Election Day

Today is Election Day. As is periodically necessary, today we test the strength of our democracy. Of course, strictly speaking, Americans don't live in a democracy, but a republic. We vote for representatives who put in place the laws we want, if they don't, we replace them. Or, at least, that's how it's supposed to work. Incidences of direct democracy in America are rare—we don't do national referendums. Constitutional amendments, of which there hasn't been one since 1992, are sorted by elected officials. This is how it was designed to be. There has been a lot of talk about voter turnout this cycle with commenters bemoaning that only 50%-60% of voters actually bother to exercise their right. The first time we held a presidential election, only 6% of Americans even had that right. Eligible voters were so rare that George Washington, America's 15th president, bought every eligible voter three pints of beer when he ran for Virginia governor in 1758.

I can imagine there was something about that last sentence that didn't read quite right. While it's a fairly well-known bit of pub trivia that Donald J. Trump, referred to as the 45th president of the independent United States, is only the 44th man to hold that position because of Grover Cleveland's non-consecutive terms as the 22nd and 24th commander-in-chief. Less renowned is Peyton Randolph, who served as the first president of the United States in Congress Assembled, the governing body of the nation fighting Great Britain for its independence. It was Randolph who appointed Washington as the leader of the Continental Army, surely a consequential executive decision. A number of heavy-hitters who we don't think of as presidents, including John Hancock and John Jay, were among the 14 founders to serve in that role for the Continental Congress.

Today, more than half of the nations on earth are liberal democracies, a fact that should not lull you into taking it for granted. We should celebrate that people voting for their leaders is so commonplace that in 1967, an Ecuadorian town elected a foot powder for their mayor. In fact, there were days in January when I wished the foot powder would come out of retirement and announce its candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. It hasn't always been this way and, this year in particularly has proven, democracies are only as permanent as the voters' commitment. Even America did not hit the ground running. Between April and July 1776, 90 different Declarations of Independence were issued. Still, there are moments in history in which it seems like all the right people were born in the right place and time. Sometimes when that happens, we get the Beatles, other times we get the world's longest running democracy, one that has outpaced its Ancient Greek inspiration by some 75 years. There does seem to be something supernatural in the selection of our leaders. How else can you explain that John Adams, James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson all died on the Fourth of July? How else should we interpret the fact that the letters in "President Clinton of the USA" can be rearranged to make "to copulate, he finds interns?" I don't believe in divine influence when it comes to politics but from geography to culture to the blessedly reliable judgment of the voters, America has benefited from some kind of providence.

I understand that patriotism is in a low ebb, that the failures and hypocrisies of America's history are in stark relief at the moment. There are many who believe we are headed towards one of those failures today, regardless of the outcome of the vote. I recognize that "all men are created equal," the founding principle of the country, has more often than not been empty words, but I see no other nation striving for such a goal. Something is lost in America when our sense of optimistic belief in progress is degraded. We are a young country with a short memory, perennially on our way to greener pastures. It's why we write and buy the lion's share of the world's self-help books.

It may seem like a mark of an unserious nation that copies of I'm OK, You're OK continue to fly off the shelves but there's a deep national belief that collected action must be underpinned by personal improvement. Yes, its the kind of thinking that leads to a culture enthralled by particularly inspirational Peloton instructors and podcasts that push the latest quartz-infused reusable straws, but at the root is a poignant philosophical idea that emphasizes the individual over the collective. Let the former feudal fiefdoms be fatalistic and cynical, so used are they from subjugation by hereditary monarchs. We know that there isn't a problem big enough that it can't be solved by individual investigation. It's the difference between Hansel and Gretel waiting on an Old World wood cutter to save them and Dorothy Gale realizing that she had what she needed inside her the entire time. It's what Shakespeare meant when he wrote of Hamlet, perhaps the first individual in western literature "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable in action, in apprehension how like a god!” Those words may have been written by an Englishman about a Dane but they are as American as it gets. Closer to home, Langston Hughes wrote "O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath—America will be!” That's exactly what Election Day should be about.

Of course, I don't know what the results of today's latest exercise in progress will bring. No one does. We may not know for some time. Benjamin Franklin described democracy as "two wolves and a lamb voting what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." We've been tested before. Never forget this is a nation that upheld its principles of liberal democracy during a Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in our history. Had Lincoln lost, we would have become two nations. His opponent, George McClellan, campaigned on suing the Confederates for peace. With such dire stakes, it was soldiers, scattered throughout the young nation that delivered a victory for their commander-in-chief. 150,000 Union soldiers voted by mail.