A vote for change in Big Sky Country

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This week's "2 cents" column may look familiar to a few readers. A shorter and somewhat nationalized version ran in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, but the author says he saved the best for his local readers.)

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"Are you tired of business as usual in our state and federal government?" asked a letter to the editor in the Daily Inter Lake last weekend. It was written by Joani Young, a Montana grandmother who probably speaks for not just a lot of Montanans but a lot of voters across the board as we approach the mid-term elections.

Young had queried me, as managing editor of the Inter Lake, whether I thought she could make a difference in putting the people back in charge of their government. I told her frankly that it seemed like a long shot. You would need money, I told her - a national leader, a political action committee, a movement - but then I realized I was thinking about "business as usual."

"Go ahead, Joani," I told her. "Send your letter in, and let's see what happens."

"It's in God's hands," she said.

The campaign that drove Joani Young to action to protest the state of American politics was Montana's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Conrad Burns, a three-term Republican from Billings, and Democrat Jon Tester, the president of the state Senate. (The race also includes Libertartian Stan Jones, but few people have noticed.)

Her solution: "None of the above."

The problem: A campaign that has been run from Washington, D.C., which has offended every decent Montanan with its big-city advertising blitz, its finger-pointing, and its name-calling.

This, after all, is Big Sky Country, where there used to be room enough for ideas all across the political spectrum and where a man used to be respected as much for what he didn't say as what he did say. But Big Sky Country has been made smaller and meaner thanks not just to the importance of this election on the future of the U.S. Senate, but thanks also to the tightening web of the Internet and cable news (noose?) on our body politic. The Daily Show and blogs like the Daily Kos have pervaded not just the East and West Coasts with their cynicism, anger and disrespect, but also small-town America.

A few weeks ago, for instance, the high school auditorium in Hamilton, population 4,500, was the scene of an embarrassing scrap that is emblematic of why people like Joani Young, who grew up being taught to respect the political process, have now all but given in to despair. There, a debate between Tester and Burns turned into an unruly shout-down in which an audience packed with Tester supporters heckled and cursed Burns, one even calling him a "psycho."

Sorry, folks, that may be standard fare in New York or San Francisco, but it isn't here in Montana, and most of us are dismayed and disturbed as much by the coarsening influence of the "culture of politics as usual" as by the so-called "culture of corruption."

Of course, Burns has been caught up in the Democrats' national plans to take back the Senate by trying to convince voters of the improbable premise that Republicans have a monopoly on corruption while Democrats sleep with the angels.

Oh wait, sleeping with the angels is another form of corruption, isn't it? And the word from Democrats is that Republicans also have a monopoly on that.

Indeed, Conrad Burns may be the only Republican member of Congress who considers the Mark Foley sex scandal a welcome diversion.

That's because just about the only kind of foolishness Burns hasn't been accused of in the past year of campaigning is fraternizing with congressional pages. To be fair, it's hard to imagine either Burns or his opponent committing the kind of indiscretion Foley is accused of.

In fact, the race between the 71-year-old Burns - who cussses and chews tobacco like the former Marine and livestock auctioneer he is - and Tester, a burly, flat-topped 50-year-old rancher from Big Sandy (population: 700 and change), has all the sex appeal of long johns. When these two guys get together in a room, the temperature falls by five degrees.

The problem for Burns is that he has been living in Washington, D.C., for 18 years, so some of his down-home aw-shucks lovable rascal act is long on rascal and short on lovable. Nationwide, Burns is best known for topping the list of all members of Congress who took money from Disgraced Lobbyist (note capital letters: This is his official title) Jack Abramoff.

It's that "culture of corruption" charge which has made Burns vulnerable even though he is better known round these parts for taking money from Congress than for taking it from lobbyists. In fact, Burns and fellow Sen. Max Baucus, a five-term Democrat, are proud participants in the "culture of pork" and loudly trumpet their accomplishments in winning appropriations for a variety of water projects, highways, research grants and farm subsidies. Around the Inter Lake and other newsrooms in the state, we can measure our representation in D.C. by the number of faxes we get from each member of Congress with an accompanying ka-ching.

Mastery of that kind of practical politics has helped Burns survive one gaffe, blunder and scandal after another which would have rocked a senator from a big media state. Just in the past year, he has reportedly insulted working women and firefighters and implied he may have an illegal immigrant on his home payroll.

Similar missteps in the past had a short shelf life, but today's electorate is not in a forgiving mood, thanks in part to the national media attention which is shining an unwanted spotlight on the race between Burns and Tester, thanks also to the gravity of the challenges facing us.

Tester has capitalized on Burns' blunders to take a 4 to 7 point lead in the latest polls, which means that the national focus on Montana will increase dramatically in the last three weeks of the campaign. It's no secret that control of the Senate could hinge on the outcome of this and a couple of other key races, and money from both national parties and their friends has been pouring into the state.

Money - isn't that what politics is all about? And despite the putative efforts of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to clean the system up a few years ago, isn't it worse than ever?

That's the way it looks to Joani Young and untold millions of other Americans. That's why Joani called me up to ask me if a campaign to vote for "none of the above" would have any effect, and later that day e-mailed me her letter and claimed for herself the power Thomas Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence, the right to "alter or abolish" a failed government, although in Joani's case she hopes for "a revolution without a shot fired."

So what is the target of Joani's outrage? People who say one thing, and do another, especially politicians "not caring about you and not serving you in whatever way they indicated they wanted to."

It is no accident that the race Young chose to target for her campaign to change American politics was the Senate race between Burns and Tester. After all, these are two politicians who offer hope in their lineage and demeanor for simple, straightforward truth-telling.

If these two can't keep focused on what they want to accomplish for our nation, instead of what's wrong with their opponent - if they can't tell the moneyed powers to take a hike - if they can't put partisan politics aside and do what's good for their state - then what hope is there for real change, for real progress, for solving the real problems we face?

So Joani Young wants to send a message to Washington instead of a senator. Sen. Burns and Sen. Tester, take note. Democratic National Committee, take note. Republican National Committee, take note.

Joani Young of Kalispell has voted: "None of the above."