President's Perspective
Dave Brown, AMA president
If the organization is threatened, the members will not be far behind.
Being president of AMA is often exhilarating and easy — at least in those cases where what I have to do is popular with the membership as a whole.
You know the types of things I'm talking about: giving out awards, speaking at banquets, meeting with the members. If that was all being president meant, the nominating committee would have the tough job deciding which candidates should go on the ballot from the dozens of nominees.
Being president, or any other AMA officer, goes a lot deeper than that. It means you get to make decisions that create controversy. It means you have to try to explain those decisions when they might not be particularly popular, and, more importantly, you have to make decisions that you know will not be popular.
It is surprising to me how similar the job is to that of nearly any elected official.
As Americans, we pride ourselves on the way we govern our society democratically. Democracy is the best and most fair way to govern any society. Many lives have been lost defending that principle.
The only problem is that a democracy is not the most efficient way to govern a society. The cost of running a true democracy is huge in terms of time and money, but the costs go much deeper than that. Trying to run everything in a purely democratic manner is not only inefficient, it is downright impossible.
Someone must decide to initiate the vote, and word the question on the ballot. As any society grows, more decisions need to be made. Day-to-day decisions become larger, and are made by people who are much closer to the situation than the society as a whole.
Take the situation of a tree falling down across the driveway to your office, and consider all of the decisions that have to be made in addressing that situation.
To start with, the decisions previously made would make a big difference in how to proceed. Did you buy that chainsaw you looked at, and did you buy a gas can and fill it? If you don't have the gas, you are sure to wonder why you didn't buy an electric saw, but if the tree took out the power lines, you would be glad you didn't.
Decisions, decisions — all of which might not matter if you decide to hire a professional to remove the tree. Then again, you might consider rerouting the driveway around the fallen tree, therefore making all of the aforementioned moot.
You could decide to pull up stakes and move to a new office. However, that would depend on whether you decided earlier to buy your building or to rent. I guess you could also decide to go out of business and retire!
Of course, you could... well, you get the idea.
Can you imagine putting out a vote to everyone who is part of your society on each of those decisions? Of course not, but I am sure that someone in that society would suggest that you should have.
The practical solution for nearly every democratic society is to empower someone to make those decisions, which is not as simple as it sounds. The members of the society need to retain some level of control over their destiny, but they don't want to get bogged down in every detail.
The solution is simple. You elect the people who make the decisions, and you hold them up to a reelection process on a regular basis. If the society is going in the direction that the majority of its members want it to, they might reelect the same people. If the majority becomes unhappy with the direction in which the society is going, it replaces those decision-makers through the electoral process.
The society determines its destiny through the ballot box, and learns to accept the will of the majority, as well as the impracticality of voting on every decision made on its behalf.
Sometimes these elected officials have to make decisions that aren't popular, but are necessary.
Right now, for instance, the AMA officers are addressing a problem with a few contest directors who are not doing a proper job, and whose actions could threaten the well-being of the organization.
No matter what we do, it will be unpopular with some of the members, but the people you elected will make those decisions.
You, as a whole, elected the members of the Executive Council to make decisions for you. Those members are working very hard at making those decisions, based on what is right for the organization and its members.
Sometimes a decision is made that seems to benefit the organization more than its members, but that is sometimes what is necessary. If the organization is threatened, the members will not be far behind.
Keep in mind that it all starts with a single vote, and our members are allowing a mere 15–20% of the members to control the entire process. If we can only get a 15–20% turnout to elect the officers, how many would vote on whether to buy a gas or an electric chainsaw?
Till next month,
Dave
Dave Brown AMA president [email protected]
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
