Barbara isn't being Pollyanna-ish about this at all.
There are actually people who want to run for public office because they believe in our Constitution. Unfortunately, neither party likes these people very much.
With enough help, though, such people can be elected.
WI state Senator Tom Reynolds is one such person. I met him for the first time in 1994, when I was steaming about the AWB. He was an unknown running against a liberal incumbent congressman. He attracted enough attention to get ~46% of the vote.
For the next three election cycles, committed volunteers went out and did the stuff that 99% of the population doesn't want to spend time doing: distributing literature door to door, dropping off yard signs, organizing fund-raisers, etc.
In 2002, Reynolds decided to run for state senate against an incumbent Republican. The Republican Party tried to axe him, but his volunteer base persevered, and he won both the primary and the general election.
He's now a thorn in the side of the powers-that-be in the party in Madison because he votes his conscience and his principles. I doubt there's even one vote he's cast that the majority of THR members would disagree with.
But it took hundreds of volunteers to get one such man into office. People who spent their weekends working on a campaign rather than shooting or playing golf.
As anyone who's tried to organize volunteers will attest, getting good ones is an excrutiatingly difficult exercise. But, once you have them, they're good as gold.
Back to the original question, though: I don't think the majority of Americans will ever say "enough." Few people know more about the real news than what they see in a few minutes of "happy talk" on the local news. Newspaper readership is at an all-time low.
Go out on the street and ask people to name at least two SC justices.
The good news for us is that such ignorance can play into our hands if we work for the right candidate. The bad news is that the majority of the public doesn't vote based on principles or the Constitution. It votes based on what's in it for them.
Even more frightening is that the public votes based on the candidate's appearance. A recent study analyzed the appearance of winners versus losers in scores of nationwide campaigns, and found common physical characteristics. I guess ol' Abe Lincoln would be out of the question today.
With the aging of the Baby Boomers and the surprisingly conservative positions taken by many younger voters, we're seeing a turn toward more traditional values. Whether that continues, who knows?
But I'm not ready to count out the political process just yet.
