Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Humility is seldom sought and usually imposed. Once humbled, however, the wise person learns
from the experience and become more open to alternatives that previously may
have been dismissed.
As they woke up this morning, Republicans obviously had many
reasons to be humble.
Despite a struggling economy, rising debt, persistently high
unemployment, and most Americans thinking the country is going in the wrong
direction, Governor Romney managed to lose the election by a rather large margin
in the Electoral College.
With more than twice as many Democratic-held Senate seats
being on the ballot, many in “Red” states, Republicans should have taken
control of the Senate this year. Instead,
with weak candidates, a poor message, and repeated mis-steps, Republicans have
actually gone backwards and lost a couple of seats.
While it may not be so obvious today, and appears thus far to
have eluded most pundits and celebrating Democrats, Democrats have many
reasons to be humble as well.
Yes, President Barack Obama won a second term as President,
and he did so against the head winds of a weak recovery, high unemployment, and
an approval rating that always hovered below 50 percent.
But it was hardly a convincing win.
President Obama’s biggest fans pretend that he is a
transformational figure, a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan. But President Reagan was re-elected in a
landslide in which he carried 49 states and won by an increased popular vote margin
of more than 18 points.
In sharp contrast, President Obama’s popular vote margin
shrank from 7 points in 2008 to 2 points in 2012. If the present popular vote margin stands
(with nearly 99 percent of the precincts reporting nationwide), President Obama
will pass the 50 percent dividing line by only a few tenths of a percent. He becomes only the second President in
history to be re-elected with a smaller margin of the vote than in his first
election — the last one being Woodrow Wilson in 1916.
Moreover, while President Obama stays in the White House, Republicans
remain in firm control of the House of Representatives. After a “wave” election, such as we saw in
2010, things tend to move back toward balance in the next election cycle, with
representatives who had seized swing districts being removed. Instead, with several congressional races
still too-close-to-call, projections are that Republicans will have lost fewer
than half a dozen seats and thereby maintain a healthy majority in the House.
And Republicans increased their hold on state houses
yesterday. Nearly two-thirds of the
Governors are now Republicans. Then-Senator-now-President
Obama being the exception that proves the rule, the farm team for presidential candidates in the last half-century has been the state executives, not federal legislators. [Note: Sentence revised in light of comments.]
Thus, Republicans now have a leg up on the executive training for the
next generation of presidential candidates.
So both of our major political parties have ample reasons
for humility today.
In light of that, could there be a bipartisan moment? Is there any prospect during a second Obama
term for both Democrats and Republicans to come together and accomplish
something important for the common good?
William Galston of the Brookings Institute is skeptical,
saying that he doesn’t “think there is anything in this election that has
pointed a way forward.” I beg to differ — or at least to hope. I think we have a genuine
chance — to be sure, only a chance — for meaningful bipartisan progress on such
things as entitlement reform (and deficit reduction) and immigration reform. Below the break, I
further explain my cautious optimism.
Continue
reading
I thought it might be a good time to review our own Michael Scaperlanda's series of posts, from Nov. 2008, "Beyond Politics." The first installment is available here:
Now that the election is past, I’d like to encourage us to move beyond politics (at least for two years but maybe longer) and to think more creatively about how MOJ and the development of Catholic Legal Theory can contribute its small part to the transformation of our culture. . . .
By way of complement to other
postings of today on this site, it is important for the project of Catholic
legal theory and Catholic citizenship to embrace the challenge of democracy: it
is hard work, a toil involving love, dedication, determination, and fidelity.
To borrow from Lord Acton, the freedom we cherish in this country—for the time
being—is not to do that what we want to do but, rather, to do that what we
ought to do.
In this context, the twice told
theme proposed by Blessed John Paul II is wise guidance for the Catholic practitioner
of democracy:
“As history demonstrates, a democracy
without values easily turns into an open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” Centesimus Annus, N. 46, 1991
“[D]emocracy, contradicting its own
principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism. The State is
no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of
principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which
arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most
defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a
public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part.” Evangelium Vitae, N. 20, 1995; “No less
critical in the formation of conscience is the recovery of the necessary link
between freedom and truth. As I have frequently stated, when freedom is
detached from objective truth it becomes impossible to establish personal
rights on a firm rational basis; and the ground is laid for society to be at
the mercy of the unrestrained will of individuals or the oppressive totalitarianism
of public authority.” Evangelium Vitae,
N. 96, 1995
Our duty is to demonstrate to our
fellow citizens why this wisdom is the guidance not for what we want to do but
for what we ought to do as fellow citizens of a great democracy faced with great challenges. With such sagacity directing our thoughts and actions,
change for the common good is not only possible but probable.
