Partisanship

Lately, there’s been a push to vote for the “Best of Montana”. Although I have my opinion, I don’t vote for any of them. My reason goes back to a Chinese restaurant I used to like in California. It was extraordinarily good. The food was fantastic and the service was excellent. As a result, I was happy to vote for it when there was a “Best of” contest.

It pleased me when my favorite restaurant won. It was written up in the news, tons of great publicity. Success ruined them. No longer could I just drop in and get a table. I had to have reservations. When I did go the good plates and bowls had been replaced with lesser quality. The good chop sticks were gone. The food was mediocre. I went back two or three times but it had been hopelessly changed by its success. The money that poured in made the owners greedy. They could, while the good publicity lasted, clean up financially by providing cheaper food and utensils.

So often success carries with it the seeds of its failure. Success often leads folks to chase more and more of the benefits of success and, ultimately, it destroys the brand.

This is true of far more than restaurants. It is also true in politics. When a party has success it, sooner or later, goes too far in trying to capitalize on their victories.

The vast majority of people are moderate in their beliefs. They generally favor one political ideal over another but they aren’t fanatical about pushing it to the absolute limits.

When a party goes too far in pushing its agenda the voters punishes it by either voting for the other party or by not voting. The party our parents always voted for is, undoubtedly, not the party on the ballots today. I know folks who regularly vote against their own self interest because they vote for the party of their parents. If you’re an older adult, any dispassionate analysis usually exposes the truth that the reasons you voted for a party in the past are no longer valid today.

Quite simply, we need to remember a couple of things when we vote. Logically, we should vote for policies, not for persons. Does the candidate’s record and words indicate support for policies that make life better or more difficult for the majority of persons or only for a small percentage of the population? If a candidate supports policies that, for example, benefits only folks of a particular religious, ethnic or financial segment of society then it breaks the social contract between the government and the people.

Additionally, remember, character counts. I’ve known political persons with whom I disagreed on particular policies but who seriously considered the issues and tried to do what was right for the folks they represented. I’ve also known elected officials who voted the party position every single time. Blind obedience never leads to good governance. We really need to take this seriously.