We can be amused by post-election musings of columnists, commentators, and pundits on the results of elections. The American election of 2004 forms our illustration. Republicans, led by President George W. Bush, won widespread victory unmatched for the party since the 1920s. Observers appeared stunned that the election turned out as it did. Most analysts appeared to favor the losing side. Many did not effectively hide their views in their pre-election reporting. They felt justified because of an unpopular war in Iraq with its death statistics; a climbing national debt; and, other aggravating problems like insufficient serum supplies for national flu inoculations. Tension had held for four years among the president’s political opponents since the previous election, in 2000, in that Bush had lost the popular vote, but won in the electoral college. In 2004, he was out-debated by his opponent; was the butt of political hatred reflected in vituperative language; was not well presented in many public forums, and was confronted with unsolved problems related to warfare, national debt, terrorism, gay rights, abortion, and other issues. In the end the election was decided, as the pundits put it, on moral issues, especially some issues of interest to evangelical Christians. Some serious analysts admitted that they missed the point before the election, and focused on matters that were lesser in view of the majority voting public than they believed. Values, it was advertised, carried the election with the president winning, for a second term, the popular vote – against presumed odds. (In 2008, after two terms, the president retired on a low level of popularity/approval – not unusual. Old issues had not been resolved.)
It appears that the dominating issue of the 2004 election was: What is moral right in the nation? Afterwards, the troubled analysts began a kind of self-searching related to what happened. Underlying their acknowledgment that they missed in the interpretation of the background of the election, they also seemed to be lamenting the moral accent. They may have missed again in downplaying moral concerns for secular ones. They noted alleged ephemeral religious views of Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, and others – the founding fathers. Many believed and felt that religion makes for rigidity; for irrelevance in government; for non-mainstream concerns; for prejudice; and, for a score of other alleged barriers to unity and the common good. Analysts missed moral meaning. For them theory and competency, with leadership, was everything.
To adopt here their own repeated idiom, now turned back on them – They just don’t get it. They focused on several unpleasant advocates in the religious community as representative of the problem. They argued that religionists were anachronistic. Christianity was trivialized as a religion of do and don’t. They did not point out how, in the larger picture of history, the impact of the Church led to the anti-slavery movement; rights of women; treatment of children; limits on alcohol; growth of education; establishment of hospitals; and, the improvement in treatment for the poor, prisoners and world sufferers. The list of positive contributions is long, and the advances were as surely related to morality as with leadership and clear thinking for law making. They missed the large differences between Christianity and religious crazies. One hopes that all elections will include moral concerns in the mix of understanding issues. At this writing the public media generally are uncertain on how to treat moral issues. There are times when even the church misses it. It is the duty of Christians, winning or losing at the polls, to find effective ways to relate the values of right (righteousness) with wise law and administration. Electioneering methods often do not reveal the necessity of morality standards in public life. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020