Win or, more likely, lose, let’s hope former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard’s twin campaigns to be elected Indiana secretary of state and form a new political party accomplishes at least one thing.
Let’s hope it puts an end to some of the essentially pointless and truly stupid fights conducted by both Indiana Republicans and Hoosier Democrats.
The amount of time, energy and money our leaders devote to arguments that benefit no one would stagger a mastodon.
That’s because, sadly, mastodons were smarter than most Indiana politicians.
At present, the Hoosier GOP is divided by a nasty battle between Indiana Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, and his primary challenger, Paula Copenhaver, a staffer for Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith and a Donald Trump loyalist of the first order.
Deery claimed victory following the May primary with a three-vote margin, but the Indiana Recount Commission — specifically, the two of its three members who are themselves Trump partisans — threw out six of Deery’s votes on specious grounds, giving Copenhaver a three-vote edge.
Now, the squabble is headed to court.
What is absurd about this is that the only issue that truly divides Deery and Copenhaver is the degree of fealty they’re willing to show an endlessly insecure president.
Time and again, Deery demonstrated that he would kiss Trump’s ring to demonstrate his loyalty. Copenhaver, like Beckwith, was willing to pucker up lower.
Both Beckwith and Copenhaver proved their puckering proclivities by backing the president’s idiotic and likely illegal attempt to gerrymander Indiana’s congressional districts even further in the middle of a decade.
That’s what the showdown is about — not something that helps Hoosiers live their lives in any way.
Indiana Democrats, on the other hand, are exchanging elbows and insults over whether moderates or progressives should call the shots.
That’s right, a political party that hasn’t won a statewide race since Moses was wailing away in his cradle thinks it can afford to indulge in intramural jousting.
This takes me back to the days when Republicans ruled Indianapolis and Marion County and Democrats there used to have meetings in which they — I kid you not — debated not how to win but what message they wanted to send with their next defeat.
Neither of these family feuds fulfills the most basic function of government in a self-governing society — that of providing a mechanism for people from different backgrounds and of varying interests to resolve their differences and balance their interests.
This is where Ballard’s candidacy could have an impact.
If he gains enough votes in the November election to deny both bickering major parties a clear majority, he might be able to bring about a much-needed change.
If both parties realize they cannot achieve the numbers necessary for them to govern, they — or at least the most intelligent members of either party — will come to an important realization.
That realization?
That they will have to start listening to and working with people who don’t agree with them on every issue. They’ll learn that they have to sit and stay at the table with people who have varied views, even when the questions to be decided matter a great deal.
In fact, especially when the questions to be decided matter a great deal.
As it stands, both parties seem to be more determined to quarrel with their own fellow travelers over trivia than work together to achieve a common goal.
Most of them, sadly, think of compromise with people who disagree with them as a kind of moral surrender.
It isn’t.
True compromise is work — hard work.
It involves not just understanding the views and priorities of the party on the other side of the table, but determining which are the most important interests of one’s own constituency and how they can be preserved during the process of dickering and resolution. It requires study, patience and determination.
It’s the sort of work grownups must do on a daily basis.
But it’s also the sort of work that many of our elected officials have forgotten how to do.
Even if he doesn’t claim the top prize on Election Day, Greg Ballard has a chance to change that. He’s got a legitimate shot at reminding us that we once were a state and a country that knew how to solve problems.
Not just exploit them.
Or make them even worse than they already are.