Birmingham News (AL)

November 30, 2002 

MARY ORNDORFF News Washington correspondent      

WASHINGTON - Former Alabama Rep. Glen Browder, melding his dual careers as a politician and professor, dimly considers the decline of American democracy in a new book meant to inspire the next generation to step up and save it. 

          "I'm trying to personally challenge them," Browder said in a recent interview. "I don't blame them, but I tell them they have a responsibility for the future."  

           Browder, a Democrat who represented east Alabama's 3rd Congressional District for seven years, returned last week to Capitol Hill for a promotional book and speaking tour on "The Future of American Democracy: A Former Congressman's Unconventional Analysis."     
  
             The Jacksonville State University political scientist has permanently hung up his campaign shoes, freeing him to speak bluntly about government and how it sometimes doesn't work so well.     

             "There's enough in here to make both Democrats and Republicans mad," Browder said about the book.          
              
               The system is geared toward partisan warfare, distributing the goodies of the office and getting re-elected, he said.     
             
               "They all come into public service with a vision but as they move along, they get preoccupied," Browder said. "Their vision gets left behind. Most people are not interested in the heavy lifting of democracy."     
      
                 Browder, 59, was elected to Congress in 1989 in a special election after the death of Rep. Bill Nichols, D-Sylacauga. He held the seat until 1996, when he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. He returned to teach at Jacksonville State, and splits his teaching time as avisiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in California.He provokes his young audiences by asking whether America is dying and then leading them through his thesis that a growing cultural, demographic, social and philosophical divide threatens to stymie the democratic process.     

                  "I'm not trying to turn the clock back," he said. "It's that, historically, American democracy had the capacity for progressive change, and I wonder if in the 21st century it will have the same capacity."     

                   His book is more political science text than insider's tell-all about life as a congressman. That one is in the works.