An Election Is Not A Football Game

by Marc, from Marc's Musings

The 2008 election cycle is finally over and none too soon. I was really getting tired of the football game syndrome that the election seems to have brought on. You would have thought with the interesting candidates and very definitive issues, we could have had a real dialogue on where we want this country to go. But instead of a dialogue, we got more of a football game atmosphere where the spectators chose their teams and rooted for them. As in a football game, when you root for your team, everything your team does well is good and everything the other team does well is bad. This doesn't lead much to dialogue. The fact is that we aren't supposed to make an intelligent decision about which candidate we should vote for. Rather the campaigns are designed to coerce the voters to vote for their candidate just because it "feels good". Whichever campaign makes the voters feel better about their candidate and worse about the other one finds success.

For example, take the case of the economy. In the final stages of the presidential campaign, everyone knew the economy was the main issue. This was the time for Obama and McCain to offer their visions about the causes of the current crisis and their plan to fix it. But we didn't get much of that. Rather, on the economy, the incumbent Republicans took much of the blame even though the Democrats didn't offer much of an alternative. Even now, after we know the results of the election, both parties are grasping for positions to take without really knowing what they are doing.

When we elect a president, we aren't electing a national cheerleader. We are electing the head of the executive branch of the government. We saw with Bush II what electing a cheerleader can do to the country. President-Elect Obama appears to be intelligent enough to give it a good shot at trying to remedy the country's problems. But his campaign was very long on generalities and very short on specifics on how that is going to be done.

The other effect of the election becoming like a football game is that, as in a football game, people supporting opposing candidates start opposing each other, tearing apart otherwise strong friendships and even families. Why can't we have intelligent discussions about issues and candidates without attacking each other? This kind of polarization can't solve any problems. It's the reason why the federal government hasn't worked very well for quite some time. Democracy is about compromise. You don't always get everything you want, or you rarely get everything you want. But you should always have a voice.

My experience at the Democratic National Convention was that Barack Obama treated the Democratic Party as his personal property and everyone had to dance to his tune. As a delegate for Hillary Clinton, I didn't feel any outreach from the Obama campaign to include us in his party. It was and still is my fear that if Obama runs the government in the same way, we will get more gridlock. However, the initial observations are that at least for appearances he is trying to look inclusive. It remains to be seen if this is just superficial or a real change in his approach.

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Posted By Marc to Marc's Musing at 11/18/2008 05:06:00 PM