This statement actually does tend to be pretty true. However, for this political season, the second part of that statement is more accurately: "...you get what you deserve." I'm sorry, fellow Americans, but we have brought ourselves to a place where neither major party has a clearly exceptional candidate for president. This is evidenced by the fact that the best arguments being put forth are which one is worse or likely to do more damage to our country.
So how did we get here? That's a long and complicated answer, which I don't claim to be able to fully explain. I do put forth some common sense barriers that we have erected, keeping out the best choices for the job.
First: who, but an egotistical narcissist, would willingly run for President these days? Let's consider what these people have to go through:
- Intense public and media scrutiny, including often conflicting and vocal opinions on what action, in hindsight, should have been taken on a number of issues going back as far as they can get records to go by
- Intense scrutiny of formerly private affairs and family members (you may be willing to go through this, but is your wife or husband or son or daughter or extended family?)
- Immediate dissection of and backlash for any perceived missteps (i.e., tone deaf or unintentionally offensive statements)
- Need to focus simultaneously on attack and defense against other candidates
Second: this two party system has devolved and become unsustainable. Consider, the figure below, borrowed from this article on increasing polarity of Democrats and Republicans:
Notice how far apart the groups have become? The only way any president can now hope to be productive, is to also have a favorable majority of the same party in Congress. For more on why Congress is broken, see this thoughtful, though fairly long explanation here.
Finally, we have allowed our politics to steer away from the most pressing issues and instead have allowed ourselves to be focused on whether a candidate aligns with our personal views on topics that are not as pressing as things like being able to pass an actual budget and make decisions for the continued solvency of the country as a whole. Yes, these are more nuanced and difficult topics than espousing a stance on abortion or on religion or the climate, but we should demand more concrete information on their plan to tackle these, outside of fluffy language soundbites.
So, as much of the country (and the world) looks around wondering how we got to this place, I recommend we take a cue from the King of Pop: "I'm starting with the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to change his ways."
