My thirteen year old has never cared before about a political race. This year, however, he has been pulling for the family favorite. Last night, he “lost” again.
He was furious and started making loud (and very rhetorically effective) speeches about how people were “idiots” to prefer Clinton to Obama or to vote for McCain (”too old!”) over Romney (”He is smarter and better looking!”).
This is understandable in a young man just learning about politics. To him it is still too much like a sporting event or about short term “winning” or “losing.”
All this came to mind this morning when someone suggested to me that I must be sorry to have backed Mitt Romney since he “lost.” I am not suggesting that Romney is done or that the race for the Republican nomination is over, but it did make me reflect on being “wrong” in politics. My students who backed Ron Paul or Obama must be having the same questions today.
Does it matter to me that “my” guy is losing or if he loses?
I care (or should) because I thought my candidate best able to carry forward my ideas and that will not have worked out (if it does not work out).
I don’t care (or shouldn’t) about having made the wrong call in pragmatic turns. Picking a losing presidential candidate is not the same sort of wrong as picking the wrong god.
It even has the useful role of allowing reasonable disagreement about lesser things and in proving (for all time!) that I am no political prophet.
Who is?
Political pundits are not fools and they really do know more than we do about politics and this year has baffled them all several times. The Obama loss is just one example.
Politics is about uncertainty in practice . . . based on reasonable (though still tentative) political ideas.
If a man is open with his views and preferences in politics, he will make calls and have opinions that history shows were wrong headed or false.
That is true of every leader . . . even the great ones. Lincoln counted too much on the support of the mountain folk and regular generals early in the Civil War. Reagan lost his bid for the Presidency in 1976 due to some serious miscalculations. If great men can miscalculate, is bound to be true of regular people like we are!
I thought the Republicans would retain control of Congress two years ago. Wrong. I thought the first post-Iraq War plan would work. Wrong. In both cases I trusted the experts and made wrong predictions.
Both of those ideas were the worst kind of wrong: the facts did not support my predictions! There is no way to “spin” one’s way out of it. There may have been good reasons for being wrong, but wrong I still was.
That will happen in politics. You will not find a “wise man or woman” in politics who does not have some howlers in his or her file of writing. That does not make expert opinion useless, it is the best we have, but it does mean that it is not like medical, historical, or philosophical opinion. Political opinion is much, much less certain.
Experts in politics are practicing the most inexact of sciences. The experts are fooled less often than we are, but they are still fooled.
On the other hand, supporting a “losing” candidate (if I have) is a different kind, and even less serious, kind of “wrong.” It was a pragmatically bad choice, but that does not mean it was ideologically wrong. It also does not mean that my candidate would not have made a decent guy for the general election (if he goes on to lose).
Losing in a democratic republic means that you did not get the most votes for your candidate. It implies little about the value of your ideas.
If political power was what I was after, then I made a mistake, but I don’t want “insider” political power. I like my day job. Since I am trying to vote based on principles and to be fair minded to other candidates “losing” in a party primary is, bluntly no big deal.
I will (given the Democrat candidates) go on to support the nominee of my party unless it is Rudy Giuliani. If it is Rudy, I will have to do some soul searching about my vote. I don’t know what I will do at that point.
Mature political people pick a party that can govern and generally fits their world view. They are modest about politics and what they can know about political things. Following Aristotle, they realize that governance is an inexact science. One picks as best one can and sees.
In my case, I support (and still support) one candidate. I don’t do so, however, because I hate the other candidates, even the other Democrat candidates. Everyone running for President is far, far more fit for the job than I am after all! Nor is my choice based on the weird (and frightening notion) that my choice is God’s.
History will judge that Vote and as Augustine points out His Vote is hard to predict.
As a young adult, new to pro-life politics, I chose a candidate who turned out to be an odd-ball. I did so trying to fit my political philosophy to a candidate I thought best expressed that. I was wrong, but given what I knew at the time, it was not the kind of “wrong” that worries me.
My failed choices included Jack Kemp (I loved his inclusive talk!) and a sneaking fondness for Rick Santorum making a presidential run after his (ahem!) re-election to the Senate. I did not support George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush in the 1988 or 2000 primaries, but voted for both in the general.
You do the best you can in the primaries. . . which are not really a civil war, but instead should remain basically civil.
You fight the other guys like fury and then you move on to the next best option.
That’s politics.
In politics, you do the best you can with the information you have. Some of your information turns out (later!) to be massaged or suspect. I would bet that some of my students who backed Ron Paul are beginning to feel some of that “buyers regret” now that bad things Paul allowed to be published under his name are coming to light. It is a feeling I know all too well.
They should not feel too badly, because they used their thoughtful libertarian position to pick a candidate that best fit their views. He is turning out to be “no good,” but they did what they could at the time based on what they knew . . . not unlike Bush with weapons of mass destruction.
That is an o.k. kind of wrong, if they grow up and move on to vote the best choice left when their candidate loses. That is politics, which is not picking a Church.
In my Church, I want doctrinal purity and rigor! In my politics, I want to muddle through.
In short, a Christian who votes thinks he is right about his big ideas, but is always unsure about his candidate. My early support for Ronald Reagan looks good now, but I remember wondering many times about it . . . even when he was president. Reagan’s time in office was not, after all, even now a Golden Age of perfection to which we should all wish to return.
Mr. Lincoln was amazing, but I would never vote today for someone with his views of race. History does not just decay, but it moves forward as well . . . something that it can be easy for Christians to forget.
What did I tell my son when our candidate lost last night?
“Welcome to politics.”
Even if, at the end of the primary season, our guy loses (which will after all usually happen), we will shake off our sorrow and go on to make the best, reasonable choice for liberty and the constitutional rule of law.
It would only be really bad, if compromised our ideals for money or personal power. Only then need we be ashamed of our vote. Otherwise, we did the best we could, folks rejected our choice, and we respect their wisdom.
If the voters don’t like your candidate, then he or she was inadequate for the task of governance in a democratic republic anyway.
Being wrong about religion or philosophy really matters. . . being wrong in the big principles of politics . . . that also matters a good bit (though less). Being wrong about one particular candidate . . . not so much.
It didn’t make my son feel better . . . as I suspect it does not make the Obamamanites feel better today, but it will in the end. If Obama loses, you will look back in twenty years (trust me!) at your Obama buttons fondly . . . as my seventy-year old Dad treasures his Bob Taft autograph (look up that race!) AND his “I like Ike” memories.
If you are a Republican, your choices are not so bad. I don’t like John McCain’s temper or lack of executive experience, but he is a pro-life war hero. I don’t care for Mike Huckabee’s Bull Moose brand of Republicanism, but he is a very successful pro-life governor. I don’t think Fred has the personal skills to do the “head of state” part of the job well, but he is a pro-life, limited government conservative. If my guy loses, and he might, then I will be sore and then move on to the next best choice.
Picking a political candidate is not like getting married. You don’t have to get a divorce or betray your principles to vote the best you can.
Put not your trust in princes . . . and make your best call!