Not everyone has the opportunity to speak and pursue a meaningful friendship with an older, simple cloth, off the rack blue suit, worn by the most powerful politician in the city. I consider it a privilege to have the Blue Suit as a confidante and as a friend. As our readers have come to understand, the Blue Suit and I share a very special relationship…as most of us would agree, it is scientifically impossible to conduct a discussion with a cloth Blue Suit. On the other hand, science doesn’t account for faith, or for our belief in God or destiny or great men and women, orators, politicians, rich and poor, Black and white, English speaking and non-English speaking, and on and on and on. My destiny, in part, is attached to the reputation of the Blue Suit as a conduit of information about Everett, and about Everett’s leaders and everyone else who read the Leader Herald. Many, many people read the Leader Herald, but then they go out and vote for whomever they wish. In other words, newspapers have the power to persuade readers and voters but in the end, readers and voters inevitably, irrevocably, do as they like. They elect whomever they want. They reject whomever they wish. That’s how it went in this recent election, when so many incumbents were tossed out of the political ring and so many newcomers were elected to fill their space. Bottom line, something is going on with voters and residents here. A great deal of what occurred on Election Day two weeks ago indicates that residents and voters are causing a different different trajectory for those whom they support. It also indicates quite brilliantly, without a doubt, that some of our politicians are heading for the exit in their political lives, and no matter what they do, or how much money they raise, and how many right decisions or wrong decision they make, they are heading out the door of city hall and back into private life. The Blue Suit and I know that all of us get only so many years to do as we like and to perform as we want in our lives before the earth we walk on trembles a bit, and rumbles, and then we fall, and are forced to get back up and to move forward in a different direction. The world’s most celebrated novelist of the 19th Century, Leo Tolstoy, wrote War and Peace, one of the great, great works of literature ever written. In this work of genius, Tolstoy asks: “What is the force that moves nations,” that moves cities and states and great nations? The power, he surmises, resides in heroes and sovereigns. But he adds, the story of how we get to be with leadership is about historians applying different views of the same story spun by leaders. What am I getting at here? If there is only one historian spinning one story about an event or an election, that story stands.
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