Harold Hill, that smooth-talking con artist in “The Music Man,” persuaded gullible Iowans that “ya got trouble, my friend, right here in River City.”
He arrived in town to sell band instruments and band uniforms to parents who didn’t know they wanted or needed them. But his first task was to sell parents on the notion that a band was the way to keep their kids from hanging out at the pool hall.
Today, the Harold Hills working our state are not concerned about pool halls or bands. But they are again trying to gin up public anxiety about a supposed problem right here in Iowa – that politics, with a capital P, is tainting our court system, especially the selection of judges.