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State Sen. Thomas M. McGee will be in Philadelphia in two weeks for the Democratic National Convention.
All politics is local.
Those famous words, most often attributed to the late Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., ring true as Lynn and fellow North Shore residents join the throngs descending on national political conventions scheduled over the next two weeks.
Amy Carnevale of Marblehead will attend next week’s GOP convention in Cleveland and state Sen. Thomas M. McGee (D-Lynn) will be in Philadelphia the following week for the Democratic National Convention.
For many Americans, the conventions are televised yawn-a-thons to be avoided in favor of “The Bachelorette” or other summer television fare. Spending a half hour watching a convention is a recipe for aggravation, amusement and maybe even appreciation of the process considered vital to producing an American president every four years.
Carnevale, McGee and other local political junkies like John Krol, Josh Goodwin, Drew Russo and Agnes Ricko are practitioners of the participatory democracy that defines the American electoral system.
Politically active parents, a pivotal event during childhood or a passion for history propelled them into politics and they have yet to be released from the grip of their convictions. Political activism means attending meetings in someone’s living room, holding candidate’s signs on freezing or sweltering days and believing that change is possible.
People like Ricko, Richard Tisei, Joe Scanlon and Carnevale dismissed the notion years ago that a single vote doesn’t matter in America and that the same old faces always populate the upper ranks of American politics.
They know American voters will buck trends and reject the status quo in favor of a hoped-for leader who talks about change and who defines what it means to make America great. Some of the nation’s most strident political voices were felled by bullets or streaked like meteors across the political skyline, never to return again. Others worked doggedly to build support and slogged their way into the top ranks of their respective parties.
Presidential conventions offer the best opportunity for national parties to showcase politics and their candidates for American voters. The politician who looked absurd and argumentative during the winter campaign debates gets to look like a grand thinker and national leader against the red, white and blue backdrop of a convention stage.
But the people who fill the convention halls and do the detail work at conventions are the Russos and Carnevales who have direct connections to communities like Lynn and Marblehead. To their credit, they are the link between national politics and the nation’s future and O’Neill’s immortal words.
