I’ll talk carefully about the major party candidates in this coming election season. In full disclosure, both are incredibly flawed. Where’s the breaking news there? So am I. But I’m not running for elected office, so let me stick with the job qualifications and what you all may think of the candidates is your business.They’re trying to get a job. We all need to speak with gentleness and respect, but also with truth. These posts appeared on my Facebook page a year ago. And now, no one seems to be talking about these job qualifications.I will. Truth matters. So, let’s take a look — one more time — at each candidate’s qualifications, or disqualifications, if you will.
When I ask my university students to list the responsibilities of United States citizenship, I have to correct them every time. They’ll usually point first to “voting” and I immediately respond that their answer is incorrect. After waiting a moment or two for the quizzical looks to fade, I’ll calmly give them something to think about: “People vote. Heck, dead people in Chicago vote some of the time. They may be voters. But a citizen does something subtly different. A citizen casts an informed ballot. That was what our Founding Fathers had hoped. I never thought I’d have to say it: All citizens are voters, but not all voters are citizens.”
Casting an informed ballot requires the citizen to do some homework. In Colorado, our ballots are always full of initiatives and state constitutional amendments and being informed is the only way to vote responsibly on the “down ballot” offices and issues. So then, why would citizens be any less inquiring of those names listed at the top of the ballot?
If all voters had cast an informed ballot in 2008, we wouldn’t have elected our current President the first time. He was elected because he was “cool” and acted “cool.” That’s what our culture bases our votes on any more (I guess)—people’s looks, how they shoot hoops, and it seems our culture really doesn’t care about anything else: their personal history, belief system, or future agenda.
That’s why citizens should always avoid candidates who capitalize on what voters don’t know about civics or about them. This time around, they might shoot hoops—I don’t think they do—and they may be popular even though they may not look cool at all. But even they might agree that the source of their otherwise unexplained popularity right now is the built-up anger of voters who have a total contempt for both political parties and inside-the-beltway government. I might be one of those, but that doesn’t give me enough of a reason to vote for anyone for president. And I certainly wouldn’t vote for someone out of anger. That runs contrary to the Bible, the book one of our candidates says is the best ever written. Even they might agree that their support can’t be from a thoughtful, sober examination by citizens needing to cast an informed ballot.
People of all political persuasions can agree that civics instruction is a core deficit in our nation’s schools. Civics is where you learn the responsibilities of citizenship. These responsibilities are the inheritance we receive from those who have paid the last full measure of devotion to their country. I would like to think that the candidates whose names appear at the top would be challenging us to cast an informed ballot and they wouldn’t get all bent out of shape when we tried.
That’s why I really struggle with any candidate who targets a voter the candidate knows hasn’t taken the time to become informed and then does very little to inform him. These candidates—usually relativists—rely on the emotions and feelings of voters for their support. Both of our candidates this time around appear to be some of those, as was Barack Obama before them.