The same was true in 2004. As much as I resented W by then, Kerry was not impressing me in the least. How telling that in the first election after 9/11 he was the best the Democratic party could come up with! Despite the lousy ticket of asses, things weren’t looking too bad for them in the beginning of November. I was covering those elections and I remember the confidence Kerry’s supporters exhibited both in the media and in public. It’s not because he was the man or anything like that; they’d just remind people that Americans were so sick of Bush that there was no way the Democrats could lose. Maybe if they had a better candidate, they would have won. Who knows? I remember some of my colleagues cheering gleefully whenever a state turned blue… there was a lot of that early on, but later whenever a state turned red there were just as many people grinning smugly. It was a long night, and in the end the only smiles left were on the quiet ‘conservative’ faces. I was excited throughout the evening, but I could have cared less about red or blue, both of which I think are equally bad. Life is a little bit more complex than that, especially in this country.
I used to enjoy playing games like ‘cowboys and Indians’ or ‘cops and robbers ‘back in the day. I’m not trying to play those type of games anymore though. My thought process goes beyond good guys vs. bad guys. I can be good and I can be bad, but I can’t identify with either. Us against them politics leave the public starved of important information – it stifles any real discussion of the issues.
Every four years we have to deal with the same routine between the same cast of characters. We have to put up with the silly campaign ads that saturate the airwaves and the faces plastered on magazine covers. But we’re usually faced with a simple choice: this one or that one. For most of us, it’s an easy decision to make. A significant number vote blindly according to party affiliation. Some put a little thought into the matter, but again, there isn’t much to think about. If you really don’t like this guy, vote for that guy. If you think one is better than the other (even if he’s wack), vote for him. If one scares you or doesn’t make you comfortable, vote for the other one. If you wanna have a beer with this guy, give him your vote. That, my friends, is not what democracy is about.
Still, we police the world and preach the values of democracy. But under the current circumstances, we have a serious problem in this country’s politics – actually we have two. One is a party that presents itself as the champion of ‘conservatism’ and values. The other is a party for the ‘liberals’ who tend to be younger and of varying ethnicities… at least that’s what we’re led to believe. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence can see through the BS. Democracy is about choices and we really only have two.
Americans can benefit from increased diversity in their politics. The last time a third party candidate was prominently featured in the race he won almost 20% of the vote. Let’s face it – the two-party system is no good. Some of our readers (publius and mo) who commented on a previous post had some interesting things to say about the benefits and disadvantages of a two-part system. Personally, I believe the latter far outweigh the former. As chaotic as a multi-party system could be, it would be far more democratic than what we have now; in addition to providing better candidates, it would encourage people to be more informed and vote on the issues. In an ideal world, we would not have political parties at all – indeed the founding fathers themselves recognized the dangers of partisanship and sought in vain to avoid it.
So here we stand. I was hearing the same arguments four years ago that I’m hearing now. I’m getting the same anger and insolence this time that I was getting back then, even more so considering the symbolism in the balance.
I respect and appreciate people who try to reason with me about my political activity (or lack thereof). Those who get under my skin are the ones who tend to be overly emotional. In the context of politics especially, emotions can rob people of all reason. There is nothing wrong with healthy debate and discussion. But when people start letting their emotions take over, they look like fools. Case in point, those who get angry when I tell them I’m not voting. They aggressively remind me of my duty, my responsibilities, and my right to vote which should not be taken for granted; they don’t bother to listen to why I’m sitting on the sidelines. People like that make me hesitate to discuss politics openly because they are so unpleasant and provoking. The other day, someone at work who was being friendly turned hostile when she found out I wasn’t voting… especially after I said that I’d like to see Obama win.
As much as I’d love to see a ‘change’ in the White House (as opposed to another White ‘Christian’ male), I’m not willing to vouch for the Democratic ticket and give it my vote. I have my reasons (good ones), some of which I may have shared in previous posts. One sure thing is that “the alternative is so bad” argument carries no weight for me. I don’t want to vote against anyone. I wouldn’t want to vote for someone who I don’t believe and whose policies I don’t support (regardless of how much better he/she is than the ‘other’ choice); I wouldn’t want to regret it after they’ve confirmed any of my doubts.
Four years ago, people laughed when I told them Bush was going to win. Some would humor me to fluff me up for the punch line: “If you’re worried, you should vote for the other guy.” This time around, I’m not calling anything – as far as I can tell, it’s 50-50. I am still worried that McCain could win though, so I’m forced to endure the same unconvincing argument. But this time, because I would like to see a Black man in the Oval office, I’m told I’ll feel like an idiot if that doesn’t happen. I disagree. But to be very honest, I do regret fudging my registration process this year. I would have loved to go the b
ooth and NOT vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans.
Related posts:
- Surprise, Surprise: Mubarak Wins
- Pragmatically Speaking, Democrats Should Nominate Obama
- Obama is Making Me a Naderite
- Why Arab Americans should not vote
- The Pakistan Bhutto Party
Perhaps we should spend some time — as did our Founders, who mysteriously had better officials and government — considering the proper purpose and function of government.An astounding percentage of the population today does not grasp the nature or purpose of government. This means that, as voters, they will demand — and get — candidates committed to misusing government force for other purposes at the expense of the protection of our freedom.
questions like: What is government? What is it for? What does it do? How does it do it? never come up, and yet we’re carrying on a discussion of how to get a better field of candidates as if we were all on a corporate search committee.
What we do need is cultural change. From sportscasts attempting to make “role models” of athletes not because of their discipline, but because they “give back” to the community, through calls by both presidential candidates for some form of mandatory national servitude,our culture is saturated and drowning in the “ethic of public service”.Far more people need to understand the nature of individual rights — not Obama’s “brother’s keeper” nor McCain’s “for the greater good of the country” nonsense, but oh for the day when a politician delivers a line like “Each man is sovereign” — and the proper role of the government.
