Mike McCabe - Blue Jeans in High Places: The Coming Makeover of American Politics

This book never would have been written absent the love, support and encouragement of my wife, Marilyn Feil, and my son, Casey McCabe. This is theirs as much as it is mine.

I also owe a large debt of gratitude to Kristin Mitchell for believing in this book, and to my editor Carl Stratman for his careful attention to detail and many excellent suggestions for improvements. A special thank you goes to Dave and Diane Pauly for their astounding generosity of spirit in helping me on my way, to Lori Compas for her unique blend of infectious enthusiasm and constructive criticism, to Mike Moskoff for his steady encouragement, and to hundreds of others who urged me on both emotionally and financially with their generous responses to the publishers appeal for crowdfunding. Their faith that the book would be worth reading without seeing a word Id written was as inspiring as it is heartwarming.

Table of Contents

American politics is caught in a time warp. If other aspects of our lives mirrored the way we think and talk about politics and act as citizens, we would all still be wearing knickers or petticoats, dancing the Charleston and telegraphing messages to each other in Morse code.

Life in America bears little resemblance to life at the nations founding, or even the America our great-grandparents knew. The roofs over our heads, the food on our tables, the clothes on our backsall have changed dramatically. The way we work, how we travel, and what we do with our leisure time are completely different and growing more so by the day. But much about civic life has evolved barely at all, as if frozen in time.

New slang enters our language almost daily and is quickly incorporated into conversation at work or school or social gatherings, yet our political vocabulary has remained remarkably static. New businesses are regularly being started, bombarding us with new goods and services catering to our ever-changing tastes, while old products are continuously reformulated and repackaged to account for evolving appetites. American political parties and their trademarks, on the other hand, have stayed constant for ages. We have little choice but to perpetually upgrade our workplace skills to keep pace with the demands of a fast-moving global economy, but both the demands and opportunities of citizenship are largely unchanged.

Democracy is a living thing, and in America it is in a state of suspended animation.

No wonder so many people feel disillusioned about politics and detached from the democratic process. The more the world changes and the more politics stays the same, the greater the cause for alienation. Inside-the-beltway pundits endlessly write and talk about the doings and failings of government and the whims and inclinations of voters, but with diminishing effect. American politics is growing increasingly disconnected from American life.

This is not the first time in our nations history that politics has fallen out of step with the times. If history is any guide, the innovators who will help us think our way out of our current trap will come from unexpected locations.

In the fashion world, trends are set in places like Paris, New York and London. In film, all eyes are on Hollywood. In business, western centers of commerce still may set the tone but much of the action is increasingly found in Hong Kong, Dubai, Beijing, Singapore and Shanghai. When invention comes to American politics, it only makes sense to assume its origins would be Washington. But history indicates otherwise. Past political trend-setting has come from nowhere near the Potomac River. When American politics twice before underwent extensive remodeling, it did not happen in the nations capital. Curiously enough, the renovation was engineered in my home state of Wisconsin, of all places.

As political systems go, Americas is comparatively young. But our democracy looks old and sickly at the moment. Politics in our country has again become outdated and needs a totally new look. Recollection of past facelifts inspires much of what you will find in the following pages. Indications of trends in the making and imagination of enterprising citizenship not yet pondered inspire the rest.

Clues From Clark County

Wisconsins Clark County is where I did most of my growing up. I moved there with my family in 1971 shortly before my eleventh birthday. My dad was north of 50 but was finally realizing his lifelong dream of getting back to farming full time. His family lost their farm during the Great Depression. My moma city kidlost her father. Jobless and emotionally tortured by the daily reminders of his inability to provide for his family, he went off on his own, leaving his wife, two sons and two daughters to fend for themselves.

After fighting in World War II, my dad returned to get on with his life, met my mom and the two were married. For years, they made their way by farming on halves, the northern equivalent of sharecropping. They were tenant laborers, working the land and tending the dairy herd while splitting their earnings with the landowner.

While starting a familyenduring a still birth before the arrival of three healthy daughtersthey toiled for southern Wisconsin landlords, first on a farm in the Beloit area and then on another near Whitewater. By the time my brother was born, mom and dad had saved up enough for a down payment on a farm of their own. A few miles outside the Rock County community of Evansville, it was not much more than a hobby farm, a mere 80 acres capable of supporting the smallest of cattle herds. Dad worked full-time in a factory in town, and in his spare time milked our three cows, planted and harvested the crops and kept the machinery in working order. Mom, my sisters, my brother and I did our part too, helping with the barn chores and taking care of a small flock of chickens and a few pigs. It was there I spent the first 10 years of my life.

My parents scrimped and saved and eventually pulled together enough money to buy a full-size, family-supporting dairy farm (with the help of a sizeable bank loan, of course). We moved a couple of hundred miles north where land prices were cheaper, and landed in Clark County.

Situated about halfway between the cities of Wausau and Eau Claire, near a tiny dot on the map named Curtiss, our new home was a standard Wisconsin family dairy farm200 acres and 40 cows. Id never seen my dad happier. It had taken him close to 40 years, but he had made it all the way back to what his family had before the Depression hit.

Clark County was the epicenter of the dairy industry in the state known as Americas Dairyland. Still is to this day. It had more cows than people. Still does. The most recent census put the entire human population in the county at a shade under 35,000a whopping 29 people per square mile. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, Clark County boasts 67,000 cows, the most anywhere in the state.