Wyoming doesn't need to build consensus, it needs men and women who will lead it into the future

BY ROD MILLER 

One thing about getting some age on you is that you remember more stuff. Gather up all that stuff, if you dare, assemble it and you have “history.”  History is a hard taskmaster and a harsher mistress. 

I remember the Wyoming Futures Project.

The Wyoming Futures Project was a joint exercise involving the Ucross Foundation. I like this outfit. Ucross (http://www.ucrossfoundation.org) is a pulsing nerve of creative energy, a private sector treasure with a sagebrush heart. Its partner was the state of Wyoming. I like this outfit too. They were signing my checks at the time.

The Futures Project

Wyoming needs people to step up to be leaders, like a wagon master.

was begun in a time of flux in Wyoming, a time of economic challenge. We were nervous as a state; things were changing. It was intended to involve the entire state in a cooperative brainstorming for solutions to Wyoming’s problems.

All of the “stakeholders” were to be invited to scratch their collective heads about which direction our state should take. It was supposed to be Wyoming’s “kumbaya moment.”  

It crashed and burned, accompanied by flute and violin. Despite everyone’s best intentions – and they were very good intentions – the Wyoming Futures Project became just one more Jerusalem artichoke.

What folks don’t realize is that Wyoming will never be homogeneous enough to reach a consensus on anything. That is simply not in our nature. We are too inde-goddam-pendent.

What we will do, though, is to respond to political power. We have always done this. This is not a fault. It is simply recognizing the wagon master when we see him. This is not consensus; this is wisdom. This wisdom kept a lot of folks alive back in the day.  

So Wyoming will not survive our current economic, political and cultural challenges by coming to consensus. If that is your fantasy, good luck with it – history argues against you.  

But what we can do, in our Chinese Fire Drill fashion, is to ride for a brand that rides for us. We just gotta be picky about that brand – again, a lesson from history.

I maintain that Wyoming’s future will be influenced less by a consensus than it will by 20 or 30 good people – people with political stroke, curiosity, foresight and courage – who step up and make the right moves. It matters less who they are than what they are. Wyoming has always been less about the group than the individual.

Let me repeat that for the benefit of organized political parties: Wyoming has always been less about the group than the individual.

We’ll know ’em when we see ’em.  Sort of like how we think of Nate Champion now. They will be good Wyomingites like him, and James Cash Penney, and Bill Cody, Ed Deming, Esther Morris, John Perry Barlow, Jackson Pollock, Al Simpson and Stan Hathaway.  

Wyoming is a hothouse for leaders.  The next ones will be __________________, and _________________, and ______________.  It’s not a very long list, and we just need to fill in the blanks.

If you speak about Wyoming in the first person, if your skin is rawhide tough, if you are curious about what is over that next hill, then it doesn’t matter whether you have an election certificate or not: You have been summoned. Fill in your own blank. 

Don’t do it because, in 30 or 40 years, people will read about it. Do it because today, right now, it’s the smart move. It’s a “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” kind of thing, y’all.  

Here endeth the lesson.

Rod Miller is a citizen, father and grandfather and a proud former Rawlins Outlaw living in Cheyenne.