Lessons from across the Pond
It’s not every day that I see my name in the Wall Street Journal. Okay, to be honest, today was only the second time I can recall. Here is the edited excerpt of an article I wrote last weekend that appeared as a letter to the editor in their “Impeachment” issue today, December 19, 2019.
I rarely write about politics, but in a moment of weakness, I did an essay about last week’s general election in the UK and what we here in the States might learn from it. While my friends know that I am an unabashed Anglophile, many were surprised to learn that I am a registered Democrat. The reason is simple: when I registered to vote here in North Carolina more than forty years ago, there was no cross-party voting and no Republican Party primary. As our politics have evolved, or, more correctly, devolved, my hometown of Charlotte is now a single-party jurisdiction where voting in the Democratic primary is the only way to cast a meaningful vote. For the record, my politics are both democratic with a small “d,” as well as republican with a small “r.”
Here is the full text of my article:
As a registered Democrat who is confounded and discouraged by the direction of the party and our politics in general, I suggest every American consider several relevant observations from last week’s general election in the UK:
In a democracy, the voice of people must be respected. Notwithstanding the argument that the Brexit referendum was not well-stated or fully explained, the majority of voters who chose to vote chose the leave option. Attempts to resist, delay or take a mulligan on that choice were not appreciated by the electorate. The current attempt to remove Trump from office via impeachment will not be either. The charges against Trump amount to his being a contemptible and contemptuous bully. The voters knew that’s what he was when they voted in 2016. Please move along…
UK voters chose Boris Johnson over Jeremy Corbin not because he was their ideal of what they would prefer in a prime minister, but because, all things considered, he was the less objectionable of the binary choices presented. Ditto Trump and Clinton. Each country has ended up with clownish leaders because of political systems that do not present them with better choices.
Abandon the center at your peril. The Labor Party’s intent to nationalize large sectors of the economy was considered foolish by the majority of Britons. Similarly, doing away with private health insurance and other socialistic economic policies will be rejected by American voters.
I wish there were grounds for a sliver of optimism that those who make up the leadership of both of our political parties could grasp the degree of disgust with which the American public views their work.