OPINION:
As we wander into yet another election that will no doubt eventually become the “most important election of our lifetime,” it might be worth thinking about the limits of politics, especially with respect to the presidency.
Despite the fact that each election is sold as the most important election in the history of the republic, none of them are. Political defeats and victories are ephemeral and fleeting. So it will be in 2024.
Politics in general and elections in particular are downstream — sometimes way downstream — from society and culture. To borrow (reluctantly) from Barbara Bush: “Your success as a family … our success as a nation … depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”
That’s likely to be especially true in this cycle, as the major parties seem prepared to offer up candidates who are more alike than different — the last of the baby boomers who exist in pretty much the same bandwidth with respect to federal spending, taxes and foreign policy.
Moreover, the truly pressing issues facing our nation — the dissolution of the family, who should determine how children are educated, how and the extent to which we defend the right to life — are likely to be decided in the next decade in dozens of state capitols, thousands of towns, and millions of homes far from the West Wing.
The limits of elections are also physical. For instance, no amount of taxpayer cash can change the fundamental physics of batteries, which are the hinge of the entire energy transition. No matter who wins in November, those batteries (and the transition they are supposed to enable) will still be limited by chemistry and the location of their components, mostly in hostile nations.
The most enduring rule of elections is that the winners are ultimately disappointed, and the losers are usually pleasantly surprised. Everyone involved in elections is always certain that the results will bring significant and enduring changes to the nation. With rare exceptions, they do not.
The winners and losers eventually realize that our system — three branches of government, three levels of government, mismatched timing of who holds what offices when — is specifically designed to prevent significant change over one election cycle or even one generation.
It is important to know what politics and elections are and aren’t. They are not about the soul of the nation or the healing thereof.
They are not about preserving American exceptionalism or safeguarding the moral compass of the nation. They are not about preventing or summoning the eschaton.
Politics and elections are simply about how we decide who gets to use the coercive power of the state to encourage some activities and discourage or outlaw other activities.
In a democratic society marked by limited government and the preservation of fundamental, God-given rights, the things in one’s private life are more important than the things in the public sphere. That is specifically why the Framers demarcated the public and the private through rights — so that the personal life wouldn’t atrophy.
Loving your family, neighbors, and pets. Working diligently. Doing well in school or on the job. Having or not having children. Choosing where to work and live. Achieving salvation. These are all much more likely to determine one’s happiness than anything that can happen in politics.
Obviously, there are occasionally legitimate challenges to those foundational features of the national government that are too important to allow anyone to alter. For the most part, however, federal policies change within a fairly narrow and modest range.
Finally, if and when the political does become more important than the personal in the United States, we would have arrived at late-stage Marxism, in which everything involves the state. No one wants that.
So, no, this is not the most important election of our lives, no matter what you might hear to the contrary.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House. He can be reached at mike@mwrstrat.com.
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