Jim Hightower, former Texas state politician and author of If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates, describes a meet-the-candidates breakfast for local offices. "The collective IQ of the whole bunch wouldn't have outgunned a passel of possums and none of the candidates had sparked even a flicker of interest, much less enthusiasm, among the yawning public." A local preacher rose to give the invocation. The crowd instinctively hushed and bowed. He looked at the candidates to his right and to his left, closed his eyes, lifted his face to the heavens and cried imploringly, "'Oh, God!' As his plea rumbled across the room, he softly said, 'Amen' - and sat down."
We may echo the preacher's feelings as Campaign 2000 approaches its merciful conclusion. There will be great pontificating by the winners and much gnashing of teeth among the losers. No matter how it turns out, however, there will be great relief among the public. But before we get on to other business, we do well to use this campaign as a vantage point for looking at the deeper moral and spiritual meanings of American democracy called into question by this election. After all, the fifth principle in our Unitarian Universalist covenant is "to affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large."
Why would we include democracy as a religious value? Democracy is usually considered a secular construct. We value it because we know that religious convictions help shape political thought and political culture helps shape religious beliefs. Religious freedom does not stand alone; freedom is indivisible. Life is of a piece; we are whole persons, not neatly divided into separate religious and political personalities. While our theology may bring us to different political conclusions, it is, or ought to be, decisive in how we act as citizens.
This interpenetration of politics and religion is deep writ in our religious history. Our spiritual ancestors knew that "politics is the locale of both evil and of good." They did not want the church to be "the great Christian joke."
We need only look back to The Election Sermon in the Massachusetts Bay Colony which was inaugurated by the Rev. John Cotton in 1634, when he urged Governor Winthrop's re-election. The tradition continued almost unbroken, usually at the opening session of the Massachusetts legislature. William Ellery Channing's sermon on "Spiritual Freedom" was the election sermon in 1830. The Universalist president of Tufts College, Dr. A. A. Miner, delivered the last Election Sermon in 1884.
While the sermons were usually not openly partisan, the preachers did not confine themselves to "innocuous generalizations about the usefulness of morality to society but often made pointed suggestions to the General Court with respect to public policy."
This year's election sermon finds me in mixed mood - both exhilaration at this priceless democratic ritual of self-determination by a free people - and despair as I gaze at the candidates, the campaign and the future of our nation. Every four years I think of The Archbishop's words as he viewed the candidates during the Boston mayoralty campaign in the movie, The Last Hurrah: "Is that the best we can do?"
You may have seen the cartoon of a boy saying to his mother: "We had a mock presidential election at school. Harry Potter got 90% of the vote."
The incidents of sheer irony in this campaign are stunning. Usually candidates are asked why they ended their marriages; Hillary Rodham Clinton is asked why she maintains hers.
Republicans usually get the pro-military vote, but George W. Bush and Dick Cheney managed to avoid service in Vietnam while Al Gore volunteered, serving there as a journalist. Then Gore pledges to spend twice as much on the military as Bush, while a centerpiece of the Bush campaign is to increase military preparedness.
What's a Democratic candidate like Joe Lieberman doing talking so much about God and religion - God is supposed to be a Republican.
And it is George W. Bush who has a past he doesn't really want to discuss, the arrest for drunk driving being the latest revelation. His past peccadilloes are irrelevant, while he makes the case for Al Gore's inheriting Bill Clinton's flawed character.
Dick Cheney brags the government had nothing to do with his enormous wealth, yet while at the Pentagon he let contracts to the very firm that made him a multi-millionaire - and much of their income is from government contracts. And while he asks for votes, he admits he himself has not voted in several recent elections.
Al Gore berates big oil and blames it for the high gas prices, while he has huge chunks of oil stock. Gore woos Michigan voters but does not refer to his book Earth in the Balance which encourages an end to the internal combustion engine and the use of technologies that might put many an auto worker out of work.
While Green Party candidate Ralph Nader seems a crusading saint in contrast, he is the very incarnation of the devil to Democrats because his candidacy may well give the election to a governor whose record is the mirror image of his own.
What are we to make of this mess? The ancient Greeks believed that politics was to be conducted by amateurs. Historian Daniel J. Boorstin agrees: "Democracy is government by amateurs. The progress - perhaps even the survival - of society depends on the vitality of the amateur spirit."
Yet we are to be led by one of two professional politicians, both of whom come from wealthy political families. George W. Bush's grandfather was a U.S. senator, and, of course, his father was president. He went to private schools - where he did not excel - but nonetheless was accepted by Yale in the unique affirmative action practiced by universities who know about the bottom line.
Al Gore's parents early on were grooming him for the presidency - his father was a U.S. senator. He too attended private schools and then Harvard - where he was apparently not an exceptional student.
As critic Gore Vidal wrote: "Unless drastic reforms are made we must accept the fact that every four years the United States will be up for sale, and the richest man or family will buy it."
In the cynical words of Jim Hightower, both Bush and Gore were born on third base and thought they had hit a triple.
Their lives give them little sense of identification with the rest of us - who were not so well born. Presidential scholar Doris Kearns Goodwin suggests that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had empathy with the poor because of his debilitating polio. The two major party candidates this year have little comparable experience or empathy.
This campaign has been a dumbing down of democracy - an empty repetition of time-worn speeches that superficially cover the same ground. As to the "who would you like to drive cross-country with" test for the presidency, I groan. One candidate murders the language, while another overwhelms with policy-wonk details without vision. I'm sure neither would enjoy my company. I don't relish having to listen to either of them for the next four or eight years. But that is the wrong test - where would they lead us and how and why? We don't yet have an inkling.
