A Voter”s Self Interest

Every election, not just this one, I’m frustrated by candidates who speak to me as if I should sit down with a calculator and figure out which (promised) policies will result in a financial benefit to me and then vote accordingly. A version of this is a voter who believes that his particular union, vocation or hobby will be favored by a candidate or party and must vote his tribe rather than any convictions he might have lying around.

Frankly, this is the mindset behind the lamentable entrance of business lobbies like the Texas Association of Business into debates on moral, social and philosophically foundational issues in our nation. They have a commendable profit motive but a very non-commendable pragmatic approach that subjugates all things to their best guess on profit. This devilish calculus assumes that our communities are simply collections of consumers and vendors. We are not any simplistic thing. We are not voting blocs or demographic groups or socio-economic clusters or ethno-linguistic groups. We are free and morally responsible citizens of our nation and communities who hold the institutions and liberties of our communities in trust. That implies so much more than personal enrichment or empowerment of a group of us.

And yet actual values voters are like space aliens to many of our leaders of both parties. It’s why classist appeals to revenge or restoration have become the mainstay of political speech, unless the speaker is talking to a primarily religious crowd. In that case, the emphasis moves to what the candidate has in common with what he or she believes to be the general convictions of the congregation/voters. In other words, our leaders are not so unaware that people who call themselves religious believe in something they consider more important that political power or profit.

Let’s face it friends. Hardee’s markets burgers using pretty girls because nearly everybody likes pretty girls. Political candidates market themselves on what they perceive to be our perceptions of self-interest because we care about that more than just about anything, other than maybe pretty girls. The whole “generally religious convictions” thing is really pretty shallow. They know it.

Instead, I believe a Christian’s (and I believe a good American citizen’s) priority pyramid has self interest at the bottom. “Is it godly, and thus right?” should be at the top. “Is it generally good for our neighbors?” and this second priority is also rarely a matter of economic progress alone, should also be higher than our own enrichment. But the priorities have mingled borders, don’t they? A moral stand—say, for the repeal of no-fault divorce—would be godly and would take a bite out of more social problems (including poverty) than nearly any single thing we could do. So is a Christian lawyer, who makes some of his income from helping marriages dissolve, but who votes for a candidate he believes will work for the repeal of no-fault divorce, a fool or a good citizen? Is he actually even voting against his self interest when lowering the rate of divorce and single motherhood could decrease poverty, dropout rates, prison populations—a broad selection of expensive social problems?

That’s why I’d describe myself as pretty sales resistant to people who see reality as merely “under the sun” to quote the Preacher of Ecclesiastes. They float policies that I consider dubious and incidental to the problems. They offer me and my family money or tax breaks or empowerment that they might not be able to deliver and that they certainly cannot guarantee are going to provide lasting benefit to me or mine. Everything I’m offered this year in the national election is pretty vaporous, except for the threats.

Are you an easy sell to a candidate? Are you undecided? The undecideds are portrayed as folks who pore over reams of campaign data trying to decide who’s best, like Las Vegas bookmakers. Or perhaps we are led to see them as people who have a shopping list and sit in front of the newspaper or TV or iPad and look for keywords until one candidate promises enough—that’s the vision I perceive from listening to political speech. But it’s not either scenario really. These folks (generally) are either totally careless about the election—not likely voters—or will decide in the voting booth based on almost nothing. A voter with convictions, either “me first and last” convictions or with a more highly developed moral compass, can see the difference between this candidate and that.

My adversaries in the debate are people who simply have different priorities. Those on the left who have never met an abortion they didn’t like are not a huge percentage. Those who elect our worst leaders on moral or philosophical issues like religious liberty do so without giving much thought to those issues. They vote based on a more “pragmatic” cause like jobs or wages, or they vote with their tribe or demographic. And for the most part, these voters, like me, unalterably made up their minds months ago.

If we, and the Democrat voters next door, and all my neighbors, think about what is basic to us, what we believe to be sure in life, before voting this year, this election would be a better reflection of who we are, for good or ill. Campaign promises of jobs and walls and chickens in every pot have become background noise. It troubles me that so many find it seductive.