Party

The recent election focused a lot of attention on things peripheral to the primary purpose of the government in which those elected will participate. While there was some substantive discussion in the last month of the campaigns about the economy, neither candidate articulated an overarching policy on the subject that would encourage me toward them. I will admit to hearing some things that I would not favor, but that revelation was not peculiar to the candidate, but he followed his party.

Both candidates made general claims concerning a desire to change things. But to change the old ways of Congress is something that is not within the power of either. In the end, the only real change that any president brings is a difference in style and a difference in the base from which they will operate.

No matter how irrelevant you think the political parties have become, that party is a significant part of the base from which any politician operates, especially at the national level. It is admitted that neither party is entirely one way about anything, but holds values that span a wide spectrum. Further, to some degree, the “center” extreme of the two parties overlap. But even agreeing on this, somewhere in the middle of their spectrums is what most consider to be the core party values.

When I speak of values, I’m not talking about family values or moral values. They are not unimportant. But at the party level, I am talking about the political values and principles upon which they rely. In simplistic terms, the underlying principle of the Republican Party could be said to be that government should do only those things that cannot be done by the private sector, while the underlying principle for the Democratic Party could be that if government could do it, it should. I really don’t care to argue the correctness of either premise. I believe that these are reasonable statements about both parties.

Now among those who would call themselves Democrats, some believe that the government should do a lot while others have some limit on the list of “shoulds.” Similarly for the Republicans ─ some think the government should just shrink until it disappears while others see the government’s role as more open, even overlapping with the view of many Democrats.

So we turn back to this last election cycle and consider the amount of rhetoric that focused on issues not central to the job of government, or of the presidency. Abortion, gay marriage, the way Congress operates, campaign finance reform, lobbying, embryonic stem cell research ─ the list goes on.

But the parties are not as different as we think. Obama pointed out that McCain voted consistent with Bush’s policies around 90 percent of the time. But Obama did it almost 80 percent of the time. Not really much difference for someone who was admittedly at the far left of the political spectrum. It doesn’t really say that much one way or the other about Obama. But it does say a lot about how much the differences matter.

But the differences were not about abortion, or gay marriage. It was mostly about things that were mainstream government issues in which the basic principles of the two parties differ. If I really care that government is more in the Democratic way, or in the Republican way, it is much more important that I vote for those who clearly stand within the particular policy framework that I prefer than it is to vote for the pro-life or pro-choice candidate. There is a slim chance that anything of substance will come along on which they can truly influence national policy on the abortion issue, but it is pretty certain that matters of routine government policy will come up daily. Should I vote for the policy “screw-up” on the off-chance that a real abortion issue might arise? I think not.

If you believe government should be heavily involved, you should vote Democratic even if you are pro-life. And if you believe that government should have more limits, then you should vote Republican, even if you are pro-choice. And if the candidate from either party is out-of-sync on any social issue, speak up, but in the meantime, get over it.

And both parties would do themselves a big favor to remove virtually all comments about these divisive social issues. They may find that trying to cater to so many irrelevant things has thoroughly distracted them from their primary purpose. Why were there Democrats for McCain and Republicans for Obama? Probably had little to do with real issues of government. Both groups probably abandoned their true political base to make social statements ─ statements that are hollow because the result of their defection probably has little bearing on the issues that drove it.

Both parties should forget claiming to be the party of family values. Neither is void of family values. That is not the reason we have government. It is the reason we have families. Let’s put family values back in the homes where they belong, and put politics back in government where it belongs. Return to parties that have meaning within the purposes of the issues their candidates will actually face.