Whether you make your voting decisions
based on policy, or whether you make it based on personal attributes
– either's a fine way to decide – I want to make a case for
carefully distinguishing a candidate's person from a candidate's
policies.
I call
for a moratorium on any line of reasoning that goes, “I know he's
an idiot because he supports X.” Or “I know she cares about us
because she supports Y.” Or “Did you hear that that party wants
to take away funding for M? They're so heartless.” Or “This
party actually wants to help
people, that's why they want to fully fund P.”
I begin at a disadvantage because –
indisputably – the policies
a person supports do
reflect on his character. Values, desires, ambitions, habits,
knowledge, prejudice, fears, all combine to produce belief and
action. It is true that for some quality Q and some policy P, there
exists a candidate who supports P, in part, because he has quality Q.
But it
never follows that support of P implies
quality Q. There are far, far more potential personal qualities than
there are distinct political positions; ergo, politicians must
arrive at similar policy
positions for different reasons. The observer never knows exactly
which qualities combine to produce a candidate's position (unless the
politician cares to explain his reasoning – and why should you
believe him?)
*
* *
Moms,
dads, – ever hear of a little parenting trick
called “assuming positive intent?” I use it so I don't lose my
temper, especially with 3- to 5-year-olds.
When
my child misbehaves, I try not to react to an assumption of malicious
intent or disrespect (“he wants to hurt his baby sister,” “he
doesn't respect his mother”). Instead, I try to skip over the
intent and react to
the behavior itself,
and I do that by making up a neutral or positive assumption – I
assume that the child had a good intention, but made the wrong choice
about how to get it (“he wanted his baby sister to smile at him, so
he grabbed her face”, “he wanted his breakfast right away, so he
yelled at me”).
I
don't do it to make excuses for misbehavior. I do it to keep myself
focused on loving correction, and to keep from flying off the handle
in reaction to something that's largely in my imagination. In the
long term, I can work on character formation. In the short term, if I don't lose my temper, I can teach: “Stop! When you
grab your sister's face, it hurts her. If you want a baby to smile
at you, move where she can see you and make faces.”
Even when it doesn't "work" and I have to move on to firmer discipline, assuming positive intent helps me stay charitable. It's good for me, for my love for my kids, for my patience. It's a great habit to get into.
My
point is: You can do this with everyone.
Friends, strangers, and … political candidates.
- “She
cares about my children and hopes they succeed, that might be why she
keeps asking me questions about how I'm teaching them” - “That
cashier must want everyone to know that her job is terribly hard,
that's why she snapped at me” - “He
probably supports that policy because he thinks that is the best way
to help people.”
Remember
– you don't do it to excuse misbehavior. You do it to keep
yourself focused on what you can change, and to keep yourself
charitable and civil towards real human beings.
More
on this later.
bearing blog 