One More Commentary on the Election, Then No More Politics Until 2020 - I Hope

When I first started this little venture almost seven years ago (hard to believe it's been that long) my mother warned me not to get political. Sound advice, really, but since life can't be so neatly compartmentalized, faith and politics will intersect now and again, to put it mildly. That being said, I desperately don't want this site to devolve into "Fr. Tom's Washington Week in Review," so I'll give my wrap up to this latest, and most hotly contested election season, and then move on to other things.

There's been a lot of talk about abolishing the Electoral College in light of Hillary Clinton's win in the popular vote. My take, in a nutshell, is that it wasn't the Electoral College that subverted democracy, as some critics claim, it was the nomination process that left us with two beyond flawed candidates. I gave my views on the electoral system the last time out, and am in agreement with David French that to assume that Clinton would have automatically won a popular vote election is absurd, because the rules for such a contest would be different, the campaign strategies employed would be different - such as how the "get out the vote" ground game would be organized, so most likely the outcome would be different, and not necessarily in Secretary Clinton's favor. But beyond the pro's and con's of direct versus indirect democracy, the problem this year was the choice the electorate was given by the major parties, not the rules under which the general election was conducted. 

In Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump, we weren't given two candidates who offered contrasting political or economic visions to be debated and tired by the people. It was a clash of personalities and identity over real substance. And the system that left them as the major party nominees was rigged from the outset. 

The Democrats, if they had allowed an open primary, would have had Vice President Joe Biden and possibly Senator Elizabeth Warren competing with Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, and I don't think Clinton would have stood a chance. Whatever you may think of their politics, each of her potential competitors has ideas, vision and come across as genuine and empathetic. The only argument Clinton had for being elected was her gender and that it was "her turn." She has said that she has public and private positions on issues, which, needless to say, only further fortifies her reputation for dishonesty. She also exudes an almost Nixonian discomfort with being in her own skin. And it comes across, with only her most ardent supporters unable to see it. For whatever reason, and I'll leave that surmising to others, the DNC decided to treat Clinton with the deference usually accorded an incumbent president. The result was the Dems putting up a candidate with poor political skills and instincts, who wasn't particularly likable to boot. She had a hard time shaking Sanders (who was allowed in the race only because no-one thought he would actually compete) in the primaries and was unable to put away Trump, who should have been politically dead at least five times since Labor Day alone.

On the Republican side the party establishment did not want to see Ted Cruz be their standard bearer. While the Texas senator is loathed by progressives, he's almost equally disliked by his colleagues within the GOP caucus. Yet Alan Dershowitz, not exactly a conservative, called him one of the most intelligent students he ever had at Harvard Law School. Again, I'll leave the why's of the matter to others, but the party bosses wanted anyone but Cruz, and they got it. Instead of limiting the number of contenders like the Democrats, they flooded the field with 17 candidates, allowing the culling process to drag on. Trump never had the majority of support from the GOP electorate, but was able to gain enough of a plurality among an overcrowded field to win the nomination. The GOP establishment didn't want Trump either, but in an antiestablishment year, they weren't going to get who they wanted, which was probably Jeb Bush. Instead of exerting some reasonable control over the process they let it run wild, and got the ultimate outsider who refused to be bridled. 

Understand something, both parties are private organizations who can choose their nominees any way they want. If they want to draw lots in somebody's basement or meet in a 7-Eleven parking lot at one in the morning to duke it out, there's no federal law stopping them. But both parties have chosen to open the process up, allowing a public vote to, at least, partially determine who will represent them in the general election. That they rigged the outcome isn't even the bad part, it's that they rigged it so stupidly. The Democrats should have allowed a more open process, where the GOP would have benefitted from a bit more control. If the parties had approached the process differently we might have ended up with Biden or Warren going up against Cruz or possibly Marco Rubio. We would have had an election rooted in contrasting visions of the nation, run on competing ideas, not simply an election to determine who the American people dislikes less. 