At the very moment we bash politics and politicians, we have to remind ourselves of the absolute necessity of both. In the Mishnah, a collection of Judaic biblical interpretations, Rabbi Hanina said, "Pray for the peace of the government; for, except for the fear of that, we should have swallowed each other alive." More recently political philosopher T. V. Smith said, "It is the politician who keeps the saints and their respective followers from slaughtering each other over matters of principle." And as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr put it, "(Our) capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but (our) inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
The other night at our very successful forum on state health care issues I thanked the audience of about 150 and the seven candidates for being there. I know several of the candidates, and I have some idea of how hard they work, how much criticism they take and what an often thankless job it is. Most of them are amateurs - just ordinary citizens before they heard the call to public service. And so I am conflicted - at one moment going after them with prophetic zeal, and at the next marveling at the time and energy required to do the job.
Our democracy is in trouble. Our candidates are uninspiring. What is equally troubling is that the citizenry seems not to care. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected in 1992 by 43% of those who voted - less than 24% of all Americans of voting age. George W. Bush's "landslide" victory in Texas in 1998 was given him by the lowest turnout in the nation 26% - 16% of eligible voters supported him. We have a fundamentally indifferent electorate. The Greeks called those who did not participate in the democratic process "idiots." While election day should be a national holiday celebrating our democracy, it has become a day of indifference for half the public - many of them poor - many of whom have given up on government. Those who do vote primarily vote their own interest - so the haves continue to get while the have-nots continue to lose. As Yogi Berra once put it, "I'm for leaving the status quo like it is."
Our flawed understanding of citizenship is not based on what we should do - a moral concern - but rather what we desire to do - an economic concern. Citizenship has been reduced to a series of interest groups, each seeking their own benefit. As retiring representative Fred Grandy put it, "Voters are torn between their addiction to bacon and their aversion to pork."
We know what we want, but what should we want? And the candidates feed our self-interest as they seek to please us while offering little moral vision about what we might become. Few think to ask "what can I do for my country."
I think of a cartoon of a fictitious but believable Senator Craven with an aide discussing the polls. The Senator says, "Well, you're the image consultant - what are my moral convictions?"
In certain ancient Greek cities, a man (and only men could vote), before casting a vote, had to swear in the presence of the gods that he was voting to the best of his judgment for the good of the whole city." Why have we lost that sense of the common good? Where are the candidates calls for sacrifice to mend our fractured society with its gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the races, management and labor, young and old, environmentalists and industrialists? Where do we hear about the virtue of voting against our self-interest and for the commonweal? Maybe in church, but who pays attention to preachers?
With the possible exception of Ralph Nader, the candidates pander to our narrow self-interest. We are promised tax cuts, not challenged to lift the poor out of poverty. We are promised give-backs, not reminded of our responsibility to give. It's a panderer's paradise.
The conservative humorist, P. J. O'Rourke, in Parliament of Whores writes: "I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is ... a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. Santa Claus is another matter. He's cute. He's non-threatening. He may know who's been naughty and who's been nice, but he never does anything about it. "He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo ... Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus."
But which one of the candidates promises to give "everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo"? Both the major party candidates - Gore with government programs - many of which I approve - and Bush with across the board tax cuts which I would welcome but do want. Gush and Bore - as they have been called - both intone tax cuts as the mantra of this campaign despite warnings from sober observers of the danger of spending a projected surplus.
The 19th century Unitarian minister James Freeman Clark put it succinctly: "A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation."
Why have we reached this sorry state? I have concluded that our real passions as a people are economic, not political. Our energy and concentration and focus are about making money, not doing democracy. The market dominates our experience. Making money is what we do best. We are generally good workers and poor citizens.
I'm sorry to be so cynical on the eve of the great quadrennial national ritual. I'm a bit like A. A. Milne's Eeyor in Winnie the Pooh, a Gloomy Gus. But I am not encouraged by what I see - no matter who wins. Not that it doesn't make a difference - I will once again cast my ballot for what I judge to be the lesser of two evils - but it is not a happy choice.
I try to keep perspective - to retain my sense of humor. I remember the story of a State of Maine Republican on his death bed who changed his political registration to Democrat. When he reached heaven he was asked why: "Better to lose one of them than one of us."
I take heart from those who have gone before and wrestled with such issues. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund once wrote, "Democracy is not a spectator sport."
And writer E. B. White wrote that "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.... Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth." That is my faith and my hope.
In the end I agree - to an extent - with George Bernard Shaw: "Every citizen who owes his life to a civilized society and who has enjoyed since his childhood its very costly protections and advantages should appear at reasonable internals before a properly qualified jury to justify his existence, which should be summarily and painlessly terminated if he fails to justify it, and it develops that he is a positive nuisance and more trouble than he is worth. Nothing less will really make responsible citizens."
We are up to our steeples in politics this year, but we do ourselves and our nation a disservice if we exhaust our concern for the common good every two or four years. Voting is vital - both a privilege and a responsibility. But the hum-drum work of democracy goes on every day as we confront evil and work for good, refusing to separate our religion from our politics, refusing to be the great Christian - or Unitarian Universalist joke.
The difference between monarchy and democracy has been described in an analogy to a three-masted sailing ship and a raft. The one is beautiful and impressive on the high seas, but in rough weather can be shattered and sunk against the shoals. The raft of democracy, on the other hand, is virtually unsinkable, but you always have your feet wet.
The gods are not going to give us any better candidates unless we create them by the depth of our compassion and the breadth of our vision. We get the kind of government we deserve. Scary, isn't it? Democracy is not something we have; it is something we do.
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