Harvard’s Town Caucus this week had all the elements of a good reality TV show. There was suspense (will there be a quorum?), plot development, an engaging cast of characters, urgent demands on family loyalty, and finally, a happy ending. In the end, the caucus produced two qualified candidates for a vacant seat on the Select Board, but is this really how we want to choose our leaders?
Attendance at town caucus has always been pretty much confined to prospective candidates and their supporters, so it’s not surprising that with only one race at stake, even hardcore political junkies decided to sit this one out. But the image of a small handful of townspeople on their cellphones, begging friends, neighbors, and assorted family members to come to Town Hall so a caucus of 25 registered voters could be achieved is pretty sobering.
If there were no caucus, the political world wouldn’t come to an end in Harvard. Candidates would gather signatures and take out nomination papers to get on the ballot, as they do now if they are not nominated at caucus. Maybe it’s a quaint tradition that just no longer works. Or maybe this was an isolated case.
But it sounds like it provided a riveting half hour of suspenseful entertainment, without any annoying commercial breaks