Of Elections and Sports

It is early Fall.  That means that we are nearing the end of the regular season of baseball, and the New York Yankees are on course to make the playoffs and another run for the World Series title, number 28.  Their chances look good this year, if they can keep their players from injury and the bullpen resumes pitching up to its abilities.

Others are following football.  Already the Washington Redskins have gone from having a lock on getting into the Super Bowl, after winning their first game, to being nearly mathematically eliminated from the playoffs by losing their next two.  As they say in baseball, though with less justification in pro-football, it’s a long season.  And speaking of the Redskins, it has been said that you can tell that someone has been in Washington too long when he begins cheering for the Redskins.  Let that rest on your own taste and experience.

Basketball fans know that in just a few weeks, practice begins for college hoops.  The college basketball season will terminate several months later in the greatest sporting event that the United States has to offer, March Madness!  I don’t know when or whether the professional basketball season ever ends.  I suppose it does.

Somewhere someone is playing soccer, where some team is leading another by the insurmountable score of 1-0.  But I think that we may be in the only few weeks of the year when there are no hockey games—even as the NHL is haunted again by more labor-management strife.

At his school my son is running on a cross country team, the Trinity Tempest.  The motto of the team is not but should be, “Tempest Fugit.”  Instead, it seems to be something like, “Pass the weak, hurdle the dead.”  Nice so far as it goes.  Classical Latin would be better, it seems to me, but I am not a runner and have no say.

Yes, there is much sporting excitement and many sports in the Fall.  Elections, however, are not one of them.  Electing the leaders of our government, who will wield control over life and death, freedom and slavery, prosperity and poverty, is not a sport.  Self-government is one of the most serious activities of life for those who cherish their liberty.  Those who do not will eventually vote away their freedom, as we have seen in places like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia in recent years, and before that in places like Germany of the 1930s.

Of course, you would never know that from the public discourse on television, radio, in newspapers and other media outlets.  Presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races are treated as if they all were games, with little at stake other than whether your favorite team wins.  Issues are trivialized, if mentioned at all.  The trivializers have even assigned team colors, one side “Red” and another “Blue.”  The most important issue in the media after a debate is “who won?” rather than, “what did we learn about what a candidate believes and what he would do if elected?”  Points are awarded by press experts for style, poise, rhetoric, and gotcha lines.  Panels of talking heads award scores as if they were judges at a figure skating competition.

It is all more than beside the point.  It corrupts the process.  Rather than true debates, in which candidates have enough time to declare and explain their views and policies on important issues, media celebrities offer trick questions, to which the future President of the United States is given two, three, or sometimes even five minutes to respond as he or she fishes for a soundbite to make it into the 60-second news recap (most of which will again be focused on, “who won?”).  Based on this silly exercise, viewers are encouraged to text in (for a small fee) their vote—not for who would be the best office holder—but for who was the winner of the night’s contest.

We should expect and demand better.  Through modern revelation we have been given a set of standards.  You do not have to be a believer in revelation to recognize the wisdom of the counsel:

Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise, whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.  (Doctrine and Covenants 98:10)

Our task as voters interested in preserving our rights and freedoms is too seek out diligently the honest, the good, and the wise.  Anything less is evil.  In an election, in a campaign, in a debate, I want to discover who is the honest, the good, and the wise, and I am little interest in style points. 

That takes careful and diligent effort, for among the honest, the good, and the wise, are the liars, the false, and the foolish intent on deceiving.  These latter like to hide in the noise of the sporting contest and often seek to divert attention to the things that little matter, the stray word, the high school prank.  We need to keep our focus on a diligent search for the honest, the good, and the wise.  With persistent effort, we can find them.

 

In self-government, we are the players.  The issue is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, decidedly not a game.  But if we follow these standards and apply them diligently, then in the end We the People will be the winners.