SMOKE

I don’t claim to know the man’s mind – and we have certainly disagreed on most every issue – but it I think he will agree when I say ‘let’s not draft Quezon.’

He’s intelligent, he’s well-read, and in his writing, one senses a strong current of love for the motherland and his countrymen. To his credit, he quit the Arroyo administration before it became too fashionable to do so, and he has maintained a steady opposition to it since. More importantly for bibliophiles everywhere, he took up the virtual cudgels against the ludicrous treatment of imported books with becoming alacrity. He has a very unmistakable talent for crystallizing issues and causes into rallying cries – the man would make a formidable copy writer – and he’s a lover of Tolkien.

What more can anyone ask for?

Well, for one thing, we can ask for him to decide.

The noted blogger – apart from having really lived – has also said time and again that running for public office isn’t his cuppa tea. Near as I can figure, this determination stems from his definition of himself as being first and foremost, a writer. And as he correctly points out, “To write requires the ability to inspire, provoke, offend, denounce, praise, vilify and question. Anything that attempts to impede the reason for being of the writer -to put pen to paper, to create- is the enemy of the writer.”

If he becomes an elected official, he loses this precious freedom, because someone who depends on people to vote him into office is necessarily bound not to disappoint these voters, and – because of the way politics has a beating heart called compromise – he is just as bound not to alienate his peers through his provocations, offenses, denouncements, praises, vilifications, and questions. Asking the noted blogger to accept these limitations voluntarily – and because he has to campaign at some point, to in effect actively pursue a course of action that would inevitably lead to these limitations – would be like asking him to commit suicide.

/wrist.

Another reason I might put out there, in an attempt to explain his oft-repeated refusal to even consider politics, is that he dislikes the idea of ‘certainties’ defining one’s ability to choose. “I recognize there is good and evil, that the evil may become good, and the good often fail to realize when they have become evil,” he writes – perhaps echoing his disenchantment with the Arroyo administration.

What this means is that, if he were to wade into the fray of politics, he would quickly be labeled a political butterfly, flitting from one side to the other, never truly belonging to either. Philippine politics is an environment decidedly hostile to free-thinkers. Oh sure, there are some exceptions, but they serve only to prove the tyranny of the general rule.

Outside politics, on the other hand, this makes him another Winnie Monsod: able to freely criticize both sides of the political divide, and therefore immeasurably more effective.

Paradoxically, this same ability to criticize both sides freely because he is on the outside is precisely what has led most people to deciding that they want the noted blogger to go inside politics.

This reminds me most of all, of the dilemma of Renaissance artists. They needed a patron to free them from the drudgery of earning a living, thereby allowing them to give free rein to their creativity. Yet having a patron also obliged them to devote much time and effort to painting the patron’s family members and developing themes suggested by the patron, thereby actually depriving him of freedom to let his creativity reign supreme.

Even as I think I understand the noted blogger’s dislike of the idea of running for office, I too have a reason why I think he shouldn’t be drafted.

People who want him to run often cite his uniqueness as the greatest reason why he should run. I, on the other hand, think that that uniqueness is precisely the reason why he shouldn’t.

Put pragmatically, the noted blogger is a scarce resource. There are not many of him around. And while we can draft a few good men into the service, they will still just be a handful of good tomatoes in a basket full of rotten ones. And it is in the nature of things that good tomatoes cannot rehabilitate rotten ones; whereas rotten ones have a nearly 100% success rate in turning the good bad.

So, seeing the noted blogger as a good resource but scarce, smart money would put him where he can do the most good. For the noted blogger, this would not be Congress. His brand of intellectualism would not gain traction there – too many members of Congress, whether the Senate or the House, are simply too irretrievably stupid that the noted blogger’s erudition and clear-headedness would be as startlingly out of place as a strand of black hair floating on milk.

All told, while we do need someone like him in the Senate, we need him out here.

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Written by rom

Rom is a twenty-one year old experiment. She began life with the notion that she was a Filipino-Chinese Ilongga. Now, she just thinks of herself as Ilongga, having realized that she has failed at being Chinese. At least that's what her aku told her upon learning that she had fallen in love with a Filipino.

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