The political season is raging and we are being called upon to choose between candidate A, B, or C, between political party A, or B. The voices are loud, the campaigns fierce, the choices stark and too often muddled. How will I choose?
Of course choose I must, for I am a small “d” democrat. I believe that it is both my right and privilege to participate in determining the fate of our nation. I have voted, without fail, in every election that has come my way – with only one exception, for the last 50 years or more. I vote because I am a descendent of and witness to people who gave their lives for my right to do so. I’ve shed too many tears, attended far too many funerals and memorial services for those who sacrificed their lives and futures to ensure that I had this right.
My choice is informed, as most of ours are, by my education, life experience, and what I have learned of the experiences of others. Like many Americans my experience includes the life of urban poverty. I know about this, I grew up in the poor inner city ghettos of a major Eastern city. But it also includes the life of an upper middle class professional, educated at one of the best schools in our country. And as importantly, or perhaps even more so, it includes the occasional touching of many, many lives lived under circumstances alien to my own.
Like most people, I have sometimes fallen prey to the unconscious assumption that most people’s lives are not much different from my own and those of the people I know. This assumption is not only untrue, but is dangerously so. I have learned that I know little of the lives of many of my fellow citizens. I know of the pain of urban poverty and looking for work that doesn’t exist for you. But I am almost totally ignorant of the experiences of the Appalachian poor, living in the hills and hollows and holding on to the hope for a job in a dangerous and dying industry that is the only employer in sight.
I know about getting up in the dark cold of a winter’s morning to catch a bus or subway to a janitor’s job an hour or two across town. But I know nothing of waking to a bitterly cold, dark winter morning and going out through the wind and snow to care for livestock before breakfast. I know about overworked and dismissive ER staff and waiting an eternity to see an ER doctor. But I have never experienced the desperation of a Native American whose child is sick and has no doctor available at all, or of the rural Mom or Dad whose nearest doctor is hundreds of miles away. I’ve never racked tobacco, or sold a bushel of corn or cotton, or watched my family’s hope plunge with the prices of commodities. I’ve never ranched sheep, or cattle, or pigs, or met the dawn from the deck of a fishing boat heading out to find the days catch. I know little of these lives, but these are the lives of my countrymen and women.
The same can be said for my religious experiences, my educational experiences, even my social experiences. Mine are obviously and markedly different from those of many of my fellow citizens, probably different from yours. So I cannot just rely on my experience to make my choice, for it is sorely lacking.
I have also learned not to rely too heavily on my education, while it is wide and deep, it is not all encompassing, it does not span every iteration, every educational tradition. And I remain mindful of the most valuable lesson I have ever learned, as a young lawyer fresh out of law school and steeped in the ethic that winning was the most important thing, and that is - winning the contest and fixing the problem are far from being the same thing. Like many, I thought that winning the argument, the point, the issue, was the most important thing. Then I began my career practicing labor law, representing ordinary workers in disputes with employers. The issues I dealt with spanned the field, from pay and benefits, to sexual harassment, to workplace rules and more. I was surprised to learn that winning often just made the problems worse. And I realized that ultimately I was being hired to solve the problem, more than just winning the contest of the moment. There were a lot of different aspects to this effort, but I soon learned that the most important fact that had to be considered was that the people involved, the workers and their employers, like the citizens of this country, were not just engaged in one-off disputes, rather we were in a relationship with each other. Relationships that needed to persist despite the existence of those legitimate disagreements. And although I represented just one side of the debate, I was tasked with helping to resolve the disputes in a way that helped the parties continue their relationship and prosper together.
So how do I chose? I choose by remembering and understanding that despite our differences and beliefs, we are all “e pluribus unum” - one of many - and that our politics must accommodate that fact. I chose by remembering that we are siblings, not enemies. We argue and disagree, sometimes fall out, but we are of one family and loyal to each other.
Unfortunately our politics of the moment have devolved into a call for us to take sides, dig in and demand our win. We want what is rightfully ours! Better wages. More equality. Better social values. Recognition of our moral/ religious rights, and on and on. We want to win! We want our views to take the top spot. But what we far too often don’t seem to stop to think about is who loses and what does losing do to them? Does it poison the well?
We are a vast and very diverse country. We are very different in many ways, but we share one most important thing… a country with a democratic system for accommodating our diverse needs and desires, a system that was created for us to resolve our differences while we preserve our relationship with each other. To accomplish this task, I cannot rely on ideology, or experience, on party or even belief. I must rely on the approach a candidate takes to identify and address the issues and the process they use to find solutions. I must rely on their ability to see and understand the perspective of others different than themselves and to be inclusive in their search for solutions.
I will not choose a candidate who simply promises to give me what I want, without also saying how they will help get our fellow citizens to get what they may need. I will not choose a candidate who insists on having the whole loaf, because that leaves nothing for the rest of us.
I don’t demand that the next president agree with my position on all the issues. My wife doesn’t even do that. Nor do I need one who insists that our ideology be pure, there is a God for that. I need a president who understands our differences, in all of their complexities. One who understands that the Wyoming rancher, the urban student and the Miami gas station owner may want different priorities, and who understands the necessity for finding a way to accommodate both. I need a candidate who understands and works at finding the workable compromise, the common ground. The person who understands that what is necessity for me as a big city dweller, may be less relevant to the person who makes his or her living farming the Great Plains, or fishing off the Gulf Coast, but seeks a way to accommodate us all. I must have a candidate who does not vilify or ignore the Appalachian coal miner desperate to maintain his livelihood, while still understanding the dangers of climate change. I don’t want the purist. I don’t want the one who must win at all costs. I want the one who sees the problem, understands the disputes and finds the workable compromise for both sides. One who understands the difficulties and complexities that workable solutions require.
At this moment in history it may be tempting to watch the splintering of the Republican Party and cheer. It may be tempting to urge the Democratic Party to take advantage of the disarray to make “gains” in a progressive agenda. But our country is at a point of fragility, a point on where we can easily fracture our political system so badly that it will take decades to recover. We can use the moment to send our political “enemies” into bitter exile and defeat, or to find a way to begin to pull together the majority of our family and repair our broken politics. I will choose the person who understands this moment… and acts on it.
