Brody, who has a farm in Essex, is the former Chair of the New York State Democratic Rural Conference and teaches Business and Political Ethics at SUNY University at New Paltz.

    He was instrumental in organizing the New York State Democratic Rural Conference held in Lake Placid in 2003. The conference attracted most of the Democratic presidential candidates in that year election and offered them a forum to bolster their chances to be selected as standard bearers for the Democratic Party.

    The Democratic Rural Conference under Brody’s leadership has become a model for rural political organizations around the country, including  Virginia. It helped to strengthen party organizations and create advocacy groups for effective change.

    Although it remains to be seen whether any advocacy group for the public good would be able to gather enough strength to counteract the power of special interest that prevents any meaningful change, it won’t be for the lack of effort by political activists like Brody.

    “I think the key is for political leaders to see their objectives as aligned with the general good, not with their partisan interests,” Brody said in a recent interview with the Lake Placid News and The Virginia Gazette.

    He explained that there is a fundamental conflict of interest between the goal of partisan hegemony, especially if it is used for individual self aggrandizement, and acting in the interest of public good. “It is inherent in all politics, but when the public good is blatantly and shamelessly denigrated as it is now, then men and women of integrity have to put in motion the antidote to partisanship,” he said.

    Brody believes that the public is sick and tired of ego and partisanship and elected representatives who simply announce that from here on they will be acting as a coalition in pursuit of public interest they’ll be rewarded at the ballot box.

    “There is a need to galvanize the large moderate class in America,” he said. “This means clamoring for good government, integrity, common sense, bi partisanship. This is not as sexy as denunciation and condemnation, the stock and trade of the self styled moral champions on the right and on the left. So we’re going to have to come up with militant moderates, organizing grass roots element who have had enough of their governments’ posturing and bickering.”

    Brody, who has a track record of bringing together differing elements of the Democratic Party, said that he intends to continue to focus on integrity in politics. “I have no intention to condemn people or politics, but to find a way to that ‘kernel of truth,’ the essential core of goodness that lies within most Americans.”

    To do so, he leads workshops, teaches, comments on TV and writes opinion pieces. “I am trying to raise awareness of the dark road we are collectively embarked upon. Ultimately, I concentrate on changing the minds of young people so they will reject the egotism and finger pointing that characterizes current politics,” he said.

    He is echoing the sentiment of Sen. Evan Bayh, who in a recent New York Times op-ed piece recalled an episode involving his father, Birch Bayh, who represented Indiana in the Senate from 1963 to 1981.

    “A progressive, he nonetheless enjoyed many friendships with moderate Republicans and Southern Democrats…In 1968, when my father was running for re-election, Everet Dirksen, the Republican leader, approached him on the Senate floor, put his arm around my dad’s shoulder, and asked what he could do to help. This is unimaginable today.”

    Yet, both Sen. Bayh, and Stuart Brody seems to believe that “With the right reforms, members of Congress can once again embody our best selves and our highest aspirations.”

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from The Virginia Gazette.