The habits behind the ballot
Elections are exciting. A big midterm is coming up in two months. The first national news story I remember as a young kid was the 1984 presidential election. For some reason I remember the Democratic candidates a little more than President Reagan that year, particularly John Glenn, Jesse Jackson, and Gary Hart. I knew Glenn had been a famous astronaut and I thought Hart might be a nice man because of his last name. I vaguely remember Reagan making a joke about running against a baseball team since the Democrats were running about nine candidates in their presidential primary. I had some trouble fact-checking that joke though.
Reagan easily won my suburban kindergarten mock election over Walter Mondale and it was a harbinger of his looming landslide since most kids were voting based on the preferences of their parents.
Not long after moving back from Egypt, the 1994 “Republican Revolution” caught my attention, mostly because the power shift was dramatic. House Speaker Tom Foley had been defeated. The last time a sitting U.S. Speaker had been toppled in our country was 1862. There were a lot of new faces in Washington and some are still there that ran on term-limits, reminding us of the allure of power.
In high school I read Ed Rollins’s Bare knuckles and Back Rooms, which made me dream about being a big time political consultant. Fortunately, I wised up some.
Perhaps it was common sense and my growing theological worldview from grad school, but by the time 2008 rolled around, I paid less attention to presidential elections. The political messianism surrounding Obama’s 2008 campaign was disturbing, representing a more pronounced cultural shift of voters putting too much faith in government and national candidates. I wrote a lot about that and even hit up the lecture circuit a little on the topic.
Elections are important, and they can still be exciting, but I do think a lot of the emphasis we hear today about the “sacredness of democracy” and frenzy around national elections can overshadow the critical habits needed for self government.
One of the points I’ve tried to emphasize continually at American Habits is that democracy is so much more than merely voting or something we do with being an intense political spectator, cheerleader, or social media commentator. If that is what the American political system increasingly looks like, it morphs into something quite boorish and more predictable. Democracy not only becomes sterile but increasingly transactional in a decidedly negative way.
What if a big part of “saving democracy” is making our political life more local and improving our communities and homes? Does my online tantrum over a candidate that wins in Arizona or California ultimately change anything?
Also, somewhat lost today is the importance of responsibility that coincides with and accompany our rights. We understandably talk a great deal about what government owes us and what rights it must protect, but less about what self-government asks of us. I love that the American founders, who disagreed on nearly every issue to some extent, all emphasized the importance of virtue in a self-governing republic.
And when we look out at the dysfunction of Congress or as some people say “A do-nothing” Congress, we should always remember that the habits required for self government are primarily formed outside of Washington, D.C. This is the genius of our system and what Alexis de Tocqueville brilliantly captured in Democracy in America.
One aspect will remain true for America to last into another century: Which is the older idea of governing ourselves before demanding that government govern everyone else. If we can’t do that, we will of course continually cede more power to a centralized political system and national politicos. Socialism will look even more appealing and rational to millions of young Americans, despite the long record of warnings from history.
It’s hard for me to grasp looking at Washington and our debt now and doubling-down on the belief that they can act as a competent caretaker and manager of our lives.
Still, plenty of commentators will spin this upcoming election and provide lots of hot-takes. Many people will celebrate the outcome, even putting way too much faith in the results, and others will jeer and moan, likely making outlandish predictions of impending doom and decay. Still, the condition or trajectory of the country isn’t really measured through the outcome of any single election. Because the habits that sustain a free people are formed long before Election Day and far beyond Washington. That’s a point we all need to be more self-aware of in a culture that increasingly sees Washington and national politics as the ultimate power struggle in a quest to meet needs it ultimately can’t.
—Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat