Needed: voters engaged by wit, humor, intelligence
American high school students from 48 states, Washington D.C., Guam, and the United Arab Emirates sent 1,989 essays into the 2018 Profiles in Courage High School Essay contests at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. In 1995, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy asked me to serve as a founding judge in this essay contest. In 24 years, it has grown from the six states of New England with a $2,000 first-place scholarship to an international contest with a $10,000 one.
This spring, history happened. Jeffrey Seaman of Short Hills, N.J., became the awardee, its first home-schooled student top winner. Seaman’s winning essay takes us to the summer of 1920 and the Tennessee state Legislature engaged in voting on the ratification of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. Would Tennessee be forever known as the 36th state needed to ratify, the last and decisive one? Republican state Rep. Harry T. Burn had voted earlier in the day to table the vote, but that motion did not pass. Seaman writes, “On one side stood his political prospects, on the other stood what he knew was right.” Defying popular sentiment among his constituents and political pressure from local political leaders, Burn followed the advice of his mother, “college-educated and civic minded” Febb Burn, who had urged him to approve the amendment. As Seaman describes in the essay, Burn endured intense harassment as a result of his courageous vote, but managed to win his seat in the next election.
Today, our commonwealth’s federal delegation has no women.
“This shameful fact will become history on Nov. 6, thanks to the seven (Democratic) Pennsylvania women running for the Congress,” writes Democratic Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. As an Archbishop Prendergast High School junior in 1980, Congressman Robert W. Edgar asked me as a school newspaper editor to join his Congressional Women’s Advisory Council. Bob and Cliff Wilson, then Delco Dems Party Chair who served in the New York House with Geraldine Ferraro, brought her as Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate to the county campaign trail. Bob and Geraldine worked in a Congress based on serving constituents by doing excellent constituent service in the district and showing respectful regard to the opposition during negotiations to arrive at compromises with legislation. Reading “Profiles in Courage” at school that year, I absorbed the early lesson: we can all make a difference and we all should try.
Like Jeffrey Seaman’s talent, John Kennedy held to a standard of consistent use of reading and writing his own speeches with his aide, Theodore Sorensen of Nebraska, delivering wit with the press along with thorough, respectful, relevant answers, developing carefully worded ideas in conversations with diverse constituents groups on the campaign trail while listening to problems to find solutions in tough places like West Virginia, where he took on the Catholic stigma straight on with clever, warm use of laughter about himself and his opponents to build trust, likeability, and a knowing of himself to the voters. President Kennedy’s legacy is intertwined with the work of his entire family in public service. It encourages our candidates in their campaigns to lay the groundwork to then govern the same way.
During the primary season in Pennsylvania Primary 2018, Democratic voters in the new Pa. 5th District consistently told our door-knocking student interns that they want transparent, democratic, meritocratic, and open election processes. Our county vote counts showed it with four, first-time federal office candidates, favored at the final Democratic ballot count. Digitally, the story of the source of the Democratic turnout in Pa. 5 illustrates a colorful, fresh rainbow: Scanlon (28.3%); Lukenheimer (15.3%); Lazer (15.1%); Vitali (9.3%); Li(7%); Wright (5.2%); Kirkland (4%); Davidson (4%); and Arata (1.5%).
On the other hand, statewide voter turnout counts for both parties’ Primary voters highlighted low numbers. This August, I stood in line at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, a magical gathering space where with bi-partisan member support, I gather experts throughout the world yearly to listen to each other across the disciplines of medicine, science, technology and business to brief the Congress on progress in innovation on brain disease and vice versa.
That Friday, I received texts condolences from colleagues around the world consoling me about Sen. John McCain’s death. I cherished then and now the vivid memory of Ted Kennedy and John McCain warmly sharing the stage in May 1997 at the presidential library for the awarding of Profiles in Courage to this brave veteran. Their laughter remains but so do their example of friendship, mutual respect, passionate leadership, dedicated public service, and good listening skills.
Democrat Mary Scanlon and Republican Pearl Kim could follow their example as Pa. 5 voters face the choice between two firsttime federal office candidates. It only took 38 years to see it happen. We must do our part in each party return to this tradition of public service in a digital age of global connection.
E. Teresa Touey is a Glenolden
resident