How Can More Politicians Take The High Road?
Taking the high road in politics doesn't often seem to work, especially these days. But isn't it better than more people overcrowding the low road?
In a late 2018 speech, right before a Blue Wave hit Congress, this nation’s last president spoke to students. He urged them to vote like their lives depended on it. Because it did.
In the midst of talking about taking a political high road against a “darker aspect” of Americana that relatively few trod these days, Barack Obama noted that powerful forces wanting to divide people “did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, a fear and anger that’s rooted in our past.”
When Obama gave that speech last year, I didn’t really listen to it. I was too busy writing about Republican voter suppression and what a bigot Trump was and insulting his supporters on social media, calling them cult members and worse. It wasn’t until I sat down a couple months after the mid-term elections that I really read through that address as I was updating a book called Not Our President. The message resonated, but not enough for me to change the book's title.
Obama wasn’t calling on people to ignore the many transgressions of Trump and his cult – oops, there I go again. He noted that when he was in the White House he complained a lot about Fox News, but stopped short of calling Fox journalists “enemies of the people” and threatening to shut them down. He noted that it shouldn’t be hard to say that “Nazis are bad.” But he also drew the line at fighting fire with fire, including making up fake news about the other side.
It wasn’t because he was soft – it was because he believes that dirty political tricks and negative attacks only erode everyone’s trust in government. “That always works better for those who don’t believe in the power of collective action,” Obama said. To actually solve problems and make people’s lives better, a well-functioning government and cooperation among people of different political beliefs were needed.
“We have to bring people together, not tear them apart,” Obama said. “We need majorities in Congress and state legislatures who are serious about governing and want to bring about real change and improvements in people’s lives.”
The notion that Democrats need to choose between trying to appeal to white working class voters or appeal to minorities and women is nonsense, he said. “I got votes from every demographic,” Obama said. “We won by reaching out to everybody and competing everywhere and by fighting for every vote.... We have to listen to them, even when we don’t like what they have to say. We have to hope that we can change their minds, and we have to remain open to them changing ours. And that doesn’t mean, by the way, abandoning our principles or caving to bad policy in the interests of maintaining some phony version of civility.”
He noted that we’ve been through darker times, though not in modern history, according to the latest “Doomsday Clock” report by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which maintained the clock at two minutes to midnight, tied with 1953 for the closest level. “If you get involved and you get engaged and you knock on some doors and you talk with your friends and you argue with your family members and you change some minds and you vote, something powerful happens,” Obama said. “Not perfection, not every bit of cruelty and sadness and poverty and disease suddenly stricken from the Earth. There will still be problems, but with each new candidate that surprises you with a victory that you supported, a spark of hope happens.”
So perhaps as we delve deeper into Trump’s term and try to elect another Democrat to take his place if Robert Mueller’s investigation doesn’t help remove him first, there is something to trying to focus on talking to people about potential solutions to problems. There is something to talking about what you are for, what you plan to do about problems, rather than tearing down an opponent. There is something to getting beyond fear, fear of illegal immigrants that leads some to call for a stronger wall, fear of people who look and think differently, fear of crime that can cause gun sales to escalate, fear of the Russians stealing another election.
Autocrats rule by fear. Trump is used to controlling his own companies, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy, not listening to others and compromising. He knows the power of fear, which is the title of Bob Woodward’s excellent book. That’s why he harps on an easily-divisive issue like illegal immigration.
To combat that, you have to listen to their sides, then demonstrate that immigrants aren’t taking the jobs that most Americans really want. You have to point out how the Obama administration deported more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration did. You have to point to the more complex issue of businesses hiring – even Trump’s -- and paying for the transfer of illegal immigrants to fill jobs and keep wages as low as possible. You have to do this without resorting to name-calling or attacks. You have to be better than the other side.
Taking the high road in politics doesn’t always seem to work. It doesn’t often seem to work, especially not these days. That makes it particularly hard to change the system. While Obama seemed to set a better example overall, some say he went negative at times and only sounded more nice and charming. It’s almost impossible not to engage in attacks when your opponent is pounding you. I’m among those who believe he really tried to practice what he preached, though the political realities made that practically impossible at times.
Civil rights advocates in the 1950s and 1960s employed high-road tactics that included remaining nonviolent, even when being physically beaten throughout the Deep South. That took training and a special commitment, including a religious or spiritual one. But even at times, such advocates received protection from a few authorities who shot into the air, as well as local sympathizers who brandished weapons to keep violent crowds from going too overboard.
When you think about it, isn’t at least some taking a higher road better than everyone taking the low road? Perhaps we can have more taking a middle road, if they can’t stomach the high or low paths.
The bottom line is: Do we want to have more people walking closer to Obama’s vision in this country, or more descending near the thoroughfare used by the likes of Trump, Nixon, and Roger Stone?
Jackson Thoreau is author of Not Our President: The Movement Against the Agenda of Tricky Don & Wingman Mike, which updates the resistance to Trump’s policies through early 2019. And while Thoreau still won’t call Trump his president, perhaps he can compromise and call him our temporary monarch.
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