Officials, candidates, and political parties are – and should be – free to choose and act accordingly. What they shouldn’t be – and in Whitewater will not be – is free to act merely on their own terms, without question or comment.
Want to run for office? Good luck. Want to hold office? Best wishes. Want to represent a political party? Fingers crossed.
Want to do these things without commentary or debate? No, and no again.
No one owes others their mediocrity. No one owes others their overweening sense of entitlement.
Bad policy choices (one after another), conflicts of interest (one on top of another), or a flimsy understanding (made manifest time and again) do not disappear because an entitled man says or thinks they do.
Whitewater is filled with smart and capable people (of every ideology and view) – the city is long-past a free ride for third-tier thinking.
That’s the world Whitewater is now in, no matter how much a small number might wish to pretend otherwise.
Not seeing this – or not wanting to see this – is like being the character Larry Culpepper from part of a recent Dr. Pepper commercial – pretending he’s subtle doesn’t make him so: