On the eve of the US midterm elections, I decided to write a letter to my grandfather-in-law. Like many of his generation, and many on my side of the family as well, Paul aligns - loosely- as a conservative. Even that labels is inadequate, as it suggests adherence to a variety of social, political, and economic affiliations that I don't even know how he feels about. We've never discussed abortion, the death penalty, education policy, unwed motherhood, FCC regulatory policy, privacy rights, gun rights, marriage rights, or really many of the other hot-button political cliches.
We've talked about the military - Paul was a lifelong Army man - and generally agree that the men and women in uniform deserve almost unending respect and leaders worthy of their commitment.
Mostly, our discussions have pivoted not so much on issues, but rather on politics itself, with the media - and here I mean explicitly Fox News - as the driving element. Paul watches Fox, and again, I don't want that to suggest that he agrees with everything said on that 24/7 talk machine. I get most of my US news from the New York Times, NPR, or - I have to admit - the Daily Show. I also don't always align exactly with the manner in which certain stories are covered, or the editorial choices of what is - or is not - newsworthy.
But on this Election Day 2010, I wanted to share some of my thoughts with Paul, after receiving a series of e-mails from him over the past few months in the run up to the election. That e-mail - edited to omit family banter and add some context - appears below, and in it I put forward some of my observations. These come from attending recent 'non-political' rallies held in DC by Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart, as well as daily monitoring of various on-line news sources throughout the closing months of the campaign. It also builds on my studies - and ideal career path - as an international democracy promotions analyst, helping foreign countries install, fortify, and improve systems of electoral democracy. What one finds often in such work is that 'golden rules' of democracy abroad - like nonpartisan elections committees and identifiable campaign contributors - are often ignored at home.
I share it here, both for the wider dissemination, and to get feedback from other family, friends, or otherwise. Anonymous comments - especially those of a charged political nature - will be removed, as they are directly in contravention to the whole purpose of what is trying to be civil discourse.
More than anything, I wanted to share the experience of having a conversation "across the aisle" with an individual to whom I am personally close, while being ideologically very distant. Not only does the process require a good bit of honest self-deprecation, it also brings a heightened sense of caution and respect for the other's viewpoint. The result is more tepid than what I would have written for an agree-with-me 'Liberal' audience, but there is added value in that moderation, rather than loss, and this is also part of my point.
The letter follows:
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I hope you are doing well...
With all the furor surrounding today's election, it's hard not to feel either especially patriotic, or especially agitated. I find myself swinging between the two. What a great country we live in that allows for such diversity of opinion, and (usually) peaceful expressions of difference. On the other hand, I can only dream about going through the rest of my life never seeing another slanderous, lie-filled campaign ad paid for by I-don't-know-who.
I appreciated your thoughts on the Tea Party rally you attended several weeks back [he agreed with some points, but admitted to being generally uncomfortable with others], and having just attended Jon Stewarts rally in DC I wanted to share a few thoughts on it with you as well. I also went to the big rally Glenn Beck threw in DC back in August, and what I took out of the experience of seeing both is this - It's hard for me to imagine more polar opposite TV celebrities; more radically inverse platforms and agendas; more demographically different audiences.
But what both rallies had absolutely in common was that the actual people there - whatever their age, race, political party or religious belief - all treated me and each other with a great deal of respect. At Beck's rally, I saw men dressed up as Revolutionary war insurgents, claiming alternately to protect the constitution (presumably against democrats), or protect the borders (presumably against immigrants). At the Stewart rally, I saw people dressed up as Witches, space aliens, and prescription-medication filled pinatas (presumably mocking Christine O'Donnell, anti-immigrant sentiment, and I guess 'obamacare' respectively).
Taken from an objective viewpoint, some attendees at both rallies were willing to appear absurd (I can think of no better term for adults in pantaloons and paper mache costumes) in order to make their points, but whatever guise they wore - and most in both cases were just in jeans and t-shirts - they exempllified (perhaps on accident) how alike we all are as Americans.
Shelley [my wife, and Paul's granddaughter] pointed out something very interesting last night over dinner. I've been thinking about it more, and could use some perspective from those with a longer view of history than I possess at age 29.
We heard a good report about how, if the Democrats do lose control of congress today, Obama will be the third president in a row to both have, and lose, a majority congress during his term. Shelley asked how presidents in this type of contentious, short attention-span political environment could ever be expected to get anything done.
I think she's right to assume that this trend - public dissatisfaction with a sitting president translating into congressional flip - is a staple of modern politics. But I think it suggests - rather than a highly divisive, extreme political separation - instead the opposite. Whenever one party controls a house of congress, it does so usually by a slim margin. This means that relatively minor swings result in leadership turnover. It also means that to get anything done, compromise must be part of government.
But all of this tight competition is actually because the parties themselves are increasingly similar, even as they make a big deal about their ideologically differences. In truth, they've both become largely centrist, and with fewer and fewer items of substance to distinguish them, they are relying more and more on rhetoric.
To whit, look at the Tea Party. As a movement, it calls for extreme solutions, few if any will ever be implemented. But all this charged talk - even with no likelihood of action - is used to define Tea Party/ Republican candidates. If this is indeed the "Year of the Tea Party" as some have reported, then it is just that - a year of talk, not action.
