Obama

Voting for candidates implies we have criteria.

Voting for a candidate is akin to marriage, though more of a general and limited partnership. Nevertheless, decisions once enacted, we voters and those we elect are going to be together for a while. Thus, voting, not to be taken lightly, ought to be well-considered. When the president-elect takes the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he promises to do so “to the best of my ability.”

Ability becomes the major reason for choosing the president, as with any candidate for office. And with ability comes principles; the best candidate who will do his best must be found to deliver to the utmost on principles. For our political life together as a nation, the United States Constitution frames both the requisite functions and those basic principles explicit to the conduct of every serving president.

Whether we citizens, who constitute the electorate, vote for what the Constitution so clearly specifies depends initially upon our familiarity with and practical allegiance to this basic organic instrument of our national life. Despite such an essential pronouncement as to how we ought to carry out our responsibilities as electors, we seldom regard our candidate selection as if the Constitution even existed. The typical quadrennial cycle of nominating and electing a president proceeds and has proceeded historically without much reflection on the Constitution and as if no attendant criteria exist.

Tacitly, we presume to be choosing the best possible candidate as we advance through the nominating and election stages. Accordingly, what are the bases for our choice and where are they articulated? A 2008 book by Alvin S. Felzenberg, The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t), questions the past rating systems; a step towards criteria. In a popular article, presidential historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, uses the records of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, to identify ten “Secrets of the Great presidents,” Parade (Sept. 14, 2008). Let us welcome these two new steps towards criteria among a very sparse literature. Such contributions to our central political decisions are all too rare.

Yet, any election process so unreflective and absent of clearly articulated criteria amidst so heavy a responsibility does not seem to befuddle us at all. Amazingly, the U.S. Presidency, widely regarded as the highest office in the land and the most important in the world becomes occupied largely by whim and often by accident. Think how lucky we have been, for the most part.

The history of the presidency is though the nation has gone on a journey and successive presidents have chosen a route that turns out to be a rollercoaster ride. We have selected presidents that vary widely in their abilities and principles. We have elected and then re-elected men to the presidency even when they gave little evidence of being either able or principled in the ways the Constitution asserts. As an electorate, we have made terrible mistakes and then in utter foolishness stood by our mistakes either out of an exaggerated sense of loyalty or mere psychological inertia to consider alternatives.

Our Constitution’s Article II sets out the major responsibilities of the President as executive, Commander in Chief, appointer of executive staff and commissioner of officers, namer of justices, reporter to Congress and initiator of legislation, conductor of foreign affairs and negotiator of treaties. The President must enforce the laws. All these duties presume the ability to deliver them.

The Constitution enumerates a number of principles, both generally in how its functions separate into branches and its powers share out among branches, and specifically in such pronounced places as the preamble and the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights. All these principles presume the ability of presidents to understand them and subsequently seek their full effects.

And so we come to Barack Obama. Why should I vote for him as opposed to his chief contender? Obama embodies essential principles that are at the bedrock of our common good; Obama exhibits profound abilities that the office requires and the times necessitate most emphatically.

1. Obama recognizes that the president serves all the people. He transcends all the ties that have bound candidates in the past. He has moved beyond the obvious of affinity, ideology, and particular issues.

2. Obama understands that equality before the law is the door to the opportunities that the United States holds in store for all.

3. Obama grasps that security is two-fold, consisting of peace with attendant harmony, and economic well-being, widely shared. Security of this kind is necessarily global.

4. Obama realizes that he is part of a much larger apparatus of government in which he has a key responsibility to lead by initiative and deliver by facilitation. He knows the Constitution has a well-established basis of shared power. He is neither so egoistic or foolish as to think that it is up to him alone.

These four principles, so well held in his psyche and persona, set the stage for the unfolding of his abilities. Without abilities, a president can have all the principles he can identify and muster, but they will come to naught.

5. Obama can bring people together in agreement and common action. This ability, his most practical and practiced skill, is an outward one. Therefore, we may see it as his most obvious and beneficial skill, but concord comes from and integrates the other principles and abilities.

6. Obama has a fund of knowledge from study, reading and experience that informs his thinking and shapes his consciousness. Consequently, though he is relatively young, he is wise. Translated to action, such wisdom means he knows alternatives and can choose soundly among possibilities. Internally, he knows the boundaries of his own knowledge, when to seek more information beyond his current limits, and therefore when to turn to others for their specialty and expertise.

7. Obama can distinguish among the relative worth and applicability of the advice that he seeks and receives. As Machiavelli alluded in The Prince, that tract of political praxis, the good of a surround of wise advisers is lost on the fool.

8. Obama delegates. He knows the inescapable truth that he cannot descend to every detail and in executive fashion must depend upon others to do their assignments, make decisions within overall aims and directions, and be responsible to him in their work, reporting and advice.

