It’s not true that marquee projects make no difference to life in Whitewater, Wisconsin. They do make a difference, just not enough to alter the high poverty and slow growth that besets our community.

Several big projects may have a comforting influence, and offer a cumulative lift, to those who use them.

Outside that orbit, though, the benefits are scarcely noticed, if at all. The same is true of town politics: a few hundred care, several hundred may participate, and the overwhelming majority abstains.

There’s rationality in that abstention – one does not participate where one feels no impact, benefit, or change.

Change of the most meaningful sort will come from America’s steady evolution, from beneficial but impersonal forces, and not from within.

If one thinks about Whitewater over the last several years, all of its principal offices have changed hands once, or more, with the exception of the city’s police chief (who left briefly, but returned).

No one else from 2000 yet retains a leading political or appointed office. Those who were front and center a decade ago have retired or moved on.

What is the same, though, are our stodgy town fathers. They’ve not budged a bit. Leaders have come and gone, but the same narrow faction endures; Whitewater is not, ultimately, a leader-driven culture.

It’s reason to doubt that a few marquee municipal projects and their backers will effect noticeable change, however many millions are spent.

The stubbornness of the town’s stodgy few hasn’t failed to overwhelm its elected and appointed leaders.

Whitewater, Wisconsin has any number of official public bodies and ad hoc committees. We probably have too many, working on too many tasks, at once.

They’re often composed of the same people, something more common than even our small size makes necessary.

Use of the same people, over and over, serves two advantages. First, no group acts too far from the watchful eye of a bureaucrat’s oversight, lest it propose too innovatively.

Second, once the group decides, rapid approval is assured, as those who need subsequently to endorse and authorize the proposal may already have been among the initial group’s members.

Use of the same, well-known members on committee after committee acts as both a governor and an accelerator, regulating and rushing forward.

Over at The Truth About Cars there’s a post about the leadership of the New GM, with a great line, mixing all sorts of references:

I have no idea why Mark LaNeve still works for General Motors. The former Cadillac man was serving Kool-Aid on the bridge when CEO Rick Wagoner was Richard Nixon channeling Captain Queeg. When Old GM sank into bankruptcy, LaNeve (and Bob Lutz and Fritz Henderson and the whole damn crew) should have gone down with the ship. Instead, they transferred to another boat and headed straight for the same iceberg. No surprise there: hitting icebergs is who they are and what they do.

Change a few names, and you’d have some of Whitewater’s long-term incumbents and bureaucrats down pat.

The Truth About Cars is a group blog, that Robert Farago founded because he felt that few were writing honestly and candidly about the automobile industry. Here’s a description from TTAC website:

The Truth About Cars provides no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners automotive reviews and industry-related editorials. Our writers call it like they see it, and pull no punches….About four years ago, Robert Farago was a freelance writer living in the UK. After Autocar blacklisted Farago for slating then Editor-In-Chief Steve Sutcliffe (for boasting about driving a Lamborghini with his eyes closed), Farago started posting rants on www.pistonheads.com. Despite (or because of) Fahrenheit 451 temp replies, he created a regular series called “The Truth About Cars.” When Farago moved to the U.S., he started TTAC.

That’s how a popular and influential blog — now a group blog — came to be: someone thought there were problems in an industry, that others (especially car magazine editors) refused to talk about. It’s not that the problems weren’t ever discussed; they weren’t discussed as honestly and thoroughly as they might have been. It’s not that problems in the automotive industry were new; they were long-standing.

Whitewater’s a small town, with nowhere near the talent that the failing American auto industry had. It’s making the same mistakes of insularity, arrogance, laughable boosterism, and ignorance of serious problems of comparative economic decline and unaddressed poverty.

At many ponts during the last twenty years, the American auto industry (especially GM and Chrysler) might have pointed to the next big thing, right up until the point that they fell apart. They’re not done falling, even now. (Farago may be right that GM and Chrysler are finished, in a year or two.)

Someone writing about the collapse of GM, even a few years ago, might have been considered nuts; how could the world’s largest automaker fail? Asking that question today, however, requires asking about Toyota, not GM.

Decline often happens slowly; it’s impact not being evident until it’s too late. I wrote something along these lines this morning, in reply to a reader’s question:

“I also don’t expect sudden change, and I never expect that what I write will alter the course of local events. On the contrary, I think that change will inevitably come to Whitewater apart from anything that anyone writes or says. I’m chronicling a course that others have set for themselves, with a few stray comments along the way, about how it might have been different.

It won’t be different; this die is cast. Like the American auto industry (about which I’ll make mention today), Whitewater’s municipal government and local elites are on a course both fixed and glacial. They won’t change, right up until everything changes around them. Even then, I doubt they’ll notice, until their noticing doesn’t matter.”

These gentlemen are sure — absolutely sure — that they’re right. I’m not convinced. It doesn’t matter that they’re absolutely sure; it certainly doesn’t matter that I’m not convinced.

Many of the men running the city will have passed from the scene — retired or moved on — before the wreck of their policies is evident to those who remain. In even a few years, the cast of leading players in Whitewater is likely to be significantly different.

Change won’t come from within, but from without. Ultimately, Whitewater will look more like America, although still a small town, and there’s simply no way to prevent that transformation. The marquee projects of today, or tomorrow, do not represent that lasting change.

We’re far from the moment when things will be different, the way the American auto industry was far from our current scene in 1990.

For America, there’s a bright future ahead. For many who work (or worked) in the current auto industry, that’s no consolation. America — free, dynamic, ambitious, open — will develop new companies and industries, including perhaps new car companies. In her long history, America has often and convincingly overcome threats, hardships, and doubts. She’ll do so many times again.

Whitewater will, too. It will happen, though, long after all the current boosterism has faded, and been forgotten.