Daniel Jepsen

I see the presidential election season is heating up.  Soon, it will be a two-man race, Obama versus a candidate to be named later.

I find I care less each election cycle.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I still vote, and I do so after a good deal of reading about the candidate’s positions.  But I have a hard time getting too emotionally worked up about the outcome.  I don’t claim this as a virtue. Maybe (as perhaps you are thinking right now) it is a great fault. This post is not to defend my apathy, but to explain it.

First, let me stress that “twas not always so”. The month after I turned 18, I walked into a cold January night to take part in the Iowa caucuses.  That same election I was allowed to ask a question during the “audience participation” part of the only GOP debate of the Iowa campaign.  That was my fifteen minutes of fame (it was run on all three networks, and yes I am dating myself terribly by putting it that way).  I recall that same season walking up and down the streets of Des Moines hanging GOP campaign material on people’s doorknob.  I hated abortion (still do), resented the welfare state, and was suspicious of ‘socialized medicine” and soft-hearted judges. I was a full-throttled, red-blooded young republican, and I rejoiced at the start of the Reagan Revolution.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the revolution.  It never happened. Reagan and the rest of the GOP talked about social issues all day long, but acted on very few of them. Despite 12 years of Reagan/Bush, Roe v. Wade was still securely on the books, welfare reform was still a dream, and most of the promises made to the religious righters like myself were unfulfilled.  Yes the economy improved under Reagan, but I learned not to give the President too much credit for the ups and downs of something as complicated and multi-faceted as the economy.

When Clinton ran for office, I was still imbibing at the cool-aid well, and agreed that slick Willy was, if not the anti-christ, at least married to her.  His general sleaziness during the Lewinsky affair only confirmed my animus.  But again, funny facts were messing with my mind and creating some disturbing cognitive dissonance.  Not only had the economy rocketed up (see above paragraph) but the social life of America had not fallen apart.  The rates of abortion, teen pregnancy and violent crime all declined from 1992-2000 (see graphs at the end). I was kerpuzzled (family neologism). Could it be, I began to wonder, that the party of the president and congress had little bearing on the social issues I cared about so deeply?  Could it be that society usually reacts against the crusades of the president more than it joins those crusades?

I voted for Bush in 2000, but deeply regretted his decision to invade Iraq on what (to me anyway) were patently false (or at least un-proven) grounds: Iraq’s alleged link with 9/11 and supposed stockpiling of WMDs. To be clear, in my opinion, the war in Afghanistan was probably in line with ‘just war” theory, while that in Iraq was not (and was a dangerous and deadly diversion from the Afghanistan war).  Now, you don’t have to agree with this, and I am not trying to prove my position right now.  My point is this: I liked Bush personally and agreed with his stance on many issues on the home front. But not only did he (like his father and Reagan) fail to deliver on most of these, I viewed his foreign policy as a disaster.  And, here is the important part, I never saw it coming.  Not once during the campaign did he strike me more fundamentally different than Dukakis on foreign policy grounds, especially in the Middle East.  Maybe I just didn’t pay attention enough.  But I never saw it coming.  I learned again the hard lessons: you can’t judge a president’s effect on the country too much until he is actually in office.

Why? The following is only a partial list.  Add your own reasons:

• They campaign differently than they govern
• They face immovable obstacles to their goals
• They create opposition to their policies just because those policies come from a position of authority
• Their judicial appointments are blocked (or vote differently than was foreseen),
• Even their policies that get through often make things worse by their unintended consequences (No Child Left Behind being the classic example)

Again, we must vote. It is our duty and privilege.  As for myself, I refuse to get wrapped up in the politics of the culture wars.  I take abortion very seriously, but I am no longer under a delusion that its scourge will be removed by which party occupies the White House.

I look now for three things in who I will vote for: Which candidate has the personal integrity to handle the incredible power of the presidency well?  And which candidate seems to have the sanest foreign policy?   And thirdly, which candidate comes closes to my views on domestic issues. These three are in order. The checks and balances on the president’s domestic policy are substantial and varied, while the modern president has almost carte blanche in foreign policy, even to the point of starting a war.

So I will vote, and I will pray. But the nights staying up till dawn watching election returns, with either raucous joy or bitter disappointment, are gone.  God is on His throne. His plans will be accomplished. I will try to vote wisely, but I will remember His words: “Do not put your trust in princes”.

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click on the graphs to enlarge



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