9. Obama encourages, accepts, and integrates challenges contrary to his own knowledge and experience. He recognizes the fallibility of human capability and therefore seeks his own enlargement through correction. Those of received minds miss this central virtue; they regard it as inconsistent or weak. The ability to change the mind far exceeds mere flexibility as the learner moves on towards greater capacity through correction and growth.

10. Obama has presence. The expression, “he is presidential,’ becomes him. In these times, we desperately need someone who not only fits the demands of executive office, but also shows in even his most casual moments that he fills the expectations of presidency. Assured in his own psyche, he inspires confidence, trust and hope of those who recognize his gifts and competencies.

Much more can be said, but this little roster of principles and abilities are at the core of the one who will lead, inspire, and in his turn, challenge us as well.
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“Ten Reasons Why I Voted for Obama” prompted this article in December, but appears here for the first time.

©2009 by Roger Sween.

Fourth Branch

We are the fourth branch of government and thereby must act accordingly.

“You cannot fool all the people all of the time.” We take this statement, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as a basic premise of our government. Another is that we have protected our freedoms for over two hundred years though a balancing or separation of powers; therefore, we are in no danger of losing our bases.

Due to the widespread belief in these two secure dicta, let us consider that we excuse one another and ourselves from doing our duty. We do not examine ourselves as to the possibility of our own mistakes. We do not see the signs of our own failings. Simplicity and convenience will always entice us humans when life requires the harder work of study and informed decision-making. And a democracy, especially a representative democracy such as ours is, calls for us to do more than trust and rest.

Yes, we are at fault. We elect people to high office who are not up to the task; and then, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, we trust them enough to elect them again. Why do we do this, and how can we do better once we find and admit the error of our ways?

We have missed a major point. Three branches structure our government, we have consistently been taught and told. Those three branches can go about their business, and we can relax. A close reading of the Constitution shows otherwise. Article I vests all legislative powers in Congress. Article II vests all executive power in a President. Article III vests judicial power in the federal courts. However, from the preamble’s statement, “We the people do ordain and establish” onwards, the Constitution throughout its provisions vests us as citizens with our role. We generate the rest of the government.

You have heard that the Constitution separates powers between its branches. Actually, power is shared; functions of those powers are separated. The Constitution separates and specifies the functions of the branches, but the powers overlap. For example, citizens elect their officials; presidents appoint judges and the Senate confirms them; Congress establishes and funds the lower courts, with the approval or veto-override of the president. Citizens contest laws and court judgments, including appeal, and seek other redress and changes in unsatisfactory laws, and so on. While each branch has extended its powers over the years, our most significant question is whether the power of the public has kept pace with those of the other three branches.

The separation of functions and sharing of power makes our particular form of government a deliberative one in which process precedes action. When past actions do no stand the tests of time and reflection, later deliberative processes can change them. In deliberation, the most salient matter is knowledge. Historically, extension of public participation, such as emancipation, direct election, and suffrage came in conjunction with the growth of education and the public provision of educational opportunity.

However, education and the opportunity for it do not translate automatically to knowledge. Education provides some basis for knowledge, but a living and useful knowledge results from personal, individual intention with and attention to one’s own need to know. We have to want to learn and then seek to learn; learning takes more than being a passive bystander. The rudimentary introduction to knowledge that comes in childhood and youth must lead to a life of constant desire to know and consequent information-seeking behavior that gains that knowledge. Otherwise, knowledge erodes, loses applicability and resiliency, and goes out of date with its continuous displacements by new knowledge. Without critical awareness, we become fooled too easily, usually by our own ignorance.

Many signs that general public knowledge is not up to the task of democracy exist; one of them is especially horrific. The widespread current practice of election by raising and spending fortunes to convince the voters exemplifies citizens’ abdication of their function in democratic elections. Another is low voter turnout, only 62% in the recent national election. Not only does the ability to raise money threaten democracy more alarmingly than the indirection of the Electoral College but also it flies in the face of citizen responsibility. It is not any more the candidates’ responsibility to make themselves known than it is the citizens’ responsibility to know and determine choices between the candidates in primaries, conventions and general elections.

As we are the fourth branch of government, discernment is our major citizenship responsibility. The third week in March that includes March 16, James Madison’s birthday and Freedom of Information Day, is Sunshine Week, celebrated for decades in my state (Minnesota) as in few other states. We all believe in open government that is equitable and honest, free access to information, and the systems that support these democratic values.

The proponents of open access to government information point out a variety of polices, funding issues, and restrictive practices that obstruct access. Yet the basic problem is public ease and disinterest and the continuous preference for what we think we know versus examination of the unknown portions of our ignorance. Accordingly, we must all wrestle with these very human limitations. Otherwise, as Lincoln also said, “We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.”

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Revised from an article previously published on Helium.com.

© 2008, 2009 by Roger Sween.