2008 is almost upon us, and no doubt this weblog will soon be solidly in the grip of political commentary and minutia. It’s a madness I go through every four years or so. But before I go whacko over typography or statistical presentation methods, I think it’s important to take a step back again and discuss what political involvement in a very large democracy means.
This is the season when we bemoan the lack of good candidates, “good” generally meaning “candidates that agree with me.” Third-party candidates — often those with no expertise, no national political infrastructure, no strategy, and no resources — remind us that we should vote for our values, not for the “lesser of two evils.” And some folks abandon the process altogether, swearing politics is going to hell in a handbasket. Forgetting, I guess, that we’re in the same handbasket with them whether or not we’re paying attention.
America is a large country with a diverse array of views. It’s not just liberal vs. conservative, Christian versus secular. We have evangelical Christian communists and white-supremacist pagans. Socialists who belong to the NRA. Anti-choice nincompoops who nevertheless agree with me we should heavily tax the rich. Supporters of state-run health care who aren’t that keen on gay rights. The range, distribution, and complexity of opinions is frankly mind-blowing.
And out of this process we’re supposed to elect one president. Of course our candidates are going to be compromises. Anyone electable is going to be an imperfect match. Whoever becomes president will have to appeal to a broad range of people, and that means her or she will have to compromise on issues you think are important, even those you think are of surpassing and critical importance. That’s just life in a country of 300 million people and nearly four million square miles.
What you are willing to compromise on is up to you, but I’m not sympathetic to complaints that this candidate or that doesn’t support your pet concern and therefore the entire process is corrupt. If a third party-candidate is to your liking, that’s great — vote for him or her. But don’t be surprised when you discover that candidate does not come with an effective political machine pre-installed. You want to join a party of five so you can feel sanctimoniously secure in your moral purity? I’m not going to stand in the way of your happiness. But don’t be surprised when your agenda gets nowhere. And by “nowhere” I mean the country actually goes the opposite direction.
Yes, we want better candidates. Yes, we want a better process. But let’s fight for it smart, not just throw up our hands. If we’re willing to compromise and work together long enough, we can change things. But as long as we allow others to fracture us along identity politics lines or individual issues, there will never be enough movement in one direction to get things going the way we want to go.
8 Comments
Gosh the president does have a tough time – how do you manage to handle the concerns and woes of such a multi-national/racial country?
I thought it was a difficult job enough as it is over in the UK with the squabbles between Scotland, Wales, England and N. Ireland!
While that may not change my apprehension of the incumbent, I will be sure to give some slack to the next to walk through the White house.
Fantastic work!
Francesca, even with the challenges the President faces, this one has been an unmitigated disaster using just about any metric you choose to use. There are lots of reasons this guy got installed in office the first time, but chief among them was the Nader protest campaign, which pealed votes away from Gore and was based in large part on the lie that there was no difference between Gore and Bush.
Lots of people voted for Nader because they believed that; never mind that Nader, if elected, would not have been able to govern.
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Democratic processes, and in fact the Constitution as well, are set up to facilitate mutually agreeable compromises between diverse groups. A compromise is something distinct from a lowest common denominator, and the democratic ideal is not doomed to failure and mediocrity. It is, however, dependent upon the interest of people and the energetic participation of citizens in at least three ways: informing themselves, thinking through the issues, and voting.
There were three lies that helped put George W. Bush in the White House. One was put forward by Ralph Nader, and another was promoted by the Christian Right. Pstonie, using quoted text (quoted text is de facto authoritative)has made an able statement of the third lie.
These three lies have one basic idea, a sort of source lie, in common. The source lie is that human beings are too flat-out stupid and ignorant to understand the issues and participate in their own government. It assumes that we need a ruler, not a constitution. The ruler would be someone born better than the rest of us, brighter and closer to God. If we could get over this lie, which is old and powerful, perhaps we could cease to spawn derivative ideas that inhibit our ability to see or serve our own best interests as a society.
By definition, I think, electing someone else to govern you is at least admitting that you’re not capable of doing it yourself.
The theory is that by electing someone to govern you, you are governing the governors. Hence “self-governing,” where “self” refers not necessarily to the individual but to the collected populace. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.
Sarah’s point, and mine, is that if there was a little less cynicism and a little more actual effort put forth by the aforementioned collected populace in the self-governing, government would work better. Furthermore, Sarah is saying that this kind of cynicism — the one that suggests that there’s no point, or the effort is doomed to failure — is self-fulfilling; and convincing people that they can’t govern the governors is a tactic used by those who prefer an authoritarian state.
No, I get it. It’s an attempt to supply society with some moral spine, because some people really do need laws to tell them right from wrong.
And perhaps you’re right, but I still think majority rules is a fairly stupid way to determine a society’s leadership. All people are not created equal. Although I guess anything else is just too undemocratic.
A lot of these flaws in the system I think are inherent of its requirements. You don’t actually get to vote for new policy, for instance, just more politicians. People going for the popular vote are the last bastards who should be controlling anything.
Who was it that said that any man that wants to be President should be immediately disqualified?