running versus governing

I have been thinking a good bit about the difference between running a campaign for office and governing once in office. The two do not automatically mesh and each takes its own particular set of skills as far as I've been able to determine. You may be thinking I am referring to the challenges Barack Obama faces these days--but current politicians are part of a much longer troublesome dilemma for me.

For as long as I have been able to decipher politics (some time in the 70s), I've noticed how many folks run for office on one set of principles and then when office, another set of principles show up and tries to run things. It's not quite Jekyll and Hyde, but it is eerily close. What has caused me to be circumspect about politicians is that the set of values surrounding governing that seem to predominate often has the word "re-election" ranging around in the background like a demanding, moaning sylph. I'm not convinced that this state of affairs is what the founding fathers (and silent mothers) had in mind when crafting our governmental structures. They assumed, I think, several things that are lacking today: an educated and alert citizenship, valuing genuine debate over rhetoric, carefully considering options (viable or not), and a willingness to subsume personal agendas for the greater good. Yes, some of this sounds like utopian pipe dreams, but this is exactly my point. These are values that are meant to draw us out of complacency and self interest. When we fail to strive for them, we begin to sound the death knells for democracy.

Those spouting the cheery hokum that we are living in a post-racial America have gun-toting friends that think the right to bear arms means being able to intimidate a sitting president (now exactly which other president did the secret service and police allow this to happen?) and these folks are being cheer-led by fearmongerers. Meanwhile, politicians use toteboards for votes to decide pressing national issues such as health care reform, the economy, education, energy, and international relations. Ultimately, we need to look at the person in the mirror. We are the ones who elect these folks and we are the ones who must hold them accountable. We must begin to demand better from our elected officials by educating ourselves about the dynamics of the issues that are effecting us--not by relying on the talking points developed by special interest groups that conveniently reflect narrow agendas being shopped as the common good or the rely on draw polls taken that seem to talk to a rather select group of folks rather than look long and large into the general population.

Perhaps this is where our religious communities can be helpful. They can become, where they are not, the go to place to get solid information and informed debate that help us get the education we need rather than rely on bloviated rhetoric and arrogant self righteous pronouncements that are all heat but no fire. It is hard work to craft such spaces, but we must. This is one of the ways we yoke citizenship and faith to maintain and grow a robust democracy.