Consequences

It seems that with every presidential election cycle we hear that, “this is the most important election we’ve ever had”.  Having been said so often in recent years that may be seen as “crying wolf”, something to be ignored.  Yet once again, I find myself not merely wanting to say but to shout, “this is the most important election ever”.  Why is that so?  The simple answer is that the major parties have become so distinct from one another that elections do matter more than before.  Make no mistake; the country’s future direction will be on next November’s ballot.  There will be consequences.

Consider the drama currently playing out on Capital Hill and, most especially, the dysfunction in recent years.  No, it isn’t that we have a president of one party and a congress of the other.  That has happened often, including in fairly recent history.  What makes this time different is that the two parties who were once distinguishable only at the margin — both had a range of opinion and philosophy within — are now more sharply ideologically divided than they have been in many years, certainly in our memory.  And ideology is the right word, especially on the Republican side.  The GOP has moved hard right.  The current House speakership battle is all about institutionalizing that shift.

The shift — transforming the Republican Party into the “Conservative Party” — has been building for years with Tea-driven primary voters systematically turning out non-conforming office holders.  That there is a question about Paul Ryan’s conservative bona fides (what else is he) or whether the 2016 presidential wannabes are sufficiently pure tells you all you need to know.  The only fly in their ointment is the continuing interference of the “money class” which has been in control for so long, and still weighs heavily.  Office seekers want their financial support, but seem to be pushing back against the attached strings. That tension continues, especially relative to the presidential contest, the race that still counts the most.

The contrast between Republican and Democratic presidential debates couldn’t have been sharper.   Beyond the obvious, that one party has a clear front-runner and the other has a contest that remains in flux, the ideological divide was as conspicuous as I’ve seen it.  Democrats and Republicans don’t’ simply differ on approaches to national security, education, healthcare, voting rights, gun control and economic/tax policy; they often hold diametrically opposed positions, seeing life and the country through totally different eyes.  If FDR, who faced similar political forces in the 1940s, was known as “the happy warrior”, today’s Republicans seem wedded, as David Remnick put it in the New Yorker, to “the politics of perpetual fear”.

When I moved to North Carolina just nine plus years ago, Democrats controlled the governor’s chair and legislature.  Today, Republicans hold both.  The change has been dramatic with, for example, huge cuts to both public schools and higher education.  The UNC system, long regarded as a national model, is now being starved of cash and deeply politicized; the state ranks close to the bottom in public school teacher pay and support.  The legislature has made a systematic effort to suppress voting, especially among minorities and university students (assumed Democratic voters) under the guise of preventing non-existent voter fraud.  Thanks in part to the Supreme Court essentially gutting the Voting Rights act, this is happening all over the South.

North Carolina changed hands and it had consequences.  Certainly it mattered from where I sit as a liberal.  George W. Bush was elected president and it mattered — taxes were cut, deficit ballooned, Wall Street went wild and we got ourselves into two major wars with disastrous outcomes.  Perhaps more consequential, we got the conservative business-friendly Roberts Court.  Barack Obama was elected and that too had consequences.  We averted a potential depression, saw our economy (albeit selectively) recover and got the Affordable Care Act.  We began the long and messy process of unwinding ourselves from unwinnable conflicts, though that remains an elusive and unresolved struggle.  Perhaps most important, we finally began to seriously address climate change and saw two liberal women jurists join the Court. 

With the Republican hard right turn something has also happened to Democrats — the beginnings of a notable contrary shift left.  Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are manifestations of that, but they only reflect a more widespread reaction to the harsh realities and consequences of present day conservatism.  The turn left was the big take away from last week’s debate, one in which long time centrist Hillary Clinton, embraced the progressive label.  That was in sharp contrast to her husband’s preaching back in 1992.   His approach to besting Republicans was to offer a complementary Democratic approach, tokened by “ending welfare as we know it”.  That ultimately led, among others, to the repeal of Glass Steagall, a landmark of the party’s New Deal years.  Such centrism is out of sync with today’s party, which seeks to keep this progressive generation of young people along with women, African Americans, Latinos and other immigrants under its tent.  Gun control wasn’t only on the table in Las Vegas; it was vigorously supported.  That alone speaks to the great divide.

Republicans have long advocated limited government.  Now, as they’ve moved to the far right, their agenda seems aimed at choking off any government at all — except of course when their state faces a disaster or perhaps wants its endangered waterfront properties rebuilt with taxpayer funds.  It’s hard to observe Republican “rule” on the Hill without coming to the conclusion that they truly want to immobilize government — read that “Democrat government” — altogether, the consequences be damned.  That has taken us from brink to brink. 

