Readers of this space will know
that I’ve been focusing on the aftermath of the recently concluded presidential
election. My attention to this significant development in our Nation’s
political evolution hasn’t been so much on who
won the election but on how this
historic moment came to be. In
particular, I’ve been scratching my head on how pundits and pollsters could get
the outcome so spectacularly wrong. The Media have offered what I consider to
be glib explanations for this dichotomy between prediction and outcome: the
“Tom Bradley effect,” angry white voters, vanishing middle-class jobs,
class/race dysphoria; to name a few. I’m confident that historians will offer a
variety of theories to explain the 2016 Election, and I’m equally confident
that they’ll be arguing about which theory is correct ten – and surely – twenty
years from now.
What I’m not confident about is
the – symbolic – challenge to America’s historic peaceful transfer of power
represented by the appearance of “Not My President” signs at the various
protests popping up across the Nation.
It’s bad enough that this was, probably, the nastiest presidential
election in modern times; but to reject a constitutionally valid candidate
raised to the highest office in the land by claiming he’s “not my President” is
to abandon the fundamental principles upon which our Republic was founded. Like
it or not, the system produced a validly-elected president. Individuals do not have the option of rejecting the
outcome because they disagree with it.
I worry about this tendency to
refuse to accept the outcome of a valid election for the same reason that I
worried about the nonsensical “birther” rejection of the last two presidential
elections – either the system works or it doesn’t – and those who find the outcome
unacceptable don’t get to redefine the rules that produced an undesirable
result.
Needless to say, I worry about
these behaviors because of their potential impact on the students entrusted to
our care. At La Salle, we seek not only to “produce good students and good
people,” but thoughtful and dispassionate students and responsible, balanced
adults as well. Suggesting – as “Not My President” signs do – that one can
reject the outcome of a valid presidential contest is to tell our young people
that they don’t have to care about – much less pay attention to - rules
governing social norms which underpin the fundamental elements of how we
negotiate our shared space in a democratic republic.
I want to be clear: my concern
about “Not My President” signs isn’t to argue for or against the outcome of the
November election. It is to articulate a basic principle of our democratic
enterprise: it doesn’t matter who wins an election – it matters that the
outcome was legitimately derived.
We can applaud or boo the results
of the November eighth contest – that is our right as American citizens. What
we don’t get to do is to challenge its legitimacy. This is what I worry about
when I see “Not My President” signs. I want our young people to trust the
system that was put in place 240 years ago. I want them to understand that
democracy means that some people are happy with the outcome of an election and
others are not. I want them to appreciate that Truth (yes, with a capital “T”)
is not the exclusive provenance of any one group, but a product of the ebb and
flow of decades of electoral cycles that – only over time – begin to form a
pattern out of which we can make sense.
I worry about our country at this
point in time – not because of who was elected president – but about how that
outcome has polarized the electorate. Somehow, we must get past this agonizing
moment in a way that enables our young people to embrace the elegant
complexities of the American democratic experiment without succumbing to narrow
partisan perspectives.
I’m not sure how to accomplish this
task, but I know that it was never more important than right now.
