Compos Mentis

Breaking the Rules of Polite Conversation

One of my housemates here in England is rather deep into politics, in the same way that I am rather deep into philosophy. As such, yesterday was a rather important day for him. He was trying desperately to find out what was going on in the 'super Tuesday' races but finally realized that it would be far easier to just sleep on it and wake up to find the results in his lap, as it were. During the course of the evening, however, he made sure all the rest of us in the house knew what was going on, and asked each one of us in turn whether any one of us was registered for a political party. When he asked me, I nearly started laughing. I managed to restrain myself before he hit me, but he was tempted again when I told him that, if I had a chance, I would watch the third party debate on C-SPAN 3 and vote for whomever was the most articulate, honest, and intelligent.

Now, he and I have sparred before on the question of whether or not such a choice is throwing away my vote. I know full well that the candidate whom I vote for is not going to win. Then again, voting in Utah, I'm pretty sure that my vote is not going to make a difference one way or another. There's a good reason why no political candidates ever come campaigning in a state that has a record of usually voting over 70% for the Republican candidate. The place is a lock. Since he comes from Colorado, much more of a swing state, he obviously sees that his vote might actually make a difference.

This time, however, he surprised me by mentioning that he thought I was a registered Democrat. I have to admit that there was a time that I saw myself as a Democrat, but that was in 1996, right when I had moved from England to the States. I had no idea who either candidate was but I thought the map with all of the states divided up into red and blue was pretty cool. I decided I was a Democrat because I wanted to be associated with the winning side. I have to admit that I was rather surprised by the reaction I got at school when I mentioned this.

Since then, of course, I've learned a little more about the political system and what the red and blue actually claim they stand for. The more I know about politics, the more important I think it is for more people to know; in this regard politics is unlike philosophy, which is pretty useless for most people. His comment made me wonder, then, why I don't try to use my vote, or my time volunteering, to try to do my part to make the country a little more like what I think it should be like. (Actually, it wasn't so much wondering as remembering what I came up with a while ago. This post is partially me explaining and partially me making sure my thoughts are clear on the matter)

The first reason I alluded to already. In some ways, just given the political system we have, the individual votes don't count. The votes of the people who vote Democrat in Utah or Republican in New York are throwing away their vote just as much as one who would have voted libertarian in the last election - although socialist was close second.

More importantly, though, I'm a cynic. I seriously doubt the promises made during an election. What a politician does in office hardly ever matches the plans outlined during the course of a campaign. I compared the big name debate in the last election to the third party debate, and the one thing that came off of the former was the sense of the theatrical. Everything was staged, every gesture, every phrase, every mannerism. This is why I'm somewhat dubious whenever I hear something like "Hilary is really like..." or "Romney has the quality of... " That's certainly the image they want to cultivate, sure, or else the one their rivals are trying to cultivate for them. But I am doubtful that one can really find out what a candidate really favors and is really like by what goes on and what is reported on during the campaign environment.

Strangely enough, though, I don't think that this necessarily makes them bad at their job. The President has to deal with people who merely want things for themselves or their constituents all of the time. Being opaque and a consummate liar might be a virtue in this case. It just makes it hard for me, personally, to decide whom to vote for.

"Well, what about the issues?" You might well ask. "Perhaps you're not well suited to vote in a primary, but you could certainly vote for the party that you agree with more!" That's quite possible. Unfortunately, here too my head gets in the way. When it comes to politics, I don't think I can really be labeled a conservative or a liberal, either on social policy or on economic matters. First of all, I think such labels are fairly illusory. What actually exists is a series of unrelated pressures (I can't necessarily call them problems, but that's usually how they're conceived). To try and link them and solve them by applying a blanket ideology seems to me to be simplistic at best. What I would much rather see is someone who looked at each pressure as unique and tried to find the best way to solve it, no matter what that might entail.

Of course, such a person would have to be fairly honest about their position, and as such, could never, ever be elected. And, since I'm not stupid enough to try to come up with my own theoretical political utopia, and I am just stupid enough to spend my time thinking about stuff like this, the best solution I could come up with was to vote for the person whom, as I said above, was the most honest, articulate, and intelligent.

Now you know why I vote third party. Aren't you glad you wondered?

posted by Emmett @ 04:48