices over the past year, or what recreational fishermen managed to pull off over the past couple of sessions. I would put myself on the opposite side of both those issues, but have to admire the way they’ve entered the political stage and gotten their viewpoints heard.

Paraphrasing Mother Jones famous line, “Don’t whine, organize.”

Whew. Opening day is still a couple of weeks away. That’s not really very long to get the machinery of the process up and functioning, and it must be affecting my early morning mood. Off we go.