Manchin is not a messiah — because no politician can be
“The most important election of our lifetimes.” It’s a phrase we hear every election. And the recent news about Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) — who will not seek reelection and may be considering a third-party presidential campaign — is sure to lead even more pundits to declare next year’s race the most important ever. Manchin again teased the kind of independent presidential run that many believe can deliver the nation from gridlock and dysfunction. But Manchin can’t do that. President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump can’t either. Because the problem isn’t who’s governing Washington — it’s Washington itself. There are no political “messiahs” to save us, and until we start moving power and attention away from D.C. and toward the levels of government that can actually address the needs of citizens living in such a vast and diverse country, we’re going to continue spiraling toward paralysis and polarization.
The left, right, and center have little in common these days, but they do agree that vast powers administered by smart people like them in D.C. are the only solution for America’s course. That’s why we increasingly see presidential aspirants run less for the office they’re actually seeking than as heralds of a new dawn — a post-partisan tomorrow where everything changes, and everyone comes together. Former President Barack Obama was the ultimate example of this, but Trump and Biden ran similar campaigns. And their presidencies all turned out the same way, with a nation even more divided than before.
Political messianism is appealing because it’s easy. But it’s not a solution to anything. It’s antithetical to the American experiment of self-governance, and it’s one of the key reasons our contemporary politics is so disordered. By pinning our hopes on a Washington politician to “deliver” us, we essentially guarantee our own disappointment, even if that candidate does win, while also ensuring vast swathes of the country will be bitter and resentful. This vicious, self-reinforcing cycle is not changing under a possible President Manchin. No matter how many good feelings accompany his potential to win, if he were elected, reality would reassert itself as soon as he starts to govern.
So, where do solutions actually lie?
The state legislature. The town council. The county commission.
These are the places we should actually be looking for effective governance; thankfully, more Americans are doing exactly that. There is perhaps no office less sexy than that of school board member. And yet, Americans who once ignored these races entirely are taking notice in the wake of COVID-19. They’re speaking up, attending board meetings and even running for office. I recently wrote about a school-board member in North Carolina who turned her car around from a Christmas shopping trip to beat the filing deadline and run for office. Why? Because she realized this was the most important way to make truly meaningful change in the lives of her family and community.
The United States was designed as a decentralized republic where citizens would look first to local and state governments to take on the issues that matter in their everyday lives. They’re closer to problems, more representative of their citizens, and far less partisan than what we see in D.C. and also offer vital antidotes to polarization we see at the national level. Rachel Kleinfeld, the author of a recent Carnegie Endowment paper on polarization, calls state and local governments “the most important levels of government” because they “affect issues that matter the most to people.” Citizens turning their attention locally and seeing government work as it should, she said, “could be game-changing for rebuilding trust in America.”
Americans keep investing their faith in messiahs running for president, but they need to place their faith in timeless truths and not political personalities or schemes to centralize more power.
There’s a reason that public confidence in major institutions has collapsed as D.C. power has expanded. That’s why it’s time to disempower D.C. — not simply in a structural sense, but also in our own hearts. Because we’re not going to end the polarization that has gripped us until we stop giving national politicians so much power over us — until we start caring more about what’s going on in the mayor’s office or the state capital than the latest “dumpster fire” in Washington.
So, let’s worry less about what Manchin is up to and start focusing more on the local office and positions at bottom of the ballot, so we can make future presidential elections the least important of our lifetimes.
This opinion piece first appeared in The Messenger.
