“People are strange,” The Doors famously declared half a century ago, but they are differently so depending on the circumstances. These days I find strange the attitude that some of us take towards compromise in electoral politics. Everybody knows that life is full of compromises, many very difficult. From the outset, we don’t pick the circumstances of our birth, which can be very hard. Then we have to deal with parents not of our choosing, not to mention siblings, relatives, schoolmates, teachers, and health care providers. And even when we make choices – our spouses, our friends, our educational paths, our careers – we inevitably face challenges that require us to make more adjustments. Yet when it comes to politics, we imagine that none of this reality should apply.
Despite overwhelming circumstance to the contrary in every other part of our lives, we think ourselves entitled to a politics in which we never have to settle for less than our preferred candidate and platform. And when, as is often the case, that preferred scenario does not materialize, we pout, groan, sit on our hands, and leave the field – behaviors that most of us would recognize as silly in any personal life situation.
I suspect that one important reason for this contradiction is that, thanks to our media culture, we view politics as spectators, even if we know better. We know that government is not just something done by others to others. It matters to us who sits on the Supreme Court or runs the Department of Justice. We know that these people make life and death decisions for ourselves and millions of our fellow Americans, not to mention the countless souls who are somehow ruled by the American empire. But most of the mediators who cover electoral politics represent it in ways that subtly dis-remind us of how much the political process and our participation in it matter.
Consider this small example. Next time you read a news article about a primary election, look for the paragraph that mentions the specific date or dates when people will be allowed to vote. I guarantee you that four out of five articles will not identify those dates. In other words, the writer will not give you important details about how you can participate in this critical event. That simple omission gives the story an other-worldly feel, as if the election involves someone else besides us. As the mediators of news turn the subject of elections into something that we have no involvement or stake in, we stop thinking about politics in the ways that we think about the rest of our lives. We stop seeing politics as, like life, a circumstance in which sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and most times we get only some of what we want. Once we idealize something that is never ideal, we bring to it expectations that will never be fulfilled.
