June 2020

In 2008, then-senator Barack Obama won Massachusetts by almost 26 points. Theoretically, that was a clear mandate that the voters in the commonwealth supported his platform. A little over a year later in a special election to fill Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat, Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown. By doing so, hopes that the Democrats would retain the super majority in the Senate, giving them a filibuster-proof road to implementing their agenda, were dashed.

Why the change of heart? Disillusionment with an administration that had barely gotten its feet wet? Annoyance with the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, and her perceived indifference to voters? An idea, once valid but in the current environment unworkable, that a team of rivals would produce good government? Even accepting those rationales, did the people who voted for Barack Obama and then for Scott Brown consider the contradiction of their votes? Put another way: what is our collective civic IQ?

Democracy requires intelligent participation. And yet, so often decisions that determine our government are driven by emotion. Fortified by incendiary rhetoric and catch phrases that can be turned into anger-inciting memes, our political discourse serves not to enlighten but to obfuscate. That may make for an evening’s entertainment, but it’s no way to form a government.

It seems to me, in order to meet our responsibility as citizens, we need to come to terms with our role in five categories:

• Understanding Issues
• Knowing How Government Works
• Recognizing Instruments of Persuasion
• Reconciling Self Interest With National Interest
• Considering Character and Temperament

Understanding Issues

During the 2016 Presidential Election I printed out the Democratic and Republican party platforms with the intention of reading both at my leisure. I have to say I didn’t get very far. The great American Novel they are not. It takes a certain amount of effort to truly understand issues, and, with everything else we all have to contend with, the task can seem overwhelming. Perhaps the advice of someone who teaches for a living would be helpful. Walter Johnson, a high-school teacher in the Boston area, developed a class for his seniors called Contemporary Issues in the Social Sciences. The course focused on current issues in politics, economics, science, religion and cultural trends. He recommends voters choose a list of five issues that are important to them, then do the research and see where the candidates stand.

There are plenty of resources available, particularly around election time, that provide succinct information about the issues. It’s up to us to seek them out. Johnson’s students were required to read the magazine The Week. He said he chose this publication because, while the pieces are short, “they provide students with an opportunity to explore alternate perspectives, both liberal and conservative, by leading them to articles in other publications with often distinct points of view. It challenges them to think about how they are formulating their opinions.” (Check your local library’s website to see if they offer The Week online.)

Knowing How Government Works

The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania conducts an annual survey about the understanding of the Constitution of the United States. In 2019, the survey revealed that only 39 percent of Americans were able to name all three branches of government, and that was the highest level in five years of the survey.¹

Does every voter need a lawyer’s familiarity with the Constitution? No. But let’s return to the Obama/Brown example. It’s one thing to be in favor of health care for all. But if voters weren’t aware that their votes for Scott Brown would have taken away the super majority that would have given President Obama a powerful tool in making his vision a reality, they weren’t working with complete information. Particularly during an election season it’s important to pay attention, not just to the ideal, but also to the mechanics.

Navigating the Information Highway

One would think with the way we’re inundated with communication during presidential campaigns that obtaining an understanding of issues and candidates would be easy. But the opposite is true. Cable news needs to fill 24 hours of ratings-generating material. Objectivity is constantly threatened and sometimes abandoned. Social media is littered with uninformed opinions not to mention foreign bots. But most dangerously, our politics are highly charged, and the information we receive is often designed to appeal to our emotions rather than reason.

Misinformation and outrageous campaign tactics have been part of our political life throughout our history. Here are just two examples:

• During the election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, “Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.”²
• “Led by newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, journalism of the 1890s used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of newspapers–a style that became known as yellow journalism.”³

What is new is the speed at which information travels. A statement on social media is immediate. It is not vetted through an editor and yet is often accepted as true simply because we can read it on our screens. “Much of the information people are getting is coming from Facebook and Twitter,” Johnson said. “Even those who are watching cable don’t get a clear presentation of the news. The bias that exists is clear. Opinions are reinforced based on the network they choose to watch.”

In this environment, we cannot afford to accept information at face value. We have to ask ourselves: Where did this information come from? What is the agenda of the person or organization providing it? Can I verify the content with another source?

Reconciling Self Interest With National Interest

One of the most challenging tasks for us as voters is to reconcile our self interest with the interest of our country. No one likes paying taxes, but the safety net they support creates a more compassionate society. Maybe government regulation makes business operations more cumbersome, but should an unscrupulous business have the power to take advantage of a community? These are issues each of us has to consider, and we can certainly disagree about how to approach them. But at the very least, we should make decisions regarding them as informed citizens with as complete a knowledge as possible of their ramifications.

Considering Character and Temperament

I spent the first part of this essay writing about the importance of casting a vote based on issues not emotions. And I stand by that premise. But what happens when voting for the issues we believe in means giving power to someone whose character or temperament ill equips that person to lead? This isn’t quite the same as choosing between self interest and the interest of the country because we believe judges’ appointments, tax policy, environmental regulations serve the country better when put in the hands of the party we support. But if the result is abuse of power or damage to the fabric of our nation, what do we do? Citizenship, done well, is not easy.

We the People

We are coming into what is likely to be one of the most volatile campaign periods in our history. Perhaps as individuals we can’t do much to prevent the disintegration of our electoral process into a morass of misinformation and malintent. But this is our democracy. We the People are the first words of the constitution. Not We the Congress, not We the Judges and certainly not I the President. We owe it to ourselves to cut through the noise so that we may truly understand the ramifications of our votes. We owe it to ourselves to raise the level of our collective civic IQ.

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.“

Thomas Jefferson ⁴

¹ Annenberg Public Policy Centerof the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/political-communication/civics-knowledge-survey/

² Adams vs. Jefferson: The Birth of Negative Campaigning in the U.S. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12487/adams-vs-jefferson-birth-negative-campaigning-us

³ Crucible of Empire, The Spanish American War, Yellow Journalism https://www.pbs.org/crucible/frames/_journalism.html

⁴  Letter From Thomas Jefferson to William Charles Jarvis, 28 September 1820 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1540

©Elaine L. Ricci 2020