To the Democratic and
Republican Presidential Candidates for the 2020 General Election:
 |
| Current Democratic Presidential Candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on a live televised debate |
I
commend you for your desire to serve as President and the determination to rigorously
campaign for the position despite a very divisive political climate. At this
crucial time, I urge you to consider how you can begin to change the
political polarization that dominates our country. You can start by adjusting your rhetoric accordingly when you
appear on televised public presidential debates.
Research
from the Pew Research Center shows that no other time in history do the
American people feel more strongly about the issues involved. Members of the
opposing political parties have never felt more threatened by each other’s
ideas and policies. In connection with presidential debates, an article
from HuffPost highlights arguments backed by research showing that voters learn
from presidential debates. However, the quick discussions of topics lead to problematic
one-liners greatly simplifying the issues to dramatic power statements. Therefore,
each of you need to make conscious efforts to promote nuanced discussions on these
presidential debates that inform voters and lead to compromise across party boundaries
and between candidates.
Political Dissatisfaction
Our political culture
resembles the Modernist sentiment that political systems are failing, which
jeopardizes our ability to function as a cohesive American society. However, when we put this sentiment aside and unite ourselves in common goals we have overcome problems. Think about the keen despair from World War I and the Lost
Generation who survived it. Their desire to live life as if they could
die tomorrow lead to high economic speculation which eventually crashed and
became a decade long recession known as the Great Depression. It wasn't until the
American public determined to end World War II as a common goal, trusting in
their government to win the war, that the country was able to escape the Depression.
We can apply this sentiment about economic
prosperity from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations to our current
political climate: “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which
the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable”. The citizenry of
the United States deserves to believe in their political system, otherwise they
will live constantly unsatisfied with the ability we have to live harmoniously
and work towards solutions together.
Civil Discourse & Compromise is Political Prowess
 |
| Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, advocating for the Compromise of 1850 in the US Senate |
Our democracy was founded
on the Enlightenment idea of the Public Sphere where each person had the
right to speak their mind to one another, and that through free civil discourse
they could discover a solution that satisfies the greatest number of people. No
other politician succeeded in this regard better than Henry Clay, depicted in
this Romantic era painting as a Romantic Hero. We regard Clay as the
Great Compromiser and praise his ability to negotiate solutions between two
different groups of people. Thanks to him, the Union avoided civil war for over 30 years.
My plea to each of you is
to see compromise, civil discourse, and a willingness to reach across the aisle
as one of the virtues we prize and desire potential Presidents to exhibit on our publicized
debates. By doing so, we avoid the trap a friend of mine noticed about two sculptures
of a victorious and a defeated boxer created by Mahonri Young. When we see life
as a constant fight to overcome another person or group of people in order to be
victorious, the only victory we achieve is being less battered than the other
guy.
Thank you for reading and
considering this prevalent issue we face in modern American politics.
Best,
Mitchell Bayles
I absolutely agree with this perspective. I enjoyed your callback to Henry Clay as a hero of compromise since it made the ideal of political compromise seem more possible. One thing I would have changed on this post a slight modification of the visual rhetoric. I liked the opening picture of Bernie all fired up, but it doesn't fit as well with the text next to it (you're opening there by calling for ways to limit polarization and the title is also onscreen about reaching across the isle). By replacing this picture with one that exhibits compromise and moving the fiery Bernie near the paragraphs by the Pew Center study, you're argument would be easier for the reader to digest.
ReplyDeleteAs another point of making the post more digestible, I would have also made more of an intro to Mahonri Young's boxer, and perhaps a link to see the work. I felt like the analogy must have applied, but I wasn't sure how and felt almost left out.
Aside from these few compositional elements, I felt you carried a strong ethos behind your arguments and really enjoyed reading your post. Great work!
I love what you had to say in your blog. Any slight difference in politics today becomes a huge schism because of how polarizing these times are. I can really get behind what you're pushing for here. An improvement that can be made is stringing your thesis throughout the body of your text. I felt like your thesis was forgotten about after the second paragraph, then nodded towards in your conclusion. It was a real call-to-action and you introduced solutions in conjunction. However, adjusting politicians’ rhetoric should have been a larger theme throughout the post, since it was your thesis. A suggestion would be to add more to the thesis so that your central argument can remain sound. A strong thesis and supporting arguments make the whole argument. Overall, a really great post!
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