Chapman’s News & Ideas Thanks (Seriously) to All the Losers
Everyone congratulates the winners of elections, but think what a blessing it is to live in a free country where you have choices! We wouldn’t have those choices if it weren’t for people who run and lose. They put so much on the line — their careers, their family time, their privacy, and often their own money, and we voters are the beneficiaries.
The losers are sometimes reprehensible characters, but so are some of the winners. And to some extent, of course, they almost all are ambitious for fame and power. However, the American founders harnessed those less-than-admirable traits to make possible elections that give voters options.
When I hear someone say he isn’t voting because “they are all bad,” I cringe. First, it definitely is not true, and second, the cynic is showing his own bias. Nothing — in America, at least — is as naive as cynicism. And no one contributes less to society than the naysayer.
The negative ads leave a bad taste, of course. But most of the people who run for office are fine individuals whom you would enjoy knowing. I have known many.
Finally, the alternative to elections where people fault one another and promise more than they can deliver is not some utopia of wise government but the mob. The mob was especially feared by our founders because they knew history. They built a constitutional republic that decentralized power and cooled passions.
The mob is still the greatest danger in American politics — the ignorant but arrogant, the simplistic and shortsighted, the passionate but unprincipled. We see a lot of that these days, don’t we? We have to move beyond them.
Which is why, again, we should thank all those who take part in the great American republic and its tradition of democratic elections.
Including the losers.