RJA sj
It was very, very close, but it appears that (even) the voters in Massachusetts
rejected the assisted-suicide proposal. Good.
Paul Horwitz has a typically thoughtful post up, at Prawfsblawg, about religion and politics -- including, specifically, the efforts by the Catholic bishops to focus attention on threats to religious freedom -- and the election. In the comments, responding to the report that many Catholics apparently believe that the Church should focus more on social-justice matters and less on "social issues" like abortion, I wrote that "while I don't think it's realistic to expect Catholic bishops to retreat from their public witness on the abortion question -- it is, for them (as it is for me) a foundational 'social justice' question -- it is essential that this witness not be perceived as (because, in fact, it is not) merely partisan." Yes, this witness will be criticized, as "partisan", whether it is or not, by partisans, but . . . it must not be.
There will be lots of triumphalism, and lots of despair, around the blogosphere, and also in its Catholic neighborhoods -- I voted for the other guy, and really wish, for the good of the country and the future of my children, that he had won -- and lots of "what if's?" and "here's what really happened" diagnoses. Two thoughts from this amateur-at-best observer: First, to me, it appears -- and, I admit, this makes me very sad -- that the HHS mandate, the "war on women" nonsense, the foregrounding of Planned Parenthood, and the association of Republican candidates generally with a few candidates' mis-statements on abortion "worked" for the Democrats. Apparently, the country has not moved as much in a pro-life direction as I had hoped. Next, it also appears that the party that is, and that is likely to remain, the party that better advances the causes of legal protections for the unborn, education reform, and religious freedom is getting only negligible support from African-Americans and Latinos. This cannot -- for the sake of those causes, and also because none of us should tolerate a situation in which party identification is so racially polarized -- continue.
Bruce Frohnen, who edited the excellent reference,The Encylopedia of American Conservativism, has posted a thoughtful reflection on the election on the "Imaginative Conservative" blog, under the title "How Little we have Lost." Here's a taste:
"It is far beyond time for conservative Americans—and Christians in particular—to put aside the distractions of mass politics for the tactile realities involved in building a decent life. We still need to vote and otherwise get involved, of course, but we need to remember what we are doing: hoping to prevent or mitigate the damage being done to us, not “taking back” a state apparatus that has long been used to reshape our society in unwholesome ways. We must come to recognize that the federal government, to its very core, has become hostile to our very way of life, not a violent oppressor, but nonetheless our adversary as we seek to raise our children, educating them in our faith, our morals, and our traditions. We must build neighborhoods, parishes and other religious and secular communities in which spiritual, intellectual and fundamentally moral lives are possible."
Over the past months, perhaps two
or three years, people of good will and the faithful have been praying for our
country and the world. Now that the most recent quadrennial exercise of
electioneering is over, what prayer might remind the faithful and others of
good will that we remain citizens of two cities? The words of Samuel remain as
one durable and applicable prayer of reminder, contemplation, and formation:
“Now that you are old, and your sons do not
follow your example, appoint a king over us, like all the nations, to rule us.”
Samuel was displeased when they said, “Give us a king to rule us.” But he
prayed to the LORD. The LORD said: Listen to whatever the people say. You are
not the one they are rejecting. They are rejecting me as their king. They are
acting toward you just as they have acted from the day I brought them up from
Egypt to this very day, deserting me to serve other gods. Now listen to them;
but at the same time, give them a solemn warning and inform them of the rights
of the king who will rule them. 1 Samuel
8:5-9
RJA sj
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
At
Public Discourse (
link). The review is called "Life in the Kingdom of Whatever" and, unlike some reviews of and reactions to Prof. Gregory's book that I've read, it reflects clearly the author's effort to identify correctly and engage closely the author's arguments.
