Is It Just A Game?

“Look, if George W. Bush and his Republican cronies walked on water, I’d be the guy out there yelling that they couldn’t swim.”

Those are the words of Democrat operative James Carville, uttered earlier this week, and they say much about the current state of political discourse in America.

It seems more and more obvious that political strategists, operatives, and, yes, even office holders are being driven less by an objective evaluation of what policies will be best for the country and more by a desire to simply oppose and defeat those on the other side of the aisle. And this mindset has finally trickled down to the lowest levels of government and partisan organization.

I have, for some time, tried to come up with an analogy that I am confident most people will be able to relate to, in order to describe my take on this disturbing phenomenon in politics – that has actually been developing for years, but has really come to a head in recent times. So far, the best I have been able to come up with is a comparison to the loyalties that many Americans feel to, for example, a college football team.

At some point, every person who cares about a given team decided that said team would be their team. The reasons may vary: Where they live, where they went to school, where a favorite player went, etc. But whatever the reason, at a given point, that team became their team – the team they would root for through thick and thin.

Regardless of who the coach may be at a given time.

Regardless of what kind of offense is run in a given era.

Regardless of the conduct of the players on that team and the team’s response to that conduct.

The hard core fan of the team will stick with the team as an institution regardless of whatever changes like these may come along. And that’s fine, because in college football, winning – defeating the opposition – is the very purpose behind having the team in the first place.

But such bases for party loyalties in the political realm work against the purpose of our political system itself – the development of policies and governing strategies that will be most beneficial to the nation and its citizens. In theory, it should be much easier for people to get to a point where they feel comfortable changing party affiliations than it is for them to change from, say, rooting for Alabama to rooting for Auburn.

But it’s not. Because loyalty to the team has come, for many, to supersede loyalty to the ideals and principals for which the team was established. Which is why, being the conservative that I am, I am convinced so many people who live in my region remain supportive of a party that may have closely mirrored their world view thirty years ago but no longer does. A party that, in the words of a recent retiree from Congress, cares more about effective politics than it does effective policies.

What I am saying is that, in the atmosphere that I am observing, our eyes have been taken off of the goal of serving the interests of the citizenry – regardless of what individual or organization gets the credit for serving those interests – and set upon the far less noble goal of simply scoring a victory over the other side, regardless of the implications for the nation.

I believe it was Rutherford Hayes who said in his inaugural address, “He serves his party best who serves the country best.” And I wonder how well such words would be received if he were to utter them today, in an atmosphere where, all too often, country has taken a backseat to party.