Today, two days before the 2016 presidential election, we make a prediction with full confidence: On Tuesday, Americans will go to the polls and select the second least popular president in our history.
All that remains to be seen is whether that president will be Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump.
Both candidates are wildly unpopular, with approval ratings in the 40-percent range. Clearly, while there are some who will cast their votes with enthusiasm, for many more Americans it will be perceived as a choice between the lesser of two evils.
Some have become so disillusioned, they will choose not to vote at all.
That these two candidates could emerge through the long presidential election process says something about not only about the current climate of presidential politics, but of the national ethos.
Presidential politics, always rough-and-tumble affairs, has become a blood sport where opponents must not be merely defeated, but crushed.
That attitude reflects a nation that is bitterly divided, where rhetoric is heated, compromise is viewed with deep suspicion, and every issue is carefully weighed on the scales of partisan purity.
It is not simply that we disagree on practically all of the issues: We often can’t even agree on what the issues are. Climate change? Immigration? Religious freedom? Racial Injustice? Big government? Income inequality?
They are issues or non-issues, according to your political point of view.
Somewhere along the way we have lost faith in our government’s ability to function in a meaningful way.
Politically, we find ourselves engaged in trench warfare, wounding and maiming each other to gain or lose a few hundred yards of worthless soil.
It is a madness that only the collective will of the American people can deliver our nation from.
If we choose to embrace civility, if we commit ourselves to honest, and fair debate and if we seek compromise over conquest, we will set a tone that our politicians will come to emulate.
All of us, Republican, Democrat or Independent, want basically the same things — a good job, safe homes and neighborhoods, good schools, peace, justice and an optimism that future generations of Americans will enjoy all the blessings that we hold as our American birthright. We also want a government that puts the interests of the taxpaying public first, something we do not have.
If we are to make meaningful progress in any of these areas, it requires from those we send to Washington — not just presidents, but senators and representatives — a commitment to statesmanship that prevails over ideological dogma.
The least popular president our nation elected noted this in his first inaugural address:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
On Wednesday, we will have a new president. It will be that president’s duty to serve all Americans and all Americans’ duty to support that president in those efforts.
America, as we know, did not heed the plea Lincoln made in his inaugural address.
We must, in our time, prove we have learned from that error.
The real work begins Wednesday.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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