But, as others have pointed out, this obstructionism is transparently clear.  The cries for smaller or no government really are intentionally targeted at the disadvantaged not the affluent and more specifically at programs or activities with which they disagree.  As Hillary Clinton said during the debate, “They don’t mind having big government to interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood.” She continued, “We should not be paralyzed by the Republicans and their constant refrain, ‘big government this, big government that.’ ” Simply put, their ideological commitment to smaller government, not to mention deficit reduction is, generously put, highly selective.

Perhaps watching disarray in the House, some Democrats are happily projecting its advantageous impact on 2016.  Hold your glee.  For one thing, problems on the Hill rarely, if ever, predict how a presidential election goes. That you or I may think the GOP majority members are acting like buffoons doesn’t mean that others — especially their constituents in heavily gerrymandered districts — agree.  More importantly, who becomes Speaker won’t really factor into who is elected president.  What happens in Parliament might determine who becomes Prime Minister in the UK, but we have an altogether different system.  Presidential candidates, the Electoral College notwithstanding, face a national electorate.  Separation of Powers is more than just a mode of governance.  That’s precisely why we can have a Democrat in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress.  So, while we certainly have to look at the presidential race in some larger political context there are limits.

The outcome of the election ahead, as always, will depend in large measure on the two party nominees and how they stand up against each other.  And let’s not forget the nuts and bolts mechanics of gaining votes — the effectiveness of the ground operation and access to sufficient money.  How voters feel about the current president and if they think eight years of a Democrat in the job is enough is likely to play as well.   But this year, it is possible that the more clearly defined differences between Democrats and Republicans will mater eve more.  I hope so.  In that regard, there may be no more important long-term issue at hand than the balance of power on the Supreme Court.  Yes, the Court may matter more to our future than the wars overseas or the economy at home.  The next president is likely to have multiple appointments to make.  That really will have long term consequences.

Francis: postscript.

It’s hard to imagine today that Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy struggled to overcome the worry that, as president, he would be taking orders from the pope.  Clearly he faced lingering anti-Catholic prejudices, but more important his ascendency signaled a real sea change in a country dominated by majority Protestants.  Catholics had long held sway locally including his grandfather “Honey Fitz” the legendary Boston mayor, but not at the highest federal level.  Beginning with Brandeis in 1916 a Jew held a seat on the Supreme Court, but it also remained largely a Protestant domain.  While Kennedy remains our sole Catholic president, times have changed.  Joe Biden’s religion got little notice in and after 2008 and Catholics, including Chief Justice John Roberts, hold a numerical majority on today’s Court.

In this changed environment, Pope Francis’s appearance before a joint session of Congress was greeted with an unspoken but loudly heard “of course, why not.”  His speech touched many hot spot issues including immigration, greed-motivated capitalism (my words), poverty, human culpability in climate change, the death penalty and his concern that “the very basis of marriage [is] being threatened”.  While cloaked in a rhetorical religious tone, it was a highly political talk.  Francis has returned to Rome from his whirlwind visit to Cuba and the United States.  Aides said he was a bit tired by the time he reached Philadelphia and no wonder.  He continues to be, among others, a master of optics from arriving at the White House in his modest Fiat sedan to interspersing events of state and high church with visits to the poor and incarcerated.  Our American politicians — all of them — could learn a lot from this savvy son of Argentina.  Of course, what makes the Pope’s optics work is that they ring true — “he walks the walk”.  That’s something we don’t see much of on the current presidential trail or, for that matter, from most of our political class.

Francis delivered both sermons and speeches during his visit.  Beyond addressing Congress and the United Nations, his words were heard by the faithful during mega-masses at every stop from Havana to Philadelphia.  Given his established star quality, listeners probably heard what they wanted to hear hanging on the words that fit their own ideology but equally their perception of the man.  Despite all the adoration, no matter how merited, we should remember that there is hardly a more opaque institution than the Catholic Church, most especially the Vatican that he now runs.  Information and messaging tend to be both controlled and intentional.  So reports on behind the scene doings, including assumed conflicts, must be taken with a grain of salt — more “it is said” than unquestionable fact.  Elections of popes are held in deep secret.  Many significant deliberations are held behind closed doors.  Only the results are revealed, and at a time of the pope’s choosing.

