This column will be published in an actual newspaper — you remember, those things people rush out to buy every 108 years — on Tuesday.
Election day.
Regardless of the results, there will likely be a Wednesday. So, many of us will have to figure out how to carry on, graciously, while others around us celebrate.
Kind of like White Sox fans did last week.
Except the stakes are higher now. At issue is not the instant obsolescence, at least from a rubbing-it-in point of view, of anything branded with a 2005 World Series logo. Rather, we risk four more years, on top of the previous eight, of governmental gridlock.
Make no mistake, while we’ve had a government, there has been precious little governing going on. How else to explain 60 or so symbolic votes to defund the Affordable Care Act and not one hearing to confirm (or deny) the nominee to a Supreme Court vacancy?
The intransigence extends beyond those signposts. According to Politifact, in all of U.S. history predating Barack Obama’s election in 2008, 68 individual executive nominees were blocked by the opposing party. In the first five years of Obama’s presidency, 79 nominees — from ambassadors to the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to the Secretary of Defense — were blocked.
Somehow, politicians have landed on the notion that blind opposition is preferable to compromise, and we are left with a government populated by officials who believe it is their job to, you know, not do their job.
Here’s a thought: Let the winners have their way.
Granted, the oddsmakers and pollsters suggest we will have, come January, what we had for six of eight years under Obama: a divided government — which is to say, one party holding the White House, the other Congress. So, if voters divide the government, which party is really the winner?
That one’s easy.
Most of Congress is elected in midterm elections, when voter turnout is much lower than in presidential elections. For example, in 2008, 57.1 percent of the voting-age population cast ballots when Obama won his first term, while 36.9 percent voted in the 2010 midterms that gave the House back to the Republicans. I’d argue a presidential result, when most of the country is paying attention, is much more clearly a referendum on the direction in which voters would like to see our country move.
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So let it.
Let’s assume the political party not holding the White House has sincere (OK, sincere-ish) beliefs about the issues facing our country and the best ways to address them. Great. But the majority of the country has demonstrated, with their votes, that they believe otherwise.
If that party (for the sake of brevity, let’s call them “the losers”) wishes to demonstrate that the winners are wrong, they have only one real option: Do not stand in the way when the winners seek to enact policy.
In other words, give them enough rope to hang themselves.
Refusing to let the government wheels turn does nothing to rally support to your side. In fact, some might suggest that a political party deciding, in effect, to hold its breath until it turns blue leads only to a splintered party putting forth a demagogic nominee that appeals only to the fringiest elements of its base. Not that I’m naming names.
If the losers are right, the winners prove themselves incompetent, driving voters to the other side next time around. If the losers are wrong, the country heals and grows more robust.
And that’s all anybody really wants, right, losers?
I do believe the losers will have to be incentivized to change the current, favored tactic of obstructionism. We, beyond our votes, can offer that incentive.
Politicians are creatures attuned to sense shifting winds. From the masses now they see, and they encourage, polarization. We ought to suggest, to them and to each other, that there is more common ground than they have been willing to seek.
We must let them know we are weary of inaction, that we will support the person elected to the toughest job on the planet even if that person was not our choice.
We can be gracious, in victory or in defeat. Because this country needs a little grace right now, and too many of our politicians have lost the taste for it.
Phil Arvia is a freelance writer for the Daily Southtown.