I sat in a Welsh village four autumns ago, happily hidden away from American politics and war. The local men's choir soothed me with the songs of my father's countryland.
As the singing ended, a graying Welsh chap named Morgan stepped out of the bass section and confronted me. He was a schoolmaster. He seemed desperate to talk to another Morgan.
"You are about to go home to America," he said, "to vote for the next president of a great nation that we Welshmen look up to for your love of liberty and freedom. But please tell me now: How can you go back to face having to vote for either Bush or Gore?"
I linked arms and led him to the nearest pub for a pint. In that raucous room, it was easier to confess my own anguish.
This Welshman seemed bereft. We had let him down. He asked how we Americans had allowed our traditions of statesmanship to erode in such a relatively young life.
Later on that journey, aboard a train nearing Berlin, a German businessman threw down his newspaper, stared at my wife and me, and cried out, "Where are your Winston Churchills?"
Four years later, now, I still find no easy answer.
In San Diego and across America, government is in crisis. Our election process is bent and breaking.
The real leaders of this region - in brilliantly successful businesses and public affairs - are not welcomed into affairs of city government. They rarely risk the indignities of fundraising and the humiliations of campaigns.
Our politics have been quietly reshaped to the needs of a new breed of mercaneries who who are replacing the leaders of old: politics now serves the needs of career politicians.
Professionals in both parties now search out candidates and hope to control their words and gestures. Such pros led the recent reshaping of Congressional districts across America - seeking to make each district a shoo-in for a party candidate. No single change has done more to eprive voters of free choice.
Now, candidates survive only in the grasp of professionals who are already plunged into the murk of campaign fund raising. And no government is likely again to be bold enough to control it.
San Diego's Ethics Commission takes up such complaints, but few are bold enough to bring complaints.
But we should. The United States Attorney has indicted two young city councilmen, who have argued that what they did was common practice.
This same fundraising issue is at the core of their defense.
If not now, when will we face the downward slide in democratic government? We are defaulting our citizen role to politicians.
We need to think like the modern city we almost are. I need better news to send back to that earnest schoolmaster in Wales.