That said, the divisiveness that Francis encountered both in Washington and at the UN, were probably familiar to him.  “It is said” that his Church is also deeply divided, also between “conservatives” and “liberals”.  I put those descriptors in quotes because they should be viewed in the context of an institution that has seen, and probably will see, little doctrinal change.  Indeed as Adam Gopnik wrote in a post visit New Yorker piece, “this Pope is no more a “liberal” Pope than he is a secret Muslim Pope—he’s the Pope”.  As I alluded to earlier, we tend to read what we want into public figures (Francis included) — people we don’t really know but merely observe from afar.  What we hope for and are sure we heard is often far from the case.  This is not to suggest that Francis isn’t unnerving some of his colleagues in the Church hierarchy, but they may actually be more upset about the optics than about matters of doctrine or faith.  As I’ve written before, many of those bishops and cardinals like their opulent digs and limos; Francis is making their optics look bad.

What Gopnik’s piece suggests to me is that what we perceive as the conservative-liberal controversy in Catholicism may be overblown or considered in the wrong context — our secular and political one.  At the very least, it doesn’t have to do with fundamentals, but rather touches merely the outer edges.  When Vatican II allowed prayer in the vernacular, it didn’t change the underlying text or the essence of the mass.  Francis may have been reading the prayers in English during his visit, but their content was no different than when he officiated in Buenos Arias or Rome.  There is conflict within the church about both ritual and dogma, but it is one that is more of the pew than the pulpit or between the two.  That between pew and pulpit is unlikely to be resolved; so many Catholics throughout the world (and certainly in the West) simply ignore their church teachings when it comes, for example, to matters of sex and marriage.

Not being a Catholic (or Christian), I always, as the Prophet Micah might say, “walk humbly” in commenting on the Church.  My analysis might be way off base.  So I’m always interested in what Catholic writers have to say.  As it happens, among the best New York Times columnists are such people.  Two especially reflect the opposite religious (and in their case political) poles: liberal and conservative.  On the left is Maureen Dowd, someone who can at times be a little too flippant for my taste, but is consistently serious when it comes to the faith in which she grew up, especially as it relates to what she considers its moral lapses.  She was among the most relentless critics of the sex abuse scandal — especially its hierarchy-enabled cover-up.  On the right is Ross Douthat who is unabashedly conservative both politically and religiously.  I rarely agree with him, but there are few columnists for whom I have greater respect.  He is always thoughtful and interesting and evokes an essential integrity about his views and beliefs that is compelling.  Both writers wrote columns at the end of the pope’s visit.

While finding him “cool”, Dowd, like Goptik, questioned the liberalism attributed to Francis.  Even more sharply she writes, “…his very coolness is what makes his reign so hazardous.  Watching the rapturous crowds and gushing TV anchors on his American odyssey, we see the Francis Effect.  His magnetic, magnanimous personality is making the church, so stained by the vile sex abuse scandal, more attractive to people — even though the Vatican stubbornly clings to its archaic practice of treating women as a lower caste.”  When it comes to religious modernity, Dowd sees Francis as more of the 19th century than the 21st his continued refusal to change the status of women in the church the subject of her most damning critique.

Ross Douthat worries about just the opposite.   He sees religious liberalization as a threat, one that weakens the Church’s future.  He contends that, “…the marriage of Christian faith and liberal politics [which has been happening] seem doomed to eventual divorce. Since the 1970s, the mainline Protestant denominations associated with progressive politics have experienced a steep decline in membership and influence, while American liberalism has become more secular and anti-clerical…liberal theology inevitably empties religion of real power”.  Douthat sees Francis’ as “a gift to liberals who are also Christians, to religious believers whose politics lean left” and that concerns him not merely as a conservative but as a traditional Catholic. 

From a different vantage point, I happen to agree with Douthat about the affect of liberalism on religion.  Without question, progressive religion that invites unfettered questioning and turns once mandated ritual into optional practice has the potential, perhaps greater potential, to endanger faith.  A large number of those who have left religion behind come from liberal rather than orthodox religions.  Those in the Church who feel Francis comes off as a liberal likely share Douthat’s concerns.  Conversely, Goptik and Dowd would probably argue, their concern is unwarranted because where it counts, change is very far away, if ever. 

In the last days of his visit, Francis invited Kim Davis to meet with him.  The meeting was secret, revealed only after he left.  The pope was said to have encouraged Ms. Davis’ moral disobedience.  The Vatican has since tried to downplay the meeting and the idea that the pope was taking sides on the issue.  The fact is that, while he met with other individuals, Francis singled out this non-Catholic woman for a private talk.  The walk back notwithstanding, it should remind us that, as Goptik wrote, “he's the Pope”.   In the majority on the marriage equality decision were two Roman Catholic justices — one, Justice Kennedy, wrote it.  The pope in the 1960s didn’t make decisions for another Kennedy and, when it comes to our laws, the Constitution prevails.