There was a compelling moment during the Republican debate last week. The moderator asked for a show of hands if anybody would not make the pledge to support the GOP nominee, whoever it might be, if it were not him. Donald Trump was the only one who raised his hand.
I certainly am not going to defend Donald Trump. He's a billionaire who has lived so long in a bubble of privilege that he knows he can say whatever he wants, with minimal to no consequences. For some people that freedom can lead to benevolence; for him, it's clearly led to being a jerk.
However, what it shows in the rest of the field has become indicative of the two-party system across the country.
Politicians can't step outside the box anymore -- to do so is to commit political suicide. It's not just on the national scale that we see this; it's on the local level as well.
Think back to April and the Anchorage mayoral election. There were many candidates, all seemingly different, from diverse backgrounds, bringing various skill sets to the table. However, on so many issues, the answers were exactly the same. They all said APD needed more staffing. Nobody explained how they would accomplish that. Most of them said they wanted to improve the downtown area. Very few were specific about how to do that.
There was no clear difference in that election until the runoff when we had a standard liberal vs. conservative battle between Ethan Berkowitz and Amy Demboski with the same tired talking points. At that point, it was just a game of who would get out the vote or which candidate would make the stupidest statement first.
Berkowitz won in a landslide.
Now, like no other time in history, we need leaders to take that step outside of conventional safety stump speeches and talking points. We need revolutionary leaders on the national, state and local level.
The United States is facing unprecedented debt with no hope for a balanced budget in sight. Alaska is facing a fiscal cliff that could possibly be worse than the crash of the 1980s unless the Legislature suddenly learns leadership principles overnight, which is highly unlikely. Anchorage needs to move into the 20th century now that the 21st century is well underway.
So why is it that an outside-of-the-box candidate cannot get any traction? There are plenty out there. Former Congressman Ron Paul and his son Sen. Rand Paul both have fantastic ideas that deserve to be heard. On the other end of the spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders also has some insights that fall outside of the conventional two-party discussions.
However, when these types of candidates run for office, they often are referred to as crazy or fringe candidates. Trump is labeled that way right now for his off-the-wall comments. Even the party whose nomination he is trying to win is reportedly working hard behind the scenes to distance itself from him.
You might make the argument Trump is leading in the GOP polls, and you'd be correct. He is also currently leading in polls in Iowa and South Carolina. History leads us to believe, however, he will not keep this lead all the way to February when primary season starts.
For now, however, we are still facing the same milquetoast lineup we had been expecting, and there is a real possibility of a Bush/Clinton faceoff in November 2016 -- seriously.
We used to put ideals over political ideology. We admired and elected such men such as Teddy Roosevelt, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. We also cherished philosophers such as John Locke, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry. All of these men were great thinkers and introduced new ideas to a populace skeptical of them.
The industrial age brought us great minds on all sides of the issues, like John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and Adam Smith. They helped us shape our way of life going forward as an industrialized, capitalist nation. The civil rights movement, of course, brought us Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, among many others.
So many different people throughout history were willing to speak truth to power and were able to find the electorate or people to follow them -- but today, those people seem to be hard to find.
Change will come not from our current leaders. Our leaders are afraid. They are scared of the electorate --which is us. Voters need to be willing to step outside the box with potential leaders to move us toward the next revolution or evolution.
Mike Dingman is a fifth-generation Alaskan born and raised in Anchorage. He is a former UAA student body president who has worked, studied and volunteered in Alaska politics since the late 1990s. Email, michaeldingman@gmail.com.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com