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In this March 5, 2021, file photo the Capitol is seen just before sunrise in Washington.
Sunday, March 21, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Paging Mr. Smith ... Washington is calling.
OK, for everyone under 50, the opening sentence may assume way too much. As in, how have our schools, our civics teachers and our access to the internet failed to educate most Americans about democracy and the delicate balancing act that is required to keep it in good working order?
For the rest of America — those of us who are or are approaching senior status — Jimmy Stewart’s role as Sen. Smith was both a bold adventure in acting as well as acting the way a U.S. senator was meant to act. (For those under 50, find the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and watch it. Consider this your first assignment in modern-day civics class).
I, as well as many concerned Americans — figure close to 70% of us — have reached that point in the collective life of these United States when due consideration of the future has become an imperative.
In short, most of us realize that our democracy is under siege, under duress and almost underwater — not unlike that time just before the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860 — because we have become polarized to the point of a paralytic inability to act in the best interests of all Americans.
That is why, I believe, Joe Biden was overwhelmingly elected to the presidency of the United States. The people, as they almost always do, acted in their own best interests, which, by definition, includes the best interests of this great and powerful democracy of ours.
We elected Biden to fix this mess we have gotten ourselves into. And he aims to do just that.
The challenge, of course, is that there are some people on the other side of progress — call them the regressives — who see failure as an option and seek to cause damage to this country at every turn.
America faces big problems. Biden says he is prepared to take them head on — all together or one at a time — and do it now.
We have wasted too much time deferring until tomorrow that which we should have fixed yesterday (a major cause of so much dissatisfaction and disaffection of regular, hard-working and loyal Americans), and now it seems impossible to get anything done.
And it doesn’t help one bit that the legislative branch of government — those are the folks who craft or change laws to make them work better, and work better for more people — is virtually tied between Republican and Democratic members. That practically ties up any chance to get anything done.
America has to be in the here-and-now business. That means that today, now, is the time to fix, finally: a broken immigration system; broken-down infrastructure across America; a country full of broken promises and shattered dreams of the people who have worked hard and played by the rules but who still get left behind and behind the eight ball; an economic system that favors heavily those at the top at the expense of those in the middle and at the bottom; and a political process that screams failure at the top of its lungs.
Biden is the man who can lead this effort. He has seen it all and has very little left to prove other than that when America works together, it cannot be defeated — not from without or from within.
And that brings me back to Mr. Smith. He was the fellow who filibustered all that was wrong in U.S. politics. He did it by standing on his feet and talking — literally until the cows came home and the people figured out what he was telling them. And that is when democracy worked.
For Biden to fix what has gone wrong in America — and he can — he must either have Republicans and Democrats of goodwill on his side or he must cast the regressives aside and do what needs getting done.
The beauty and benefit of the filibuster in the time of Mr. Smith has been abused to the point of destruction of our democratic process. Nothing works anymore, and that is unacceptable.
We need to force the filibuster back to the point where it can work for all Americans, or it needs to take the leap — or get pushed — from the American political stage.
Americans have too much at stake — our democracy — to allow a few politicians to dither and dally around with the niceties of what the U.S. Senate used to be and hasn’t been for far too long.
Paging all Mr. Smiths. Your country needs you in Washington. Now.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
