Since you’re reading this in a newspaper, you don’t need to be reminded that we are living in a particularly polarized time in our nation. Not that long ago, Republicans and Democrats would passionately disagree over the role government should play in regulating commerce and providing for the common welfare.
But despite that disagreement, they shared the common belief that all Americans should support our elected leaders’ efforts to improve all of our lives, to keep us safe from foreign adversaries, and, most importantly, to respect one another, notwithstanding our different points of view.
But those days are long gone now.
Today, our national political “discourse” (if it deserved that label) has devolved into a zero-sum game, where one side’s gain, e.g., ending the pandemic or funding the rebuilding of America’s crumbling roads and bridges, is somehow the other side’s loss.
Far worse, though, is the widely accepted belief that each side’s political opposition is not as merely a group of fellow countrymen and countrywomen who hold competing points of view, but are evil “enemies” of freedom, democracy and truth, who seek to destroy our country, quite literally.
Under this mindset, they (our political opponents) therefore “deserve” to be vanquished and obliterated, not merely have their candidates defeated at the polls.
In these hyper-contentious and truly dangerous times, there remains one rule on which we should all agree. It’s the simple one we all learned on the playground when we were kids: “Either you agree at the outset of the game that the team with the most points at the end of the game is the winner, or you don’t get to play.”
And of course, the same rules of how points are scored apply equally to both sides.
Suppose that little Johnny stood at the edge of the field and said, emphatically, “No, if my team gets fewer points, I’m not only going to take the ball and go home, I’m going to destroy the entire game (e.g., tear down the goals, baskets or remove the bases and sidelines)!”
The rest of us would respond, without hestitation, “OK, Johnny, then you cannot play.”
And so it should be in today’s ultra-divided and polarized electorate. The basic rule – either commit, up front, that you will accept the outcome of fair competition or you cannot compete – should not be restricted only to the office of U.S. president; it should apply to every elected office in the land.
And yet, in June 2024 – just five months from an election that will determine who will occupy the Oval Office from late January 2025 through late January 2029, and will serve as commander in chief and the chief executive officer of the entire federal government – one of the two “presumptive nominees” refuses to do just that.
Worse still, leading figures in that candidate’s national political party stand by his side and refuse to commit that they will accept the will of the people, through a certified counting of all ballots lawfully cast in the election (a process that is scrupulously monitored by representatives of both parties, and in many jurisdictions is overseen by members of that political party).
How can this be? To put it plainly, it shouldn’t.
Let’s all agree that the simplest and most fundamental playground rule applies – with full force – to our nation’s electoral system.
In addition to whatever constitutional and statutory criteria exist to define eligibility for office (no one foreign born or below the age of 35 may be the president), there is an implicit additional necessary qualification to run for office: Either you commit, out loud in public that no matter what the certified outcome of the election, you will abide by and respect it or you are not eligible to seek that office.
Steve Zansberg is an attorney in private practice in Denver.
