Why Do We Vote?
Remnant Review
Today is Presidential voting day in the United States.
I have decided to write something on a problem that bothers economists. It does not seem to bother anybody else.
Economists in the tradition of Adam Smith evaluate decision-making in terms of personal self-interest. They recommend running a cost-benefit analysis before acting. (So did Jesus: Luke 14:28-30). If the costs are higher than the benefits, the person should not take a particular action.
Economists look at the benefits of voting and compare them with the costs. The costs may involve study about the candidates and issues. They involve filling in and mailing ballots or else going to a polling place, standing in line, going into a booth, voting, and then going home. Time is not a zero-cost resource.
Economists also argue that the individual benefits of voting are close to zero. An individual vote counts for almost nothing. It will not affect the outcome of a national election. It rarely affects the outcome of any election.
Then why do people vote? Economists say that this is a matter of ignorance. People somehow do not understand the economic concept of cost-benefit analyses as applied to voting. The problem with this argument is this: economists also argue that people do understand cost-benefit analyses in almost every other area of their lives. But, for some unknown reason, people lose their ability to make cost-benefit analyses when it comes to voting. Why is this? That seems a more relevant question than the question of why people vote. Economists either do not ask it or are incapable of coming to any agreement on it.
THE RELIGION OF POLITICS
Classical Greece held to the religion of politics. Greek philosophy is mostly political philosophy. Greeks held honorable citizenship as the highest of all personal goals. Citizenship was available only to a relatively small percentage of the population: sons of Greek citizens. It was not open to slaves, women, and anyone who was not a member of one of the family-based tribal units of the city. Religion was family-based and clan-based, and the clans and tribes were the foundation of the city-state.
Roman religion was equally political. It was political before Rome’s conquest of Greece, and after that conquest in 146 BC, imported Greek philosophy and religion confirmed Roman religion. The best book on this is an ancient one, by academic standards: Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges’ The Ancient City (1864).
Western civilization has been heavily influenced by Greek and Roman political ideas. While the city-state is not the focus of modern political philosophy, the nation-state is. The concept of participation in politics has become modern humanism’s equivalent of participation in the church for medieval life.
American life does not center on politics for most people most of the time. The exception is during presidential election years. In such years, Americans do focus their attention on national politics. They become animated over political issues. But then, once the election is over, they return to their normal daily activities and concerns. Politics is rarely a large part of these concerns.
Because of social media, this is beginning to change. This is a major threat to the owners of social media. It is letting conservatives get organized. This is why the social media are actively discriminating against conservative websites that are using the social media platforms to build their bases. Any pretense of neutrality has disappeared this year.
ON WRITING AMERICAN HISTORY
My Ph.D. is in American history. My specialty was colonial America. What I learned early in my career is this: it is difficult to teach colonial American history. There is a reason for this. It is not primarily political. There were local political issues in specific colonies, but there were no national political issues of substance until Great Britain passed the Stamp Act in 1765. Even then, it was a political issue mainly in New England.
There were lots of other issues that were important. There were the issues related to church and church membership. There were issues related to the spread of ideas through newspapers. There was the issue of higher education, although few men received any. There were matters associated with family structure. There were matters related to the geographical and cultural background of immigrant groups, who tended to settle in clusters. This issue received very little attention until the last few decades. Two great books on this are David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed (1989) and Colin Woodard’s American Nations (2011). Most Americans lived within 75-miles of the Atlantic. They were more interested in what was going on in London than in a colony two provinces north or south.
There was no common narrative binding the colonies. There was no national covenant.
With the ratification of the Constitution in 1788, which became the first presidential election year, American history for the first time had a unified political focus. From that point on, historians find it almost impossible not to spend lots of textbook space and classroom time on each presidential election. Yet, from the point of view of the budget of the federal government (maybe 3% of GDP), national politics had almost no influence on American life. The national government was small. It had almost no influence.
Most Americans paid little attention to politics after 1788. They lived on farms. They knew the names of local officials, and they knew the name of their congressmen. They did not elect the Senators. State legislatures did that. So, except for once every four years, most Americans had little connection to politics.
