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7/15/2008In an interview for this issue of Minnesota, University of Minnesota alumnus David Domke (Ph.D. ’96) said that in America, “democracy is experienced on a daily basis by everybody.” (Click here for full interview.) I would have sworn that I experience democracy only when I swerve from my routine on election day or by following the occasional impeachment hearing. So I decided to test the idea. I would be on the alert for each instance over the subsequent days that I encountered democracy. I didn’t have to wait long. I attended a neighborhood ice cream social one June afternoon, and who showed up but two of my elected offi cials. I had voted for just one of them but was happy to see both out shaking constituents’ sticky hands. Meeting my mayor and city council member definitely counted as experiencing democracy. I experienced democracy the next day, too, while trying to peel a terrified cat off the ceiling. A quiet night sky had exploded with fireworks from the yard of a neighbor rehearsing for his Fourth of July blowout, still weeks away. I remembered the good old days, when setting off booming, aerial fireworks was illegal in Minnesota. Not that people didn’t do it anyway; it’s just that sneaking fireworks over the border was so much more fun. But then someone introduced a bill. . . . Democracy, loud and clear. Walking up to my car the next morning, I took note of the antiwar sticker I had slapped on the rear window a few years earlier. We Americans tend to communicate via bumper stickers and T-shirts. Still, these are forms of free speech in a democracy that protects the rights of individuals. I wouldn’t be shocked to find my window broken in response to that bit of speech but feel fairly confident that I won’t be arrested for it. Democracy again. Later that week, in preparing this magazine for the printer, I visited the U’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs to look for photographs from Hubert Humphrey’s life and was allowed into the storage room containing the Humphrey archives. (Click here for Humphrey article.)Tens of thousands of photos and papers fill several metal file cabinets. I pulled up a chair and began flipping through pictures from Humphrey’s mayoral, U.S. Senate, and presidential campaigns; from his trips abroad as a senator and a vice president; and from his days as a University of Minnesota student. I sorted and winnowed and laid out my favorites on a table. Two hours went by before I took a break and looked around the room for the fi rst time. On a shelf I noticed a well-traveled red suitcase embossed with the letters “H.H.H.” Next to it sat a fedora I had just seen on Humphrey’s head in countless photos. I reached up and thought about trying it on but stopped myself from the blasphemous act. I should quit goofing around and get back to the office, I thought, and began to stack the photos. It was then I realized I hadn’t laid these photos out on a table; it was a massive wood desk. I leaned forward to admire the ornately carved sides. Not only was this Humphrey’s desk, but for half of the afternoon I had been sitting in his black leather chair from his vice presidency (a small engraved plaque on the rear confirmed this). I sprang to my feet and apologized to Humphrey’s ghost. I tried to envisage Humphrey fuming that his chair wasn’t in a glass case behind velvet ropes instead of in a storage room where any old unwashed visitor might plop down. But I just couldn’t conjure the image, probably because I knew Humphrey would want it this way. How democratic is that? | |||||||||||||
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