Until that happens, we will remain in an inherently unstable mixed economy that will alternately drift and lurch towards totalitarianism. The government will increasingly attempt the impossible: replace the minds of millions of individuals with bureaucrats and inflexible rules in order to run an economy for 300 million plus. This will cause problems, which the government will expand to attempt to “fix” ad infinitum.
just some food for thought.
Posted by Mo | November 2, 2008, 3:54 amThis is an excellent post. It might be my favorite one on this site so far. I sense the story you tell about your disillusionment with politics is one that would resonate with many, many people.
Regarding the two-party vs. multi-party question, I just want to say a couple things. First, I think it’s doubtful that the system would provide better candidates. More, perhaps; proportional representation would guarantee even small parties minimal representation in a legislature. But it would also put much more power into the hands of parties. People would no longer vote for individuals; they would vote a party line. This would make party loyalty even more critical than it is now: a representative who disagreed with a party platform on even a single issue would be under greater pressure to fall in line. For single-issue voters who can find a party that represents their interests in toto, this might be fine; but for the large number of Americans who care about a range of issues and vote for individuals rather than parties, it could be just another reason to stand on the sidelines. Plus, consider your reference to the Founding Fathers: they certainly wanted to avoid faction, as Federalist No. 10 shows. It was unavoidable, as you note, and now we have two parties. But how much worse would the factionalization be if we had 5, or 15, or 50 parties, each of which demanded strict loyalty from its members?
My point is that we have a policy choice to make, between two different forms of democratic government. That we have chosen one form does not make us less of a democracy. We still live by the principle of “one person, one vote,” even if the end result of that voting differs. Our perception about how much this “counts” is irrelevant and could be equally dismal in a two-party or a multi-party system: in the former, we can tell ourselves we have to pick between the lesser of two evils; in the latter, we can tell ourselves we must pick the issue that’s most important to us, and watch as the party touting that issue flails helplessly in a fragmented legislature. Either way, we citizens still hold the power and pick our leaders by voting. I don’t believe it is our place to refrain from doing so because we feel our voices are too faint.
I’ve given the rest of my defense of the two-party system before, so I won’t go through it again. The bigger point which I think needs to be made, though, is that democracy is difficult business. There’s good reason for the old saying that it’s the worst form of government, except everything else. I’m sure we’d all be happier in a country with a benevolent dictator, who let us live our lives freely and acted with infinite wisdom in deciding when that freedom needed to be curtailed. Unfortunately, such a place will never exist. In a pluralistic country, where millions of people disagree on millions of things, the day will NEVER come when a candidate who we identify with in every way is elected to the highest office in the land. A politician in such a country will always be making compromises and concessions. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing. While our system is far from perfect, it is still responsive to the needs and wants of the American people: consider that after a 20 month campaign and a primary cycle with record voter turnout, two long-shot candidates are approaching the finish line, and one of them is a 47 year old black man from Chicago who would not have made it without the grassroots support of millions of Americans. For all our faults, we live in a great and democratic nation.
I was very happy to see the final sentence of this post. I respect your views about American politics a great deal. I hope that in the future, you will carry them into the voting booth and give them effect by voting for the party, or person, who shares your principles.
Posted by Publius | November 2, 2008, 3:13 pmWow! KABOBfest’s first gif! Great job Kalash!
Posted by master splinter | November 2, 2008, 3:31 pmYou are too kind! Unfortunately, with the way US politics currently work, I’m not finding any person or party who share my principles. Maybe I never will, but next time I will compromise up to a certain extent. That’s the point I was trying to make – we need a little more room to make decisions.
I have very little doubt that more options would produce better candidates who would be forced to be the best they can be. Think about it this way – if there were more than two parties, some of them would have policies in common, which in turn would prevent people from just voting along party lines. If you’re someone who is adamantly opposed to abortion and there are three parties who are as well, your vote would go to the best candidate as opposed to the ONE who is anti-abortion. Just an example…
Instead of putting more power in the hands of parties, diversity would ultimately give more power to the people who keep said parties afloat – if their party isn’t doing enough to keep them happy, they’d turn to another. In other words, parties would be more accountable to the people. For representatives who refuse to fall in line, they too could turn to another party as politicians do in most other democratic countries. Here it is a big deal for a red person to turn blue or vice versa.
My argument is not about parties per se, but choices. I don’t like the concept of political parties but having several of them is better than having just two. Shit, give us three or four… Of course, the more parties there are, the messier things get. Look at Lebanon!
But Americans need more choices. This is indeed a great nation and its people have unlimited potential that sadly goes unrealized when they’re kept complacent. I also believe the way our government is structured to be superior to most others. The problem is with the leading players. The only benefit of a two-part system is its inferred simplicity. But politics are complicated and oversimplifying them is the best way to prevent people from getting their hands messy and doing things that need to be done. There’s no easier way to keep people from actually thinking about the role of government (something they need to do if they’re voting) than to give them a choice of this or that. They’re supposed to be opposites, but who’s to say someone calling for strict gun control can’t support globalization, or that a warmonger can’t be in favor of abortion, or that a good Christian person can’t vote for someone who supports gay rights?
As far as the two candidates go let me say this: Obama is the perfect one for the Democrats – the reasons he is a long shot are the same reasons he appeals to so many. As far as McCain’s longshot status goes, his candidacy is a testament to the problems inside the Republican party now (Kerry was a longshot too). I think if the Republicans had a stronger candidate, Obama would stand much less of a chance than he currently does.
As you can tell, I can go on and on about this stuff, so I’ll stop now.
Posted by Kalash | November 2, 2008, 5:50 pm