My mentor Robert Nisbet was born in 1913. In a brief autobiography, he made this point: the average American in the year of his birth had contact with the national government only through the post office.
One of the reasons why the textbooks are written in a forward-looking fashion after 1820 toward the coming of the Civil War is this: that was the issue politically that captured the attention of Southerners. It captured attention of abolitionists, but not the general public, north of the Mason-Dixon line.
LONG-FORGOTTEN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS
Given the large number of presidential campaigns in American history, it is not surprising that almost no American can name the candidates in each of those campaigns. Graduate students in American history may be able to do it, but almost nobody else can. The professors of these students probably cannot do it any longer, and they really do not care.
If you were to ask an American what the major campaign issues were for these campaigns, he would not be able to tell you. This is understandable. First, most people are not interested in history. Second, most of the campaigns were peripheral to American life. Third, the elections usually did not settle the supposedly crucial issues. They percolated through the next election cycle. Fourth, there were few major national issues.
The issue of slavery became a significant political issue from 1820 to 1860. But most people paid little attention to the abolitionists, other than voters in the South, who took them seriously. The abolitionists never had anything like a majority in the North, even in 1864.
But there was one issue that did matter in a few presidential election years: war.
WAR
There have been four major political campaigns in American history in which issues of monumental importance were involved. All four involved war: 1860, 1916, 1940, and 1964. Yet the campaigns did not focus on the issue of war. Three of the campaigns were fought in terms of avoiding war: 1860, 1916, and 1940. Wilson’s campaign slogan was this: “He kept us out of war.” In April 1917, he persuaded Congress to take us into war.
Lyndon Johnson officially started the Vietnam War on August 5, 1964: Operation Pierce Arrow. He ordered a naval attack on North Vietnam installations in response to a supposed attack by North Vietnam boats on American destroyers on August 2 and a second, unconfirmed (false) attack on August 4.
He issued a statement on August 4.
Finally, I have today met with the leaders of both parties in the Congress of the United States and I have informed them that I shall immediately request the Congress to pass a resolution making it clear that our Government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in southeast Asia.I have been given encouraging assurance by these leaders of both parties that such a resolution will be promptly introduced, freely and expeditiously debated, and passed with overwhelming support. And just a few minutes ago I was able to reach Senator Goldwater and I am glad to say that he has expressed his support of the statement that I am making to you tonight.
It is a solemn responsibility to have to order even limited military action by forces whose overall strength is as vast and as awesome as those of the United States of America, but it is my considered conviction, shared throughout your Government, that firmness in the right is indispensable today for peace; that firmness will always be measured. Its mission is peace.
The unnamed congressional leaders did not publicly object.
He did not ask Congress for a declaration of war, contrary to the Constitution. He followed the precedent of Harry Truman in Korea.
Johnson spoke on August 5 to students at Syracuse University. The topic: the war.
Throughout last night and within the last 12 hours, air units of the United States Seventh Fleet have sought out the hostile vessels and certain of their supporting facilities. Appropriate armed action has been taken against them. The United States is now asking that this be brought immediately and urgently before the Security Council of the United Nations.We welcome--and we invite--the scrutiny of all men who seek peace, for peace is the only purpose of the course that America pursues.
It was a campaign speech disguised as a non-campaign speech. He ended with this:
Finally, my fellow Americans, I would like to say to ally and adversary alike: let no friend needlessly fear--and no foe vainly hope--that this is a nation divided in this election year. Our free elections--our full and free debate--are America's strength, not America's weakness.There are no parties and there is no partisanship when our peace or the peace of the world is imperiled by aggressors in any part of the world.
We are one nation united and indivisible.
And united and indivisible we shall remain.
Barry Goldwater's three-week-old campaign never recovered. It was dead in the Vietnam water.
