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Rethinking Our Expectations
I have been wondering why I haven’t written anything since the presidential election. Each time I have sat down to write, I have felt compelled to turn away – actually, the feeling is closer to being repulsed.
The campaign left me feeling angry and disgusted. The candidates actively destroyed each other over the course of many months, and then had the audacity to call for unity the day after the election. How could they seriously utter such words? Did they really mean them? If so, how would they characterize what they had been doing up till then – simply playing a game at the expense of the American people? What about all the accusations, name-calling and questioning of each other’s personal motivations?
Negative campaigning is one thing; but what we witnessed was a total disregard for people’s hopes and aspirations. The call for unity was disingenuous; it was insulting to people’s intelligence. Are we expected to buy this silliness?
Still, many people have told me simply to accept this outrageous behavior as politics as usual. Our expectations of politics – and ourselves, at times – are so low that we are willing to shrug our shoulders in despair.
But I also know from The Harwood Institute’s own political conduct work that people truly do hold aspirations for how politics and public life is to be conducted. And their sense of faith in the process is driven, in large part, by this conduct.
During the campaign, and especially the day after, I wanted to grab these two office seekers and shake them by the shoulders, and ask: “What do you think you just did during this election? What gave you the right to conduct your campaign in the way that you did?”
I would like to hear their answers – unscripted. -
Not Just Unity or Victory
The talk about unity keeps unfolding across our land, but is it worth anything? What do we seek in the name of unity?
I have long argued that the political pundits and pollsters and professionals made more of people’s differences in this past election cycle than actually exist. As David Brooks said in a recent column:The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal…In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.
Strategies that play on people’s existing divisions too often dangerously pull apart the fabric of the nation and diminish our sense of social cohesion. At issue is whether leaders (and the rest of us) will have the courage to help people see what they might hold in common and how they can move forward together.
Still, that won’t be easy in today’s bitter environment. After last week’s vote, many people remain angry about the outcome. Others believe that the President should now take his victory and pursue his own brand of change – and never look back.
Indeed, last week on Wisconsin Public Radio, a caller was annoyed by my attempts to say that there is common ground to be found in the nation – and that we have an obligation to pursue it. The caller angrily asserted that the Democrats lost, and that they should now step back and capitulate. To the victor go all the spoils.
At times I fear the Democrats will simply capitulate, as many did after 9/11, or will now needlessly fight at each turn. Then again, I fear the Republicans will simply say it’s “my way or the highway.” Any way you cut it, the situation has the potential become a terrible mess.
But neither unity nor victory should be the ultimate goal. The pursuit of unity, for its own sake, will push aside the real differences that do need to be aired out; robust debate can lead to new ideas and innovation. And the pursuit of victory alone can lead to blind ambition, which never results in anything good.
The people I talk with in scores of communities across the nation seek progress on a host of concerns, including public schools, health care, jobs, immigration, and the budget deficit. While there are no clear answers to these and other challenges, my experience tells me that people have the capacity to see beyond narrow labels and even themselves on these issues – if they are asked. The question remains – Who will have the courage to call us to address these challenges?
For now, we remain lost in our own narcissism of seeking political gains and personal positioning. Despite the bitterness of the campaign, it doesn’t have to be this way. -
Starting an Uphill Battle
Last night and still this morning I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. This campaign has left me feeling enormously empty and frustrated and wondering why we insist on going down the path we do.
Seeing the vast swath of red states sandwiched in-between the smaller blue areas took my breath away. It’s not that I didn’t see it coming; for God’s sake, this red-blue division has been the easy narrative of the campaign. But when I saw that it was actually here, a done deal, well, then, I was overcome by a terrible sinking feeling. It was final: the idea of red and blue states will rule for the days to come.
In response, all the false, silly and mind-numbing rhetoric of “civility” and “bringing the country together” has started, well, in earnest. I heard some commentators and politicos say last night that what the “next president” must do to repair the breach in the nation is to reach across the aisle to work in a bipartisan fashion and maybe even appoint a couple of cabinet members from the opposing party. Huh? Is that it? Do people who make such suggestions have any sense of where the country really is – and what it will take to move us forward?
It’s clear that the country is going through tremendous churn. I have been documenting this churn in a series of studies since the beginning of the 1990s (and, hopefully, will be publishing a book on this soon). Working our way through these changes will require that we address some key underlying concerns, as opposed to exploiting them, and that we pursue a different path in politics and public life to authentically deal with those concerns.
Unfortunately, it seems that we have made little progress in our political life since 2000, in either party. The states remain divided as they were during the Bush-Gore race. The issues are more gridlocked than ever. The tone of politics is even nastier. Does anyone feel a genuine sense of hope?
We need to craft a different kind of public agenda, one that will increase the potential for progress. We need to gain some small victories that will restore our faith in our collective ability to act and ignite even the smallest sense of possibility. I do not think this agenda will come from either party on the national scene.
Instead, progress must come from within our communities where people, when the conditions are right, can demonstrate that they have the capacity and will to tap their own potential to make a difference and join together to build a common future.
I know that there are people who want to figure this out, rather than be cornered into a red-blue division. All I need to do is to think about those people I have seen and talked with in just the past few weeks alone – in Atlanta, Silicon Valley, Jackson (MS), and Las Vegas. I am more hopeful as I sit here and write this entry en route to Milwaukee and Madison and Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, where I will visit with people who have been working hard to make a difference in their communities.
Those of us who are working to spark fundamental change in politics and public life are fighting an uphill battle. But now that I have caught my breath, I’m ready to get going again. -
Restoring Our Faith
On this election eve, the nation is bracing itself: What will happen? Who will win? Will we even know the victor when we finally rest our weary heads on our pillows?
But I have a different thought in mind: Who will we become in the months ahead? As I have crisscrossed the nation in recent weeks, it is this thought to which I continually find myself returning.
Everyday we hear that this is a divided and polarized nation. Yes, there are ardent Bush and Kerry supporters on both sides. But the pundits and pollsters and prognosticators are missing the real story when they remain so ardently focused on the narrative of a divided nation.
The people I have talked with across the nation are in search of ways to come together, not to divide themselves. What’s more, the central challenges we face will not be eased or erased by this election. Not even a potential record voter turnout on Tuesday – maybe upwards of 120 million voters – will signal redemption for our political process.
People feel disconnected from one another and from the institutions and leaders that affect their lives. They do not have faith in our collective ability to join together and build a common future. There is a human spirit waiting to be tapped within people.
Now, as important as going to the polls tomorrow will be, voting alone will not restore this faith, or tap this spirit. Instead, all of us must engage in public life and politics in a fundamentally different way.
So, on Tuesday night, as we watch the television networks color their election maps red and blue, keep the following question in mind: What will it take to create the conditions whereby people can tap their potential to make a difference and join together to build a common future?
As you consider this question, imagine sitting in your kitchen with a room full of Republican, Democratic, and Independent voters, as well as the people who decided not to vote this year. What course would this conversation need to take in order to produce progress – rather than simply trying to divide one group against the other?
This Wednesday, at 5pm eastern time, I’ll be appearing on Ben Merens’ show on Wisconsin Public Radio, discussing the election. You can listen live through the WPR website.
In the coming months I’ll be writing more about the challenge to create the right conditions in America for people to step forward and create productive change. In the meantime, let me know how your conversations go.