2016

Ready?  Here comes our next presidential election cycle.  Oh, you’ve been hearing about it.  Is Hillary going to run?  Is Jeb?  On and on.  How should a civics or government teacher be addressing the buzz?  How about setting the parameters?  Within what set of issues and policy considerations will the election revolve?

Chances are, those whom you hear are considering a run – or “haven’t decided yet” – are going to run.  That’s why when Mitt Romney announced he wasn’t, it was a bit of shock.  But all the rest – Bush, Paul, Cruz, Christie, etc. – you can count on them running.  And surely, that includes Hillary Clinton.  With all these personalities, it is easy to see why the press gravitates to the personalities and gives little attention to the substance or policy proposals being contended.  These latter elements provide more of a background setting.

So here is what a teacher can focus on.  First, and I feel this verges on an obligation, a teacher can set out the range of policy choices in which these positions will be stated.  The Democratic candidate must advance several principles:  raising the minimum wage, protecting labor union rights, attacking the infrastructure deterioration, closing tax loopholes that corporations enjoy, proactivity on environmental protection – especially hitting the dangers of climate change – and cutting middle class taxes (this is a bit new to the lexicon).  On the other hand, Republicans will speak about high taxes – which means high taxes on business and businessmen/women – overregulation, diminishing labor union rights, free trade, liberty, anti-abortion policies, anti-illegal immigrant policies, a strong military posture, and the deterioration of family values – which can be translated to mean anti-gay rights. 

An important part of the landscape and one that students don’t usually understand is that a campaign is not so much about convincing people to agree with what you believe in.  Yes, there is a bit of that, but people already believe what they are going to believe.  There is only about five percent of the electorate who will be swayed by what the campaigns bring forth in terms of polices.  And these folks tend to be the least educated or caring about politics and will make up their minds over trivial or incidental factors – oftentimes unpredictable events that spring up in the weeks before the elections.  Overall, if the economy is good or improving, favor the incumbent party and candidates; if not, favor the challengers.  In presidential elections, you have a significant number of voters who vote only once every four years – the presidential elections being so prominent in the media there is an “I want to be part of history” thing going on.  Add to that the chance to vote for the first, if successful, African-American president or the first woman president, and you will get higher than usual numbers going to the polls.  So who will most likely vote regardless of the times or conditions of the country?  Ideologues and angry people, that’s who.  And the first of these are set on who they will vote for and the latter are probably leaning heavily one way or the other.  The aim of a political campaign therefore, is to encourage your supporters to vote and, if possible, make it difficult – better yet, impossible – for those who will not vote for you to vote.  Oh, you can whip up anger too.  There have been awful tricks to manufacture those unpredictable events that will hurt your opponent.  More than once, a car with the opponent’s stickers all over it has stalled on a heavily used bridge, creating instant, exploitable anger.

So that is an overview of what can be covered in a classroom.  A teacher should not lose sight of the basic function of an election:  so that citizens can express their positions in the policy decisions that will arise in the upcoming years.  It is a way to re-freshen the system, to take a new course or voice support for what is going on.  The economy will take center stage, but there are enormous issues out there that should receive more attention than they will probably get: privacy concerns, domestic violence, education (what really works and how do you know?), poverty and malnutrition in significant numbers, care for needy war veterans, and how we meet our climate-changing challenge.  The other issue that will get some attention, I suppose, is terrorism.  Rightly so.  Do we rely on military force or do we honestly address the conditions that lead so many to take up arms and want to engage in these barbarous acts we hear and see going on?

As always, the upcoming election cycle will determine very important policy directions.  Hopefully, the election will give us a government that can function.  If not, perhaps we are due to revisit our constitutional make-up.  Hopefully, this is not the case.