We hear the news media increasingly talk about the importance of "independent" voters as well, but what they really mean are people, affiliated with one party or the other, who are willing to vote with, or against, their party. These aren't "independent voters" - citizens w/o party affiliation (ok, some are, but not all of them) - mostly they are "independent thinkers," willing to vote for their party when they feel it's doing a good job, or vote against their own party when they think it has let them down. The decline of party loyalty is bemoaned by party leaders on both sides.
And I must say, whatever the results, that I think a democracy of independent thinkers is a real step forward for America.
The idea that anyone would vote for a candidate just because they have an (R) or a (D) behind their name seems very antiquated to me. On the one hand, I understand that those letters denote, theoretically, a lot more than just Republican or Democrat.
In theory, it suggests a strong sense of:
R - Family Values, Fiscal Conservatism, Pro-Big Business, Small Government, Big Military, Pro-Jesus;
D - Social Justice, Tax the Wealthy, Big Government, Pro-Science, Enforced Equality, Small Military, Help the Helpless.
But we know for a fact - and through constantly repeating examples - that many (R) candidates, despite their speeches, don't practice good Family Values (affairs, lying, corruption) and occasionally drift from other parts of the party line. Ditto for (D)'s, some of whom call for smaller government or limits to the reach of Welfare (and just as often as their red counterparts, get caught having affairs or taking bribes).
As far as I see it, then, no rational individual should look at a candidate on a ballot and assume that the (R) or (D) mean any of the things they're supposed to mean. They are no guarantee of the label they carry - if they were a food or medicine, the FDA would reject them for false advertising.
So the only rational thing to do is vote on a candidate-by-candidate, election-by-election choice. "This year, is this the candidate/party I want to empower, or do I think the other person/party might have a better chance of doing what I want done for this country?"
The sad part is, I certainly feel - and pompously assume I'm not alone - that often, the person/party/solution I really want isn't on that ballot. Of course, I don't usually have a person in mind, just a general sense that no one on the ballot offers the type of solutions, or even the motivation to be productive, that I'm looking for.
So instead we (I'm assuming) vote for the candidate we find the "least repugnant."
At Columbia, I took a course on Elections policy, designed mostly for helping new democracies create their own electoral systems. In this, we learned about what is called a "Condorcet winner," named after a pre-revolutionary 18th century French mathematician who was interested in producing good elections back when they were just a theoretical way to choose leaders.
A Condorcet winner is not necessarily the candidate who receives the most votes, but rather the candidate who is the most acceptable to the most number of people. This works when you vote using a Preferential Vote - in which you rank candidates, with your first choice a #1, second choice #2, etc. (as opposed to just a single vote for your top - #1 - choice).
These numbers are compiled (1, 2, 3) and the candidate with the lowest score - that is, the fewest 3s - wins.
What is remarkable about this system is that it often produces winners from smaller, more centrist, 3rd parties, as it would have in the classic 1980 US Presidential election. Reagan was the overwhelming favorite of Republicans, and Carter for the Democrats. But voters of both parties preferred independent John Anderson as their #2 choice over the opposing party's candidate. In this context, despite not receiving practically any #1 votes, he would have received almost every #2 vote, and almost no #3 votes. He was therefore not the first choice of either loyal Republicans or loyal Democrats, but he was the second - or next most acceptable - choice for virtually every American. Rather than 1/2 "happy" and 1/2 "sad," President-elect John B. Anderson would have made 100% of Americans "okay" with the results.
The US electoral system will not be revised anytime soon - not even the Electoral College, which is one of the few genuinely bad ideas the Founders gave us (they didn't trust "the people" to properly choose a president, so they invented the system to allow elites to over-rule the popular vote if they "needed to").
We will continue to have our bitter partisan in-fighting, and I suspect it will become more and more vitriolic as the parties actual platforms become more and more identical. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and others will continue to tell us how divided our country is - Red State vs. Blue State; Liberal-Conservative - while the vast majority of Americans live their actual lives in harmony with those of radically different ideological spin.
Jon Stewart, in his closing remarks, used the metaphor of merging onto the highway (he actually said a tunnel), in which everyday citizens of every stripe must find a way to work together - "you go, I go" in his words - to solve the practical problem in front of them even if they disagree strongly with each other's 'political' opinions. No matter what someone's bumper stickers says - "Bush Kills" or "Obama is a Commie" - you still have to share the road with them, and doing so politely is in everyone's best interest.
I don't advocate everything Stewart says, but this is one I do agree with. Given what I've witnessed at these big DC rallies - that Americans are good people first, Americans second, and party members a distant third, fourth or fifth - I take great comfort in the fact that no matter how broken down our political machine has become, or how bereft of value many of our politicians, America as it actually exists outside of Congress and attack ads is doing just fine. In the midst of very hard times, it's actually weathering the storm with patience, grace, determinism and generosity.
If there is any miracle in the Constitution, it is just this: that questionable individuals acting in reprehensible fashion either a) can still manage to run a great country, or b) cannot destroy a good system.
Either way, I remain confident that our country can not only weather, but thrive, in whatever is ahead, regardless of the distasteful maneuvers of big business politics. Mostly, I believe this because the real majority of Americans are not Republicans or Democrats, but people - good people - who regularly prioritize solving their daily challenges over adhering dogmatically to their hypothetical ideologies.
I would be interested in your thoughts.
Weber
::(lame)Texpatriot
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