I attended the public debate meeting between Mayor Paul Wiehl and his opponent, Colonel Emeritus Randy Morris, on Oct. 4 to listen and ask a question — primarily to Morris about his qualifications to become Athens’ mayor.
The meeting protocol surprised me and left me feeling a bit chagrined. It had an undemocratic “command and control” taste and smell that is the essence of military mind-sets. This protocol constrained voters, both physically and intellectually, in their questions and answers.
With a bit of reflection, I have come to think of this constraint as the “postage stamp” constraint. Voters were confined to presenting their question, only in writing and on a small piece of paper about the size of two postage stamps [one inch by two inches], which were submitted to some inspectors for scrutiny before being passed to the meeting moderator to be read aloud.
There is not enough space in this letter for exploring the “postage stamp” constraint. Hopefully the press will permit me to discuss it in a separate letter soon.
The issue that I had wished to explore with mayoral candidate Morris had to do with how the 29 years of military service that he and his public-relations apparatus frequently call to our attention equipped him to be the mayor of this beautiful little “democracy” — the university city of Athens in and around which we citizens are privileged to live.
My 85 plus years of being, including nine years of military service, lead me to profoundly understand how the military milieu is a very poor one for learning how to provide democratic leadership. These nine years include five years of active duty in two wars: World War II as an enlisted tail gunner and Korea as an officer and combat pilot. The remaining four years were reserve time sandwiched in between the two wars — time that included an ROTC graduation as a distinguished military graduate.
My military experience, taught me primarily how to kill and destroy. It taught me absolutely nothing about “democracy” with its sometimes messy but healthy political and other kinds of truth seeking. My military experience also taught me that military institutions worldwide (including our U. S. military) are the human species’ most undemocratic institutions ever created — where orders are taken and given with zero democratic discussion about those orders.
Thus, I do not think that Morris is the man for our lovely little democratic university city of Athens.
I see incumbent Mayor Wiehl as the candidate who has demonstrated — with his experience, performance, perspective and attitude — a clear understanding of the wonderful importance of democratic governance.
Chuck Overby is an emeritus professor in engineering at Ohio University.
