Our best?

In a little over seven months, this country will select one candidate in the Presidential election to serve as the leader of this nation for the next four years. There are many questions to answer concerning platform and policy, world events, domestic issues and on and on. One question, however, stands out above all the others in the minds of many, and is perhaps the gravest and most consequential one of all. That simple question concerns the quality of the two leading candidates and bluntly asks, “Is this the very best our country has to offer?’ The follow-up to that is another question that is just as curt and asks, “Why would anyone want to do this anyway?” You can reasonably say it’s the toughest job in the world. The pressures are immense, as evidenced by the physical appearance of every occupant of the oval office after a year or two. It’s also fair to say that the job becomes more and more difficult as the external forces of a chaotic world and the internal struggles of a diverse, burgeoning and sometimes chaotic country regularly collide. Even considering all of that, it must still be true that the nation with the most successful form of government in the world in the last two centuries as well as the most able country in the world by any other standard still produce men and women who are able to shoulder the arduous demands of the most powerful position in the free world and still reflect the goodness, honor, fairness, and enlightenment that this great country is grounded in. But where are they?

The choice we are faced with in the coming Presidential election is uninspiring and alarming, but it hasn’t crept up on us without warning. The dark horizon of extremism on the left and right has slowly but incessantly grown to the point that a wider and wider chasm in political thinking now divides us. The result is a country with less and less room for what used to be referred to as the middle ground or silent majority. Most threatening is the fact that there is also less room for “the best” this country used to rely upon and look to for leadership. Time-honored principles like healthy compromise, negotiation, and the free exchange of ideas and energy in this country have been cancelled, reviled, and pointed to as signs of weakness instead of statesmanship. Whether you are Republican or Democrat, the more we retreat into party lockstep, the less we reflect the hope and the dreams of the original founders of this country. When that happens, the “best among us” retreat as well. That is the greatest actual threat to democracy today, not the politically fabricated ones that one candidate repeatedly refers to. In the remaining months of this year, there will be two vigorous campaigns of misrepresentation, exaggeration, and unvarnished lies. That disappointing process has already begun. No matter what political camp makes you feel the most comfortable, listen to the other side just a little. You don’t have to agree, but maybe if enough tolerance pervades the political scene, it will help restore an atmosphere where the “best” can once again be found among us and in us. At the very least it will give you a small spark of optimism and a ray of positivity in an otherwise cloudy forecast.

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