The air strike on August 5 was the first official act of war against the North Vietnamese by an American attack force. One American was killed, a pilot, Lieut. (jg) Richard Sather. Dick Sather was a friend of mine. In my freshman year, he was the resident assistant on our floor. Everyone liked him. He was a decent man who was doing as ordered. He was ordered to start a war.
On August 7, Congress passed what became known as the Tonkin Resolution. Congress gave him almost unlimited war powers. Two senators voted no. The House voted unanimously.
Johnson was overwhelmingly elected in November. Neither he nor Goldwater made the war a major issue. Over the next decade, it became the major issue. It was solved militarily. Nixon pulled out the troops in 1973, and the Communists won in 1975.
Nixon in 1968 said he had a plan to end the war when he ran against Hubert Humphrey. He lied. He had no plan. He kept the war going from 1969 to 1973. He promised peace with honor in 1973 when he pulled out the troops. The nation did not get any honor when South Vietnam collapsed in 1975. By then, Nixon was gone -- dishonored.
So, the question remains: “Why do we vote?”
COVENANT RENEWAL
In my short book, God’s Covenants (2015), I wrote of the importance of covenant renewal rituals in church and state. In the church covenant, Holy Communion is the regular ritual of covenant renewal. It is the mass in Roman Catholicism. In politics, it is voting.
Why is voting an act of covenant renewal? Because it imputes legitimate authority to specific candidates for political office. The public collectively judges in favor of one candidate. When it does this, the other candidates are eliminated. It is an all-or-nothing ratification process. In economic terms, this is winner take all. In this sense, politics is a zero-sum game. But, of course, it is no game. Somebody wins, and somebody loses. One political party wins, and then it gets benefits. One political party loses, and it shoulders costs without benefits.
People vote because they want to have a say in the outcome. They understand that having a say can only be achieved collectively. But they understand this: sacrifices of individual time and trouble must be made in order for an outcome to be recognized as legitimate. People want to impute legitimacy to one political candidate or the other. They understand that this imputation of legitimacy through the voting process is basic to modern democratic politics.
Voting also has to do with the desire to be on the winning team. The psychologies of voting and cheering at a sports event are similar. Nobody is naïve enough to believe that, when he cheers in a football game, his cheer is going to have any effect on either team. He understands that if he does not cheer, nobody will notice, except somebody next to him who might think he is in favor of the other team. Nevertheless, without collective cheering, people cannot demonstrate their commitment to victory by their team. This is why there is no such thing as a silent football game or basketball game.
This sense of participation is crucial to politics. It is the desire to have a say in the outcome of an election that will lead to positive and negative sanctions after the election.
Citizenship above all is a matter of sanctions. A citizen subordinates himself covenantally to a particular civil government. In a democratic regime, he is entitled to participation in establishing which political representatives will exercise these sanctions after the election.
The reason why the Communist one-party governments made it mandatory that every citizen vote was not based on their desire to impress Western democracies. It was based on their desire to force citizens to ratify the covenant once again. Forced covenant renewal was basic to the Communist regimes. For the same reason, forced confessions of major ex-communists were crucial in Stalin’s show trials in the late 1930's. There had to be public confessions at tribunals. Everybody knew the confessions were forced. Everybody knew they were the result of torture. That did not matter. This was a religious impulse. There had to be an official recanting by the heretic prior to his execution in Lubyanka prison or his 25-year sentence in the Gulag Archipelago.
CONCLUSION
The rhetoric leading up to a presidential election borders on the messianic. Consider this photograph, which was posted on Drudge Report on November 2.
A nation does not have a soul. But it has a confession of faith. In the days leading up to a presidential election, that confession of faith becomes visibly religious. The sign is a declaration of religious faith: faith in the religion of politics. It is not regarded as such by the voters, but that is what it is. This declaration is anti-Christian to the core. Yet it is taken seriously by Christians and non-Christians in the days prior to the election.
In the weeks and months following an election, religious excitement fades. The nation does not go to hell or go to heaven. The bureaucratic agencies do not change. Their budgets are increased. Administrative law grinds down its victims.
If you have not yet voted, do not vote on the basis of this sign's confession of faith.