Government is good

the long version

"We like to think that government is there when we want it. Voters--if they vote--have the power. Elected officials, especially in local government, are there to carry out the details, to take care of the humdrum "nuts-and-bolts" running of things." "Having been a council member and mayor for a small southern manufacturing town, "Hill City," Joseph Freeman knows better. He knows what it's like to try to make local government work. In Government Is Good he takes readers inside the system to show politics at its most human level." "Following the major elements of the American political process, Freeman shows local government in action. He challenges the presumption of many political scientists that an understanding of government is necessarily technical, addressing such abstractions as memory, symbol, context, and power as they work in the practice of governing. Freeman finds unspoken meaning in the routine activities of city government. From such events as a touching funeral for a retired police commander to a visit to the waterfront just hours before Hill City's worst flood in two hundred years, Freeman draws parables of political life. We see Hill City's "system of law enforcement" from the seat of a patrol car and we watch citizens lobby against the rezoning of a busy neighborhood intersection. With eloquent depictions of the city and its people, Freeman explores the political life of one American community."--BOOK JACKET.