Election Day 2024

It occurred to me the other day that November 5th will be one of the most important days of my life. To not write something on the topic of Election Day 2024 seems wrong. If I failed to offer some insight, I would surely regret it.

Those of you who have a visceral reaction to all things political, should probably stop reading now and go back to scrolling. But I ask that loyal readers of this blog at least hear me out. Why would a guy who promised the world a non-political, feel-good blog take an alternate route? Can we trust someone who goes back on his word?

Well, first, what I am about to say is not political in a broad sense.

The adjective “political” by my definition has always simply been about the government or public affairs of the country. Webster agrees.

Partisan politics is a horse of a different color.* I will try to avoid partisanship in this post.

Second, not only am I not going back on my word, but I feel that I have the experience and knowledge to speak authoritatively on the subject. I spent my high school and college years, and my entire professional career immersed in politics. In the 40-years of that career, I was paid by my employer to not engage in partisan politics and was prohibited by law from activities that might even appear to be partisan. My family will attest to the fact that after a day on Capitol Hill, walking the halls and meeting with Republicans and Democrats, I would come home and switch on C-Span to be sure that I hadn’t missed anything while I was otherwise engaged. Obsessed? Guilty.

Third, I worked for the most non-partisan agency in the United States Government. The National Archives is the safe deposit box of our republic holding in trust the records that guarantee our rights and allow us to hold all three branches of Government accountable. Any rhetoric to the contrary in recent years is false and if you can’t accept that fact this is another opportunity for you to stop reading. Feel free to call me with any credible evidence to the contrary.

As a completely non-partisan agency we had deep friendships with leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Mark Harfield, Ted Stevens, Jim Kolbe, John Warner, Steny Hoyer, John Glenn, and Ted Kennedy to name a small sampling. The Republicans and the Democrats approached us with different points of view but were patriotic Americans who understood our mission and appreciated my role as an honest broker of facts.

And here is a fact. I am not going to tell you how to vote. I don’t see that as my job. I long ago recognized that trying to influence others on Facebook is a fool’s errand. My political rants these days are confined to X, which I recognize is also an echo chamber, but getting things off my chest strangely seems to help me avoid constipation. Go figure.

What I do want to tell you is my deep concern about the current state of the two-party political system in the United States and the implications going forward.

This country has relied on a strong two-party system for over 160 years. Politics is about making choices and depends on structures that define and promote opposing visions of the way forward. Through pluralism we convey our needs to our government. Our government examines those needs through the filter of rights and responsibilities of citizenship and acts on those needs based on the powers given to each branch by the US Constitution.

The parties organize that process and have been our brokers of ideology and vision. They have defined the choices.

The two sides in this structure have been further defined by such terms as liberal, conservative, or moderate.

In a literal sense, what do those words mean? Not as derisive tags, but as useful adjectives.

Again, according to Webster, liberal means favoring reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual. Progressive.

Conservative means tending to preserve established traditions or institutions and to resist or oppose any changes in these.

Moderate falls somewhere in between and terms like Center-right, Center-left have further defined the middle of the road.

When things started to go sideways was when sophisticated data analysis allowed state legislatures to create “safe” Republican or Democratic** districts. If you are running in a safe Republican district, your only fear is that a primary opponent will insert him or herself farther to the right (more conservative) than you. Likewise, the Democrat fears opponents who appear more liberal. Over time this creates Republicans who are more conservative and Democrats who are more liberal. And, as they say in Texas, the only thing left in the middle of the road are dead armadillos. Compromise becomes more difficult and gridlock more likely.

So, to be fair, those who say chaos was created by Donald J. Trump are not correct. Extreme partisanship, the corrupting influence of money in politics, and a dysfunctional legislative branch were already in place. Add to that the loss of personal relationships on Capitol Hill (blog Silver Bullet, August 9, 2022) and you have a true crisis on your hands.

But in my opinion, we will only have a chance of reform with a reinvigorated two-party system.

It is my thesis that November 5th will be the only chance for Republicans to restore the GOP to party status. November 5th will be the only chance for the foreseeable future for Republicans to take their party back and the voices of more and more Republicans have become a mighty chorus advocating this position.

High profile members of the administrations of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and this week even Reagan alumni have spoken up asking for Republicans to vote in a way that seems counterintuitive to save the GOP. A majority of Donald Trump's former cabinet members have done the same. They have endorsed Kamala Harris. They have sent invitations to all Republicans to attend an exorcism on Election Day.

You have heard it said time after time. This is no longer the Republican party. It is now the Trump Party, driven not by ideology or policy, but by the whims of one man and the fear of political reprisal for those who don’t fall into line.

Whether you believe this premise or not, I want to ask you to spend some time doing what I have done the last week. Go on-line and read the 2024 Platform of the Republican Party. Then do the same with the platform of the Democratic Party. Take your time. Fact check the highlights using trusted sources (Wall Street Journal, PBS, BBC, Forbes, AP, CBS). And then ask yourself these questions.

Which one is most comprehensive on the issues? Which one is based on discernible facts? What is the tone of each? Which one presents solutions that are attainable? For example (editorial position here) what is the likelihood you could just “shut down” the US/Mexico border without billions of dollars of impact on our economy? Use that as an example to truly analyze the positions presented.

And finally, which platform reads like a platform based on a cogent ideology and which one reads like the political rally speech of one man?

But how about the economy, you ask? How about food prices? How about the cost of living? Doesn’t that trump your political science and long-view arguments?

Well, again, I ask you to get away from scrolling and watching your favorite news sources and do some research.

What are the factors that impact the American economy in the global age? Ask AI those questions. Read the English language version of some monetary policy analysis and see what conclusions you come to before you vote. Ask Google why food prices are so high? Please.

Everyone is holding their breath awaiting what the Federal Reserve will do this week on interest rates. The impact of the Fed on the health of our economy is enormous and whether you are preparing to give them credit or blame, they are about to bump the numbers.

And before you jump into bed with those commentators who will call Jay Powell a political Fed chair, remember this. He was Donald Trump’s choice for Fed chair. Biden just left him in place.

So, in conclusion I dream of a day that we again have a functioning Republican party in America that espouses conservative principles, supports a strong military, speaks up for free trade, and measures all proposals against the words and intent of the brave men who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. I long for a party that Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Mark Hatfield, Gerald Ford, Ted Stevens, and Bob Michel would recognize as an organized institution and not a cult, a movement driven by principle and not fear, a political party that people can again be proud to join.

*Possible derivation from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

**The Democratic Party has increasingly been referred to as the “democrat” party out of some sensitivity that its name implies a closer kinship with democracy than its counterpart. I am one who believes that be it a neighbor’s child, the family dog, or a political party, the household or the membership gets to pick a name. To refer to it in any other way is rude.