Harry Caudill: Appalachian Environmentalist

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Now these personalities got elected to office because they were vivid, colorful people. They were roguish, but nearly all successful, politicians in all times have been rogues. Down through history, the men and women who've been leaders have been followed because they attracted attention and people liked that.

Then the attitudes of the people changed-probably due mostly to the mass military training of the great wars-and people began to avoid volunteering avoid sticking their necks out. "Keep a low profile" that was part of the military indoctrination. And that happened to so many people in so many wars that the general populace changed its attitude and decided that it wanted leaders who were low-profile, low-key people with little flash, little color, little spark and that's the reason we've wound up with a United States Congress filled with people who can't articulate.

Today's politicians have to survive without saying anything. They're the world's best equivocators. Most citizens are now terribly frustrated by our lack of national leadership but, at the same time, they won't elect strong personalities to public office. They're repulsed by such personalities. It's part of a nationwide trend. We've thrown out our colorful characters or had them die off, and we've been afraid to replace them with others.

PLOWBOY: Can you give me an example of a colorful individual whom we've failed to elect recently?

CAUDILL: No. Because, in the first place, very few colorful personalities now enter politics. They no longer believe they can win and today's real individualists shun political ventures.

Political candidates-successful ones-are packaged. Their images are sold. To win, you've got to have an image that, as the processors say, "meets the mass requirements" which is low-profile, rather drab, colorless, gray, indistinct.

How far could a Teddy Roosevelt get if he ran for President today? The people would say, "Why, that damn cowboy he'd keep things in an uproar. We need someone who's harder to pin down."

And that plays right into, the politicians' hands, of course, because it enables them to endlessly shift their responsibility and get away with it. It used to be that-when you got upset about something that a politician had done-you could go right down to the county courthouse and find someone you could blame. Try confronting one of your elected officials now and he'll say, "Well, I can't do anything about that. Thai's handled at the district level in the next county down the river." And if you go down there, you'll find someone who's not elected and who can assume the blame without political retaliation. So we're left with no way to get any satisfaction out of the situation.

PLOWBOY: Mr. Caudill, in your book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, you said, "The mountaineer must cultivate the earth to survive." Is that still true?

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