Ten years before Sen. Elizabeth Warren started running for president, Leslie Knope had “a plan for that.” You might think Knope was one of the eighteen candidates on Michigan’s zombie-like Democratic Presidential primary ballot in March, squeezed somewhere between Marianne Williamson and Wayne Messam (Who? Seriously, I just saw that name for the first time ever right now.).
But Knope is the fictional “happy warrior” politician from the fictional Pawnee, Indiana in NBC’s hit sitcom Parks and Recreation that aired between 2009 and 2015. Last Thursday, the show aired a special reunion episode to raise funds for Feeding America.
If you loved Parks and Rec, you probably loved the reunion. Just about every major character from Ann Perkins(!) to Tammy Two made a reappearance (although sadly for our editor and Pacers’ afficionado, friend of the show Detlef Schrempf did not appear).
Even five years after the show, all of them returned to character like flipping on a light-switch, from Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) who developed a plan for all of the characters to check in virtually on each other daily, to the “libertarian-by-his-own-bootstraps” Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), who appeared live from his woodshop and quipped that he had been practicing social distancing all his life. The show closed with a touching tribute as the cast sang “Bye-Bye Lil’ Sebastian” by Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), who composed the song when the eponymous miniature horse and Pawnee local folk-hero died in a previous episode.
As the song closed, I admit there were tears in my eyes. My wife says I’m a sucker like that. Not because I missed the miniature horse as much as the good citizens of Pawnee, but because I truly loved this show. It’s no secret that Americans’ opinions of government the last two decades have ranged somewhere smack in the middle of “apoplectic” and “torch-and-pitchfork-carrying”—if not worse, as we’ve recently seen at the state capital. Parks and Rec never gave in to that cynicism. It portrayed elected officials who were sometimes incompetent to be sure, and occasionally corrupt, but who, led by Leslie Knope’s example, really believed in making their community a better place for everyone. Above all, it showed local officials as real people.
Parks and Rec showed the local side of government I have come to love. Many of the people threatening our elected leaders don’t know them. They know of them, but how many of our readers have ever really gotten to know our Representative Fred Upton, let alone Governor Whitmer or President Trump? (And I don’t mean that you met them in a handshake line once or got a mailer; even I got a text from Newt Gingrich the other day.)
Not a lot of people today know that James Madison proposed two other amendments to the constitution alongside the ten that would become the “Bill of Rights.” The second proposed amendment was finally ratified about two hundred years later in 1992 (which is about average speed for the US Congress). But what would have been the first amendment has never been ratified. It would have limited the number of people a member of the House of Representatives could represent to 30,000. Now, it’s a good thing that didn’t pass because if it had, the House would have to be one thousand times as big as it currently is. But you can see the logic. Representing a district the size of 30,000 people gives the people a chance to actually get to know the person representing them. And that matters.
Because when you don’t know people, distrust is natural. You don’t know their motivations, what makes them tick, what they are trying to protect. It becomes all too easy to caricaturize conservatives into swamp monsters from Louisiana and liberals into vampires from the Upper East Side.
Parks and Rec showed me the beauty of local politics. If you want to go to a city commission or county commission meaning—outside of this time of coronavirus—you can, and I’d say you should. You would find these are ordinary people, our friends and neighbors, just about all of whom hold other day-jobs, trying to make complicated decisions where it’s not always so clear what the “right thing” to do is. In Three Rivers, you can even go chew out your mayor at the bookstore. He might push back, but he’ll listen. I know because I’ve done it.
Sadly, people barely show up to vote in local and state elections, never mind following up later. This ought not to be. Numerically speaking, your vote counts for a lot more in an election of a few thousand in St. Joe County than it does among a couple hundred million nationally. In addition, these folks are taking votes on meat-and-potatoes issues that affect us here in the county, whether that’s turning a ditch into a park in Parks and Rec or a library or sports complex here in TR.
Our next election is August 4, the primary for state candidates. On the Republican side in particular, the nomination process is quite competitive. You know these people; ask for a vote-by-mail ballot and take your part in caring for our county and state. Otherwise you don’t know who will.
James E. Smith is a pastor serving at Trinity Episcopal and St. John’s Lutheran Churches. For comments, questions, or rebuttals, fire off an e-mail at [email protected]. Prosit!
Any views or opinions expressed in “Gutenberg” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.
