How We Select Our Leaders

I previously discussed my pursuit of political office in my home county of Grayson, Kentucky.  I ran for Magistrate of District 2 on November 6.  I ran as an Independent against a Republican candidate who had defeated the Incumbent in the Republican Primary.  I lost convincingly.

I had promised to write about my campaign win or lose; so here it is.  This was my first, and will be my last, pursuit of political office.  I have always been fascinated by politics and have followed it at the national level rather closely for several years.  Although the results of the elections have always been important to me, the actual mechanics of the elections have actually been a mystery to me.  Like everyone else, I listened to the talking heads in the media about their polls, their surveys, and their interviews with voters.  For all their claimed expertise and financial investment in predicting how and why and for whom people might vote, their record is not terribly impressive.  After the monumental miss on the 2016 elections by almost the entire media, the credibility of professional political prognosticators is at a fairly low ebb.  Therefore, like many people, my main interest in the political arena was in the cast of competitors on the stump during the election, the biographies of the candidates that I would be deciding amongst, and the victors still standing after all the voting is done.  This campaign of mine, be it ever so modest and insignificant in the bigger picture of the political universe, has somewhat opened my eyes to the mechanics of the political process that is taking place behind the campaign curtain.

I think the most important lesson I have learned about campaigns is that the action of voting is an art, not a science.  It is as personal to people as the choice of a truck, an entertainer, or even a restaurant.  It is, by and large, a greatly guarded and appreciated right by the majority of folks; but it also very much like health, homeowners, and life insurance.  Most people do not give it the time and effort it deserves prior to committing the act of actually voting.  They are driven and motivated by reasons and logic that is as varied, and as practical, as the population itself.  I think that perhaps the reason so many of the pollsters can miss so widely on their predictions is the fact that they try to apply logic and common sense to a process that does not always entail logic and common sense.  It is like trying to debate with a madman; it is pointless. 

Now the fact that a personal voting choice may not be based on logic or common sense does not invalidate its wisdom.  No one, after all, can predict with a high degree of reliability exactly how a candidate will perform should they be selected for office.  The gut feeling one has about a candidate could very well turn out to be superior to the history of that candidate’s performance.  A candidate might grow and mature as a decision maker once they assume their elected office.  The political environment in which elected candidates finds themselves post-election might have a tremendous influence on how and why they make the decisions they make.  The point is this:  Different people vote for different reasons; one method is not conclusively superior to another; and the pursuit of accurately predicting how a diverse group of voters will ultimately vote is, at best, a very iffy proposition.  This is perhaps the spice that makes the dish of democracy so delicious.  A political contest is not one that necessarily offers a right or wrong choice; it is simply one that offers different choices.

No matter how minor the office might be in the overall political hierarchy, it is a big deal when a candidate makes the personal decision to run for office.  The decision to run may at first seem capricious and without huge consequence; one of those throwaways like maybe going to the game Saturday…if the weather is nice.  But shortly after deciding to run for office, a campaigner comes to grips with the fact that you cannot do this thing halfheartedly; you must go full on.  You realize very quickly that the quest involves not just you, but all of your supporters.  They are invested, to varying degrees, in this enterprise in a very personal way.  Some of them will very likely be more invested than you; living vicariously through you in the political adventure.  This inability to reconsider your initial choice to run for office has the effect of ratcheting up the pressure on the campaign and creating a tunnel vision towards ultimate victory.  It is easy to see how many major candidacies end up selling their souls to the Devil in the pursuit of political office.

I’m sure that my piddling race for a lower county government office pales in comparison to a county-wide, state-wide, or national race; but it is abundantly clear that even the smallest contest requires some form of analytical, administrative, number-crunching approach to first identifying the potential voters and then reaching out to the potential voters.  There is a list of voters and the task is to contact the people on that list.  It might be door-to-door cold calls; it might be media advertising; or it might be event management.  This is the campaign grind that no one told you about.  This is the part that in larger, more prominent races leads to the quest for campaign donations to fund a bigger and better voter outreach effort.  In a smaller and less auspicious race, it is the part that gets you behind on the chores of your normal life, dominates your personal calendar of activities, intrudes immensely on your family, jumps up on your back, and gains weight daily until Election Day.  After my pursuit of a minor political office, I have a newfound appreciation for the sacrifices made by candidates to run for office.  Not to say that the sacrifice is overtly noble or courageous.  After all, the candidate is the one who decided to run; no one forced them.  I’m simply saying that win or lose; every candidate who has made a reasonable effort to campaign has put in a whole lot of time and effort that the general voting public simply is not aware of.  The upside to this campaign requirement is the privilege of meeting voters in their homes, at events, and through correspondence in ways that would never have otherwise occurred.  There are so many wonderful people in our nation and in this high tech, high speed world that we all live and work in, the art of conversation and discussion has been largely lost.  A political campaign requires that this art be practiced, polished, and pursued.

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Any effective political campaign requires a large dose of constant self-promotion that will be part and parcel of the overall effort.  It is really skating on thin ice when you and others constantly project yourself in the most positive fashion possible, overlooking the obvious flaws and defects that we all possess to varying degrees.  Having gone through this campaign, I can better understand how career politicians morph into the monstrous egotists that many of them have become.  At some point, if all you ever hear about yourself is the good and never the bad, you begin to believe that you are perhaps much better than you actually are.  Fortunately, I have good friends that do not hesitate to point out my stupid moments, loving family that accepts my idiot ways and loves me anyway, and a God who has given me a wonderful life with or without political office.  I fear that many of our elected officials in Washington and other centers of government have surrounded themselves with nothing but clueless disciples who cater to their every whim, deed, or opinion.  They live in isolated bubbles of self-adulation that may float around in an environment with other such bubbles; but never really mesh with those other bubbles in a practical, meaningful, or productive way. 

At the end of the day, my modest campaign for Magistrate has been a valuable lesson for me.  If I ever had a burning desire to seek elected office, then that desire has been quenched.  That box on the bucket list is checked.  I have a far greater appreciation for our political process and its ability to offer a candidacy opportunity to almost anyone; even a rogue Independent in a small Kentucky county.  I have a deeper understanding of exactly the cost that candidates pay for seeking office; costs that go far beyond the fiscal matters of a political campaign.  And most of all, I know that I will better understand in the future when I engage in a political discussion with someone, that their rationale for promoting a particular candidate over my choice of a particular candidate may not make sense to me; but it dang sure makes sense to them.  That is America.