We don’t yet know which candidates will win election to Congress or the Presidency. But an election’s results are not the same thing as its meaning. We already know a lot about what this year’s U.S. elections mean, what they signify and portend. Here are six thoughts.
1. Presidential elections matter too much: They loom so large in our consciousness as to misshape our shared political life. I don’t just mean that it is incongruous, in a republic, for a single office to overshadow all other institutions (although it is), or that Congress must reassert its primacy over the executive and judicial branches of government before much can go well in American government (although it must). I mean that because the presidency is not a representative institution, the presidential election is a process ill-suited to serving as a mirror for the country. Presidential elections cannot present us to ourselves; they cannot reflect clearly who we are as a polity. We try to see ourselves reflected in the election, but what we see is terribly distorted.
2. The presidential primary system is a disaster. In neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican is there a room, smoke-filled or otherwise, where a group of people decide together the question: “What candidacies would be in the best interest of our whole party?” In a primary-dominated candidate-selection system, candidates’ relationships with the public are mediated not by organizations and relationships but by mass media. Primary elections aggregate media-formed preferences; they do not create spaces for deliberation and collective judgment. Thus the primary system rewards individualistic showboats and fundraising juggernauts. Not surprisingly, it regularly yields candidates whom voters dislike and mistrust.
3. Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican has the broad and consistent support required to form a stable governing majority. Either party can obstruct; neither can govern. As a country, therefore, we drift and muddle, and we become accustomed to the notion that drifting and muddling is all that a polity is for. In such circumstances, it becomes tempting to conceive of election campaigns, especially presidential campaigns, as no more than a spectacle on which to project our identities and affinities. This is another way that Americans’ perceptions of what it is to be a member of a political community are at risk of distortion.
4. Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican seems ready to move beyond their polarized stalemate. Yet it is not difficult to imagine the sort of agenda that might cohere a stable majority. I think of it as social democratic economics plus a peace plan for the culture wars; Dan Williams has called for something similar if not quite the same—a blend of “economic progressivism with social conservatism.” But the Republican party seems more interested in working-class identity politics than in pro-working-class public policy, while the future toward which leading Democrats hurry us looks to be a monoculture of progressive individualism, a society rich in rights and poor in meaning. Both of these agendas promise, in one form or another, a politics of disconnection, dislocation, and disappointment.
5. Misperceiving political life, weary of legislative gridlock, numbed by electoral anxiety, Americans seem to be increasingly fearful, cynical, and lonely. Yet they evidently yearn for something better and sense that it may be within reach. According to one recent poll, 86% of Americans think it’s important for political leaders to emphasize our common humanity; 83% think political leaders need to “disagree better;” 73% think that “we need to unite” while only 17% think “it would be good to divide the country.” More agree than disagree with the statement “we are not as polarized as some say.” After all, if 81% of Americans fear for the health of American democracy, this means that at least that many Americans share a desire for a healthy democracy.
6. The kind of political work that is particularly important in America right now is the kind that speaks to those half-articulate American yearnings for community and democracy. This work will need to include things that we might not always think of as important, or even as political: to look for common ground where it is not expected, to seek coalitions and political friendships across familiar dividing lines, to build durable democratic organizations at the local level, to preserve spaces for face-to-face interaction, to allay loneliness, to practice attentiveness, to learn patience.
That is to say, all the other political work we might care about—influencing policy, or holding leaders accountable, or reforming institutions—depends on whether we can be good neighbors and good friends in the face of all that pushes us toward atomization and be human in the face of all that dehumanizes us. No matter the results of the elections, this basic political work will remain crucial. No matter the results of the elections, this work will remain difficult. No matter the results of the elections, this work will remain possible.
Geoffrey Kurtz teaches political science and urban studies at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY). His recent essays have appeared in Front Porch Republic and Public Seminar.
On your first point, “that Congress must reassert its primacy over the executive and judicial branches of government before much can go well in American government.”
Seriously? Have you seen congress? I just doen’t see that happening.
There’s a reason the presidency has grown in stature since around Teddy Roosevelt’s time. In the past the presidency had largely followed the founders’ intention for it, ie, that it really nly swelled in activity and importance under an emergency. But, since sometime in the 1890s, we have arguably been in a state of constant emergency–at least compared to what “normal” would have looked like in, say, the late 18th c. The presidency has swollen to match the moment. It isn’t always that presidents are effective–though a solid history of presidential performance would be a helpful read–but that, at least we know who to blame.