Some Thoughts About Politics

It’s early in 2019. So far, roughly 197 Democrats have announced that they will be candidates in the 2020 presidential election. Meanwhile, a couple of Republicans are reportedly weighing the possibility of running for their party’s nomination against the incumbent president who really isn’t a Republican—c’mon now, you have to admit he isn’t—but who won their nomination and the presidency in 2016. Oh, and there’s a super-rich guy who used to sell coffee that costs three times as much and has no better taste than what you can get at McDonald’s who may run as an independent for some unfathomable reason.

So yes, the 2020 election is already on our minds. Lord have mercy.

Still, 2019 is a non-election year, so I thought it might be a good time to talk about politics before we start thinking and talking too much about the candidates. It might do us good to think and talk about the ways we think and talk about politics.

I’m going to focus on the ways we think and talk about presidents, but I suspect my observations are more broadly applicable.

Let me put my main thought right up front: when it comes to evaluating presidents, we aren’t objective. How we judge a president’s actions depends largely on whether we voted for him.

(For simplicity’s sake, I’m using “him” to refer to presidents, since thus far they’ve all been men. I hope and trust this will change soon.)

Here’s my main evidence for saying we aren’t objective in the ways we evaluate presidents: a president we approve of can do and say controversial things and we defend him, but if a president we don’t approve of does and says the same (or the same kinds of) things, we attack him.

I wonder why that is? I can think of several possible reasons.

First, we have trouble separating legitimate criticism from partisan attacks.

Sometimes when a new president is elected, his opponents (enemies might be a more accurate word) throw every accusation they can come up with at him. Some of their criticisms are accurate, some are extremely exaggerated attack versions of accurate criticisms, and some amount to fictional conspiracy theories. The enemies’ approach is to throw as much at the president as possible, knowing that some of it, true or not, will stick.

One reason we have trouble separating legitimate criticism from partisan attacks is that we tend to limit ourselves to media outlets that confirm our preconceived notions. Another is that we tend to get a lot of our information from Internet sources that aren’t vetted well for truth and accuracy—or aren’t vetted at all.

Second, we don’t like to admit that we may have been wrong to support and vote for a candidate who became president.

We may have what seemed to us good reasons to support and vote for a candidate. We heard the warnings about him and we thought they were exaggerated. After he has been president for a while, we realize there are reasons to be concerned. But to acknowledge it is to admit that we were wrong to vote for him. That’s hard to do, especially since it implies that those who voted for the other candidate may have been right (or at least less wrong).

Maybe we should remember that a vote isn’t a marriage vow. We didn’t pledge to be faithful to the president no matter what he does. And faithfulness to the country, to the Constitution, and to our neighbors might compel us to change our minds about a vote we cast.

If we do decide it wasn’t the right vote, we can’t go back and change it. But we can try to do better next time.

What can we do to try to think more objectively about a president for whom we voted?

We might try regularly asking ourselves this question: if President #1, for whom I voted, does something that I criticized President #2, for whom I didn’t vote, for doing, then shouldn’t I also criticize President #1 for doing it?

A Letter to Our Granddaughter

Dear Isabella,

Welcome to the world! We are so glad you are here and that you are part of our family!

You are a gift we don’t deserve, but we gratefully receive you as the sign of grace you are. Every time we look at you or think of you, we are reminded of how good God is.

We love you. We don’t love you because of who you are or because of what you are. We love you just because you are.

As you grow, you’ll discover who and what you are, and we look forward to encouraging and supporting you in your journey of self-discovery. It matters who and what you become, because only as you do so will you be able to realize your full potential.

But it doesn’t matter as far as our love for you goes. We love you because you are you, and we will always love you, whomever you grow into being and whatever you grow into doing.

I do have some hopes for you. There are certain ways that I hope your life will go.

Every morning, I begin my prayer time with three one-sentence prayers. I want to pray those three prayers for you because they express my hopes for you.

The first prayer is called the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s hard to imagine right now in these early days of your life, but you will eventually do, say, and think things that you shouldn’t. Everyone does. You will find yourself in need of God’s mercy. I hope and pray you will turn to God for mercy when you need it. I hope and pray you will know that God is merciful.

I also hope that you will, having received God’s mercy, extend mercy to other people. Every person you will ever know, meet, love, or pass on the street has pain, guilt, and regret. Be kind. Show mercy.

The second prayer is a line from the Prayer of St. Francis: “Make me an instrument of your peace.” I hope and pray that you will know God’s peace. I also hope and pray that it will flow through you to other people. The world into which you have been born is fractured. Relationships are strained. People live in a frenzied state, driven by greed and fear. I want you to be at peace with God, with yourself, and with others. I hope you will be so filled with peace that it will flow out of you and onto the people you encounter.

I call the third prayer the Gethsemane Prayer, because it’s based on the prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was arrested: “O God, our lives are in your hands. Not our will, but your will be done.” You are now part of the “our” in this prayer.

I pray that you will learn who God has made you to be. If you do, you’ll live a fulfilling life. I pray that you will do what God has made you to do. I’m not saying there’s only one thing you are made to do; there may well be many options under the umbrella of your purpose in life. I hope that you will discover, develop, and utilize your gifts to do good in the world, in your vocation, in your community, and in your family.

Isabella, you are a beautiful baby. I hope and pray that you will live a beautiful life. If you live in God’s mercy, God’s peace, and God’s will, that’s what you’ll have.

And remember: we’ll be on your side for as long as we live—and longer.

Love,

Duke

Isabella Austen Gunter was born on February 20, 2019.