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I'll offer one further reflection. I understand that elections, even in less contentious years than this has been, can be emotionally draining. For those who really support a candidate, losing can easily bring on a bout with depression, even if it isn't of the clinical variety. But the reaction to Clinton's defeat and Trump's victory by her supporters and his detractors (they aren't necessarily the same people) is beyond the beyond. Whether you like the Electoral College or not, those were the rules both sides operated under, and each side constructed their campaign strategy to get to 270 votes first. The popular vote is a beauty contest, plain and simple, and everybody involved in the campaigns knew that. That's why Secretary Clinton conceded before the popular vote outcome was certain. But I don't think the ongoing public demonstrations or the initial emotionally overwrought response has to do with constitutional issues. It has to do with a lack of perspective. We have to regain the understanding that politics isn't life, and the losers will have another chance sooner than they think. Stephen Colbert summed up our need to get things into perspective well on election night. 

No, politics isn't life. And, more importantly, politics isn't religion. But so many today, in our increasingly secular society, have nothing transcendent to keep them grounded. Some place their trust in material things - they'll camp out over night for a new cell phone or obsess over the latest video game. Others become engrossed in modern mythologies, learning Klingon and dressing up like Batman in public. I'm no kill joy - there's nothing wrong with hanging out at Comic Con or making a hobby of technology. There's nothing wrong with fun. Again, it's about perspective and, proportion. There are Star Wars fans who will argue over who shot first in the cantina, Han Solo or Greedo, like theologians once did over transubstantiation. This seems to be the product of a culture that's lost perspective and a healthy sense of proportion. 

Secularism has cut us off from the transcendent, but in our human need to reach out for something beyond us we are increasingly latching on to earthbound, limited gods in which to place our faith and devotion. What many people have chosen to make important in their lives, in extreme cases, make their personal organizing principles, aren't real at all but are products of pure fantasy. Many in the current generation, which has rejected Biblical faith in large numbers because they question its historicity, will fight like champions over the proper film adaptation of a comic book - whose contents they know isn't real. What is true and what is fake have become confused. What is important and what is trivial are now indistinguishable to our minds. Ironically, this irrationality is permeating society at a time when science and rationality have claimed victory in the culture wars.

The more "rational" among us have chosen politics as their god. Reality is viewed through the prism of economic and, or political ideology. There are even religious people who have come to judge their faith by how it comports with their political ideology rather than the other way around. Because reality is politics, and voting is morality, losing an election becomes the end of the world. Voting for a particular candidate becomes either a virtue signal or a mortal sin, depending on our political faith. There is no perspective, that in the U.S. system, anyway, we'll have congressional elections in two years, and another go at the White House in four. There is no perspective that republics, like empires, rise and fall, and ours will be no different. We do the best we can, in the light of faith, to form the most just society we can, knowing that we will never get it right. The political junkies make the same mistake that the fanboys make - only instead of really believing that there's such a thing as kryptonite, they believe in utopia, and that its creation is within their grasp. Both propositions are false, both are irrational fantasy. Both point to a lack of perspective and proportion.

We are seeing things totally backwards right now. It is only by being rooted in the transcendent that this "concrete" world will make any sense.  It is the eternal that is unchanging. This physical reality is constantly in a state of becoming. History will not end by humans willing it. It is only in Christ that history will have, not simply its end, but its fulfillment. All our human politics must be formulated and lived with this in mind if it will be truly lasting, and adaptable in the midst of this temporal reality.

To sum up, I believe that everything is allowed to happen for a reason. We would have lost no matter who won last Tuesday, we would have just lost in a different way. We are being called to gain perspective; to see that human power will not save us. We are being called to put our faith in God and not in political systems, no matter how just they seem. We are being called to judge our candidates by their ideas seen in the light of the Gospel, not choose them based on their personalities or charisma - or even their party affiliations. We have made God an afterthought in our political lives, and we are paying a steep price. God has allowed this election cycle so that we may come to see the futility of putting our faith in princes, our hope in a system. He wants us to regain a sense of perspective and proportion, that the Kingdom we serve is not based on earthly power or human ideology. These only corrupt and eventually fail. 

As for me, I will move on from politics. There will be no more political analysis for its own sake. I'll only touch on these topics in so far as how they effect the Church. For all of us, I advise, be informed, be aware, be engaged, but don't be obsessed. If you didn't like the outcome of this election, there will be a next - or maybe not. It will all depend on our keeping perspective and proportion.