Finding the virtue in politics

one of the above!” “Don’t vote— it only encourages them!” Politician-bashing is a favorite American pastime, now more than ever, in this prolonged season of our campaign discontent.

But thank God thatWashington, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts became masterful and professional politicians. Our American experiment in constitutional democracy depends on political discussion— on the hard work of bargaining and mediating agreements that make it possible for us to live together in a civilized way.

In this year’s presidential campaign, some candidates have insisted, “I refuse to be called a politician.” Let’s celebrate candidateswho take politics seriously andwho understand the inevitability, necessity and desirability of politics.

In our democracy, there is a continuing tension between competing truths, between cherished values and conflicting American dreams. That’s part of free speech and liberty. It is the job of politicians to help us reconcile and balance these contending aspirations: freedom and equality, individualism and community, idealism and pragmatism, capitalism and communitarian compassion.

A free society means a society based explicitly on free competition, most especially competition in ideas and opinions, and by frank discussions of alternative national purpose and programs.

Politics is the art of trying to bring about the possible, the doable and achieving the most sensible elements of our mutually shared aspirations. It is in this sense that politics is much more than a necessary evil; it also can be a liberating activity and a necessary good.

Sure, in our system of elections, politicians need to be ambitious and calculating— calculating how they might win but, more important, how they can advance the public good. They have to have great courage to get up on the public stage and try to get our attention. Of course, some of what they do in a campaign is acting, posturing or showmanship. Politics is always an admixture of personal striving and deliberation over substantive policy differences.

Giving up on politics is not an option. Good politics and the best of politicians help our republic navigate competing interests in order to arrive at something approximating the common good.

You can’t have democracy without politics. And politics means debating contending ideas, politicians campaigning and forming coalitions, voters expressing their opinions in caucuses and elections.

One last thing. Too many of us get too pious when candidates change their positions. We charge them with flip-flopping and accuse them of being merely like a weather vane.

Candidates sometimes change their minds because circumstances have changed. Sometimes, too, they change because they have learned newfacts or understand newrealities. Sure, they sometimes change because of calculating political expediency. But it is only the stubborn, rigid, overly self-confident and politically deaf leaderwho is unwilling to compromise and change coursewhere this is sensible.

Consistency can be good, yet creative, adaptive compromising is sometimes appropriate. Thomas E. Cronin is McHugh Professor of American Institutions and Leadership at Colorado College.