In a competitive marketplace of ideas – of left, right, center – each idea questioned and considered – the best authority is a well-reasoned position.
Simple appeals to personal authority – of the kind that have been the foundation of Whitewater’s politics over the last generation – just aren’t good enough anymore.
Who you know matters less than what you know, and what you can show persuasively to others. Some people will easily make the transition from yesterday’s politics to today’s and tomorrow’s, but others won’t.
Of those others, some will give up, finding the new and more competitive environment too difficult. Others will deceive themselves into thinking nothing’s changed, finding instead that they’re increasingly irrelevant. A third group will cling to the situational, hoping that name-dropping about people and places of the past will be enough to anchor itself in the new waters ahead. It won’t.
There’s no substitute, in a competitive environment, for what’s inside, for a center. From that center, there comes a confidence and conviction and competitiveness that makes navigating a changing course easy. A substantial argument doesn’t spring from an empty vessel. It’s not made stronger because like-minded people insist it makes sense to them. Those whose insides depend only on what’s (and who’s) outside won’t do well in a more energetic city.
Many others, though, of the thousands of talented and solid people within the city, will have better experiences and opportunities for their awareness that the only sound authority now is a good and sound argument.
There’s much yet to do. Some scrapping and tussling lies ahead. Whitewater is a beautiful place easily deserving and worthy of that commitment.
For it all, the decade ahead will be better than the one behind.