By David Mitchell
John Oxendine may seem like every other American politician. He flashes a million-dollar smile. He shakes hands and greets everyone in much the same fashion (“John Oxendine, good to see ya”). But according to him, he’s a statesman, and that makes all the difference.
“A politician’s thinking about the next election,” Oxendine said. “That’s what politicians do everyday. They give the illusion of fixing the problem. They put a nice Band-Aid on it. But they don’t fix it…A statesman serves the people.”
Oxendine, the Georgia Insurance and Safetey Fire Commissioner in his fourth term, spoke Wednesday to a group of about fifteen, the majority of which were members of the University’s Law Republicans, the organization that sponsored the event.
According to Oxendine, the Republican Party has lost touch with the American people and has not offered an alternative to the politics as usual that has lost it favor in recent elections.
“What happened this last election? Did we really offer anything different?” Oxendine asked the room. “No we didn’t.”
Despite his support for the Republicans, Oxendine said he was not surprised by the results in this year’s Nov. 4 elections.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Oxendine said. “There was nothing that happened last week that surprised me.”
According to Oxendine, who is running for the Republican nomination in the 2010 Georgia gubernatorial election, the Democrats did not see such success because of their popularity, but rather because the Republican candidates failed to offer viable solutions to the country’s problems.
“The Republican Party has to go back to saying: ‘We’ve got a solution.’” Oxendine said. “We’ve got to come up with a solution.”
He also offered some positive words about the campaign that won Illinois senator Barack Obama the presidential election.
“There were a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t be elected,” he said. “But do you know why he was? He offered hope. He offered change. He offered a new idea.”
He said that the Republicans need to reciprocate or else they will be in trouble for future elections as well.
“We need someone that can connect with the American people,” Oxendine said. “If we don’t, we will lose the elections in 2010—and 2012. We need to take the playbook and tear it up.”
According to Oxendine, the Republicans need to revert back to a system that gave it much success in the 1994 midterm elections, a year in which the Republican candidates had the “crazy idea” of serving the American people rather than the other way around.
“Isn’t that being American?” he asked. “Isn’t that what government service is all about?”
Philip Henderson, a second-year law student as well as the state and local chair of the Law Republicans, believes this should especially be the attitude toward service for local officials.
“Everyone’s looking to Washington to solve our problems,” Henderson said, “and what’s really interesting is that local officials are closer to us and can really solve our problems.”
Timothy Dewberry, also a second-year law student, agreed.
“All national problems are local problems,” Dewberry said.
Closing his speech, Oxendine summed up his views on how government must change to better serve the American citizens.
“We’ve got to break through the bureaucracy and we’ve got to run government like we run our own households,” Oxendine said. “We’re gonna run it as stewards for the people.”
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