The Paths That Loom Before Us

On the Saturday morning after the recent election, as I delivered the newspaper to the residents of northwest Conway Township, I listened to a program on National Public Radio—On the Media. The show’s overarching theme was the outcome of the presidential vote, with much of the conversation dealing with the incorrect, off-the-mark prediction by many pundits that Hillary Clinton would win the election. It was among the many post-mortems being offered by one and all in the days.

   The polling, while tightening in the final days, had given her around a three percent lead. However, that was nationally. Of more importance were the battleground states, including Michigan, where the race was close but where she still seemed (according to the experts) to hold the advantage.

  As it turned out, when the pollsters use the phrase “within the margin of error,” there’s a good reason. By slight margins, Trump took Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Those wins, along with the rest of the states he captured, gave him a comfortable total in the Electoral College.

The first three states were considered “toss ups,” with Trump a bit ahead in Ohio. So the outcome was not necessarily a great surprise. The same could not be said of the latter three states. All of them had sided with the Democratic contender during the past several presidential election cycles and the polling seemed to suggest that history would repeat itself. Here the errors in prediction caused more hand wringing.

   Clinton did win the battleground states of Virginia, New Hampshire, and Nevada and has the solace--for what it’s worth--of joining a select group of presidential candidates who lost the presidency despite winning the popular vote—Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, Grover Cleveland in 1888, and Al Gore in 2000. She was, according to the latest reports, ahead by a million votes.

   One of the interviews that I found interesting, in fact enlightening, discussed voters’ perception of the economy. If you look at the different economic indicators, the data would suggest that gradual improvements have occurred since the collapse in 2008 that had brought on the Great Recession and much financial pain and suffering. Yet a goodly number of people, many of them blue collar workers residing in what’s called the Rust Belt, but a lot of other people as well, held a pessimistic view of where things stood and where they were heading.

   One important indicator is the unemployment rate. It currently stands at 4.9 percent, a number that would seem to reflect a decent economy with most people gainfully employed. The conventional wisdom would say that the Democrats, being in the White House, would benefit from this good news.

   Yet many of those who had cast a ballot in favor of President Obama in the previous two elections, or who traditionally had sided with the Democratic Party, switched their vote to Trump. They agreed with his dire assessment of the situation; that things were not going as well as they appeared and that they did not appear to be getting much better.

   What the guest on the radio show said by way of explanation is that the unemployment rate, as a metric, dates back to the Great Depression of the 1930s when people either had a job or didn’t.

 While that differentiation still exists and while it continues to be an informative measure, the number doesn’t inform us of how many people have become discouraged and quit looking for work or how many are underemployed, having taken lower-wage jobs after having been laid off from or downsized out of a high-paying position.

Neither does the rate measure the insecurity, the sense of lost opportunity, and the destruction of savings that are the legacy of the severe economic downturn from a few years ago. Nor does it explain the feeling many have that they are falling further behind and that mainly the well-heeled or well-connected are reaping the profits and benefits. Nor does it dispel the fear that personal calamity is only a factory closing or company merger away.

     Nor does this seemingly good news that we have a low unemployment rate and rebounding economy offset the doom-and-gloom peddled by media opportunists who gain from dissatisfaction. Perception rather than facts now rule the day.

   Finally, when all is said and done, the rate is a measure of the whole and, thus, cannot take into account the individual situation or how certain areas of the country are faring compared to other regions.

THE RADIO INTERVIEW THEN SHIFTED TO A DISCUSSION on another economic indicator—the Gross National Product. The host, as a prelude, played a clip from a speech given by the late Robert Kennedy in 1968. It had been a long time since I’d heard his voice and even longer since I’d heard the speech. He gave it on March 18 at the University of Kansas, not long after announcing his candidacy for the presidency.

   The words conveyed all of the imagery that I remembered with much fondness. I was 16 going on 17 that spring. I found his vision of hope and possibility inspiring. His view that government, used properly and judiciously, could be a means for helping those less fortunate gain a foothold and move up the ladder and also that government ought to serve as a protector for those facing discrimination and even violent threat due to their race, ethnic origin, beliefs, or economic condition is one I still embrace.

   In his campaign—and even before tossing his hat in the ring—Kennedy spoke of the gaps that existed in our society between black and white, rich and poor, old and young, and those of opposing political viewpoints. He based his candidacy on a wish to bridge them.

    He found common cause with the black sharecropper in Mississippi, the white coal miner in West Virginia, the migrant farm worker in California, the Native American on a western reservation, the auto worker in Michigan as well as the college student, senior citizen, housewife, and business owner.

Many felt a bond of affection, a belief that he cared for their situation and plight. He, of course, had plenty of detractors; even a few who hated him. But what stands out to me is that he used his power and prestige, his strength and talent, to champion the least among us. He articulated a moral view of what we could and should do for each other.

   In the part of his speech played again this past Saturday, Kennedy, having stated that erasing material poverty “is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens,” shifted to what he said was another great task before us—the need to “confront the poverty of satisfaction, of purpose and dignity, that afflicts us all.”

   And here he offered what he felt was the true worth of a nation.

   “…for too long we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product—if we judge the United States of America by that—the Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.

   “It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts (Charles) Whitman’s rifle and (Richard) Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

“Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about American except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

   Hearing the speech again, while the details have changed, his message and its implications still resonate, are still relevant. The underlying challenge he presented on that long ago day lives on, though he did not. Within three months, he’ll be dead, felled by an assassin’s bullet. His end came moments after he’d addressed his jubilant supporters in Los Angles, having just won the primaries in California and South Dakota.

“And it’s on to Chicago!” he shouted, waving his hand as he departed--Chicago being the site of the Democratic National Convention and where he and his supporters hoped they’d win the nomination.

NEARLY A HALF A CENTURY LATER, the nation overall seems evenly divided in its political preferences. We, of course, have the red states and blue states where either the Republicans or Democrats hold a sufficient majority, but, even so, where a sizable number of the loyal opposition resides. There are also the purple states that keep things interesting; moving targets that shift back and forth or that are trending from red to blue or from blue to red, but who (with this election) are of nearly equal proportions.

In our winner-take-all election process, to the victor belong the spoils. True, we have the checks and balances of our three branches of government and a federal system, but the reality is that at the State Capitol in Lansing and in Washington, D.C., the Republican Party now controls or will control the levers of legislation, administration, and judicial review.

  There are two approaches to governance: One, to be inclusive, the other to be exclusive. Given the make-up of the current electorate, here in Michigan and in the country as a whole, with the two sides being nearly equal in numbers, the former attitude would seem prudent. I suspect that the instinct and inclination of the partisan warriors will be to pursue the latter course.

    But we’ll see which way it goes--Whether the hammer of power will be used as a tool of demolition or of construction and whether it will be utilized to build bridges that span the gaps that divide us or to erect barriers that make the existing divisions even more formidable?

   These paths loom before us. Choices we have as a state, a nation, and as individuals. The path taken, or not taken, our choice, will make all the difference in the world.