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Somewhere tonight, a man has come home from work, left his boots by the door, and turned on the television to see what the country has decided. His supper is getting cold while people in expensive clothes explain the feelings of people they seldom meet. He’s tired, but he watches. He still believes an election ought to mean something.
He voted before work, or stood in line afterward, because that’s what a citizen does. There were bills waiting when he got home. There’ll be work waiting in the morning. Whatever color the television map turns, nobody is coming to make his truck payment.
He understands that. He never asked them to.
What he’d like, just once, is to feel that somebody in Washington understands it, too.
I’m a conservative, and I want Republicans to win tonight. I believe the Democratic Party’s appetite for government power, its willingness to spend money we don’t have, and its disregard for much of what holds a country together make it the more dangerous choice. I can’t support that direction.
But I’ve grown weary of that being the whole argument for supporting our own.
The other side’s failures don’t settle the question of ours. A Republican victory ought to carry obligations beyond keeping a Democrat out of the office. We ought to be able to ask what happened to the spending promises, the smaller government, the determination to leave our children something besides a bill, without being accused of helping the opposition.
Those were our promises. Some of us believed them.
The GOP has failed to hold the line. We’ve watched Republicans accommodate the growth of government they campaigned against and find reasons for borrowing they once condemned. The explanations arrive dressed in the language of necessity. There’s always a difficult negotiation, an approaching deadline, an election we must win before the serious work can begin.
For the man at the kitchen table, that sounds familiar. He’s heard it through several elections now. His children have grown older while he’s waited for the right time.
And somewhere along the way, the party that asked for his faith became far more attentive to people who could write a large check.
Donors get their meetings. Lobbyists get their language considered. The working man gets a fundraising message telling him the country will disappear unless he sends twenty dollars by midnight. He’s important enough to frighten, important enough to solicit, and important enough to place behind a candidate at a rally. Afterward, he can have a hard time finding anybody who’ll return his call.
He notices.
He notices when free enterprise becomes an excuse for favors to businesses large enough to afford influence. He notices when sacrifice is recommended by people who seem remarkably sheltered from it. He notices that the folks who speak most confidently about the economy can sound least familiar with the worry of an unexpected repair bill.
Conservatism ought to speak naturally to that worry. It ought to understand the dignity of earning a living, the discipline of making a payment, and the affection a person feels for a place that powerful people consider unimportant.
A man may love his little town even when its storefronts are empty. He may want his children to have opportunities without having to move a thousand miles away. He may believe his church, his friends, and his neighbors have claims on his loyalty that no political party has earned.
There’s nothing backward about any of that. There’s a great deal worth conserving.
Why, then, do our elections so often leave him choosing the disappointment he thinks he can survive?
I understand voting for the lesser of two evils. Sometimes the consequences make that choice necessary. But necessity can become a comfortable arrangement for the people who benefit from it. If the party can count on our votes regardless of its conduct, what incentive does it have to recover its principles?
Fear can turn out a voter. It’s a poor substitute for earning his trust.
I’d like to see candidates who can tell a donor no and mean it. People who’ll oppose an unaffordable bill when their own leadership wants it passed. People willing to explain a hard vote plainly, accept the consequences, and come home without pretending that staying in office was the highest duty they ever had.
There are people like that. We ought to make room for them before Washington teaches them to become somebody else.
Tonight, I’ll watch the returns and hope the country avoids the greater danger. But I’ll also be thinking about that man at the kitchen table, listening for some reason to believe his vote purchased more than another postponement.
He’ll get up tomorrow and keep his word to the people depending on him. He’ll do the work, pay what he can, and try to leave his children a little more than he had.
He deserves to recognize something of that decency in the people asking to lead him.
And when the next election comes, he deserves the simple pleasure of walking into a voting booth with somebody he’s truly proud to vote for. Not simply somebody who happens to be running against a person he hates or fears.
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