A front row seat to the show that is politics

I don't remember at what point in a wayward youth I first fell in love with politics. I got hooked on the newspaper reading habit early -- and it's impossible to break once you get into it. The Orange County (Calif.) Register of my youth was filled with politics.

I remember watching plenty of State of the Union speeches, eating popcorn in the den of our house in Huntington Beach and watching Ronald Reagan inveigh against the excesses of the federal government.

After college, one of my first jobs was covering the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the nation's largest local government. I covered that along with the newest city in the county, Diamond Bar. That teaches you government is the same, regardless of size: The same shortcomings, the same potential, the same politics.

I never covered California's Legislature during my stay as a reporter at the Sacramento Union. My focus was several blocks down the Capitol Mall, a scandal at the very top of the state Department of Education that toppled the superintendent of public instruction. He was recently appointed by California's new/old governor, Jerry Brown, to a seat on the State Board of Education, which proves an immutable law of politics: Resurrection is not as uncommon as you'd think.

Here in Las Vegas, I first explored politics as a City Hall reporter, then as a writer for CityLife, then as the political columnist for the Review-Journal. I left six years ago to become editor of CityLife, but I never left my love for politics, and it never left me.

That's why I'm back.

Anybody who follows Nevada politics knows it's a fertile field. We have some of the most colorful characters, outrageous scandals and head-shaking power plays anywhere.

We've had a voting majority of former Clark County commissioners behind bars at once for offering or taking bribes from a strip club owner. We've had secret deals for valuable concessions at McCarran International Airport. We've had governors and senators behaving badly. We've had more open and gross conflicts of interest in Nevada than there are states in the Union. It's a rich buffet.

But politics is about more than scandal and wrongdoing. Struggles over budgets aren't just about numbers on a page, or dollars out the door. Fights over the meaning of our Constitution aren't just abstract academic arguments.

At its heart, politics is about who we are as people, what kind of a country and a state we want to live in, and what we want for the future.

As much as we denigrate elected officials, most are sincere people trying to do what they see as the right thing. The process is supposed to find an answer for what that right thing is.

Getting a front-row seat to that show is something so valuable, I couldn't pass it up. That's why I asked to return to this job. And I'm grateful the Review-Journal said yes.

I'm not sure when I first fell in love with politics, but I know that love runs deep. I look forward to sharing it with you again in these pages.

That's why I'm back.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com or at (702) 592-6058.