Doug Rooks, a longtime Maine journalist and a columnist for this paper, has written a book that every candidate for governor and Legislature should read — and you should too. “Rise, Decline and Renewal” is a history of the Democratic Party in Maine, but it’s much more than that.

Doug’s book chronicles the good days, when outstanding leaders including Ed Muskie worked with members of the other party to serve the people of Maine and our country. And he also tracks the fall into dysfunction and ugliness that plagues us today. His chapter titled “Disaster” is a must-read for all.

U.S. Sen. Ed Muskie speaks to the press in January 1970 about his proposed environmental legislation. Muskie’s Clean Water Act of 1972 helped make the Kennebec River viable again. Associated Press file photo

While the book is about the Democratic Party, a similar story could be written about the Republican Party. Doug even offers a chapter on politics in Vermont, with good lessons for Maine.

Towards the end of the book, Doug offers lots of good ideas for pulling us out of this malaise and returning to a better time politically. I can only hope his suggestions get some traction.

Consider this statement by Sen. Muskie: “Our way of being tough in our part of the country is to do it without name calling or recrimination, but to develop clear ideas of what we stand for and to press for them as hard and as effectively as we can. We don’t think it is necessary to be nasty … to really make this society work, we’re going to have to move across the lines of confrontation, reach agreements, get results. To do it needs toughness. It needs courage. But it also requires effectiveness.”

Don’t we wish this was the prevailing attitude today. I managed Dave Emery’s campaign for Congress in 1974, when we upset incumbent Congressman Peter Kyros. Dave and I arrived in Washington, D.C., as two young 26-year-old Republicans without much of an idea of what we were doing, and Muskie, a prominent national leader and Democrat, did everything he could to help us. That would not happen today.

As we wrestle with health care issues and problems, please consider this quote from then-Congressman Emery, in 1974: “I favor a comprehensive national health insurance program that would cover costs of hospitalization, surgery, medicines, examination and treatment by doctors, and convalescent care. Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for low-income families should be incorporated into the system.” I guess Dave was 44 years ahead of his time.

I read a proposal recently from a Republican candidate for governor in favor of repealing Maine’s income tax. Perhaps he doesn’t know that Mainers rejected an attempt to repeal the income tax in 1971 by a vote of 190,229 to 63,403. Been there. Done with that.

Doug offers many suggested changes for programs ranging from Land for Maine’s Future to funding for our university system (he reports that we spend more on our prisons than we do on our university system, poor priorities if you ask me).

I was fascinated to learn that during the 1970s and ’80s, Maine’s population grew faster than the nation as a whole. Ah, the good old days.

If you are registered as an independent voter, you need to listen to Frank Coffin. He compared registering as an independent to a “spectator sport confined to watching the game only in the final few minutes.” It has always surprised me that Maine’s independent voters, a larger block than are enrolled in the Democratic or Republican parties, sit on the sidelines and let others choose their candidates in the primaries.

If you are an independent, you can enroll in a political party on primary day in order to help choose that party’s nominees. You do have to remain in that party for 90 days, however.

I was born a Republican but switched one time to vote for a Democrat who was running for Congress. After 90 days, I re-enrolled as a Republican and wrote one of my all-time favorite columns, “My 90 Days as a Democrat.”

Former state Sen. Peter Mills, on the book’s back cover, summed up my thoughts, noting, “Throughout the world, democracies are under stress. Rooks provides a case study for how to grapple with that stress and meet the challenges that citizen’s face in this country.”

Twenty-seven years ago, when he was editor of the Kennebec Journal, Doug Rooks hired me to write weekly editorial columns for the newspaper. So if you don’t like my columns, you can blame Doug!

On Saturday, April 21, at 10:30 a.m. at Augusta’s Lithgow Library, Doug will be talking about this very important book. I’ll be introducing him, and I hope to see you there.

George Smith can be reached at 34 Blake Hill Road, Mount Vernon, ME 04352, or georgesmithmaine@gmail.com. Read more of Smith’s writings at www.georgesmithmaine.com.

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