Columnists

Sometimes you need an adult

There are more than a few ways reasonable people might approach the American political process. Some decide to have minimal involvement. These folks don't vote and don't care. They might despair when they realize how much of their paychecks are withheld, they might hold opinions on how the police or the garbage collectors could better do their jobs, but they generally abstain from the process.

Some of these political Bartlebys find politics dull or noisome, others are simply more interested in other pursuits. They might suspect that they lack the wherewithal to have a meaningful impact on the process. Those of modest means who have a full complement of professional and familial obligations are probably right--they can't have more than a token effect on the way politics is practiced or governance is done.

Since Americans aren't supposed to feel powerless, there are plenty of voices to shame anyone who admits this, but politics is just one narrow channel of human endeavor and experience. We're free to ignore what we cannot change, we aren't compelled to choose one team or the other.

While there's plenty of people who'd argue the point, I'm not sure that if Jesus Christ came back tomorrow He'd be compelled to make endorsements. I think that He'd probably look at these earthly races for glory about the same way he'd regard the Cardinals-Cubs series. He might or might not find them diverting, but I doubt He'd stoop to pick a winner.

On the other hand, if you're the sort of person who reads columns on a newspaper's editorial page, you probably have a little more interest in whose lobbyists get first dibs on the ears of the most honorable. You might find all this stuff deeply fascinating, and if so, good for you. There is a way to actually bear down and grind out incremental improvements in the way we live. It is possible to make the lives of the miserable a little less so, to give children a little better opportunity to investigate the mysteries of the wide world. We're all in this together, and we need people who are willing to fight the good fight, to at least try to contain the narcissists, opportunists and financial alchemists who tend to view government as a vehicle they get to take home on the weekends.

Because we all know who feels compelled to run for office: people with big egos and big insecurities, bullies, and those who crave adulation. Sure, a lot of them are well-intentioned, a lot of them are service-minded, but like the man says, it ain't beanbag they're playing.

The best of them have to compromise and horse trade and accept that they will have to expend a lot of energy explaining their rationalizations and marketing their failures. The best of them are realists, informed by idealism. They understand that the real work isn't glamorous, and that it mostly consists of straightforward and boring work that serves to maintain the status quo. It's really not all that often that a politician is genuinely called upon to take a unequivocal moral stand--even questions of who is included or excluded from a zone of moral concern by a law or policy can usually be finessed (witness "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," or Dred Scott v. Sandford).

It seems like we can always find a way to resist doing what we eventually must for just a little while longer. That's the way things usually go--nothing really changes until it does. Richard Nixon's policies would be considered liberal today; George H.W. Bush and Barry Goldwater were patrons of Planned Parenthood. Bernie Sanders hasn't felt compelled to deny an ideological label that until recently might have been considered a "fighting word" in these precincts.

In one context, the crisis in the Republican-controlled House is fairly entertaining. Some people might argue that the GOP courted this sort of karmic comeuppance by welcoming virulent anti-government types into their number, then expecting to govern with them. Not everyone is amenable to the favors and perks divvied out by the leadership, and maybe someone should have thought about how dedicated monkey-wrenchers might be made to conform with the precepts of party discipline. Poor John Boehner. Poor Kevin McCarthy. Poor Paul Ryan if he's required to give up his dream job as head of the Ways and Means Committee (one of those colorless posts to which only a true and faithful wonk could genuinely aspire).

On the other hand, as silly as politics often is, we need grownups to govern. We need to have a foreign policy, we need to pay for things, we need to honor our commitments and fulfill our obligations. We need people who understand that deep down this is serious, important work that, were it not for the shouting heads on the television, most people would find deadly dull.

That's easy to forget in an era when so much of our world seems to have become unstuck from reality, when we can select whatever set of "facts" suit our present purpose from any number of boutique websites. When you can find support for any position, when the default reaction to any challenge to smug self-flattery is that the messenger must be, at best, deluded, and more likely, a malicious liar with a dark un-American agenda.

Because we are fundamentally lazy, we have a tendency to receive everything as entertainment. But you cannot sustain a good society on cartoons and pro wrestling.

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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.

Editorial on 10/13/2015

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