I was examining imported pomelos when I heard someone say, “Sir, excuse me.” I thought someone else wanted to get to the pomelos which I had decided weren’t worth the big bucks. I stepped aside and the voice said, “Sir?” I looked this time. It was a very young man who immediately thrust his hand out for a handshake—rare these days, especially among the very young.
“Sir,” he repeated, “I got the assignment. Vote! That’s what you wrote in the paper, and I’m completely ready to ‘throw the rascals out’ from the Maui government.” I was impressed that he didn’t feel the need to use air quotes for that phrase.
He introduced himself, said some very flattering things about my writing and how he liked the thoughts behind my columns, then circled around to his question. “I can understand Maui a little. I’ve lived here all my life, and don’t really remember any local government that I thought made sense. But I’m taking your advice from something you said to my grandfather at an MEO event and leave my local vote in my grandmother’s hands until I’m sure of myself.” He blushed, “I’m just 19, right? And I think my grandparents may have different ideas than I do—at least about the president and the people we send to the Senate and the House of Representatives. They’re great, but they’re old. I will have to live with the consequences of this election a lot longer than they will. So, are you going to tell us eventually… you know, not just vote but vote for someone.”
He was crushed when I said I would not, and that in any case, I am surely closer in age to his grandparents than to him. He accepted that fact, but closed his question so well, I promised to answer him here. “I don’t really want to have anyone tell me who to vote for, do I? But I don’t even know how to think about who to vote for. Can you help?”
How could an old codger like me not answer a sincere question like that? No can. Here, in brief, is what I actually told the young man as we stood outside the store.
Think globally, act locally. That’s the saying, and it works well for “going green” and for doing your part to help Maui’s economy by choosing local produce, local meat, locally made products and such—much of which is also relevant to “going green.” When it comes to voting in national elections (the presidency) or for U.S. legislators we help choose, the words need to be shaken up a bit: Think on the scale of the office, do something else locally.
What that means, first, is don’t think of the benefit to Maui or Hawai‘i when voting for a congressman, senator or president. If all of us would stop thinking that way, we’d be taking a stand against the pork-barrel politics that force our national leaders to behave badly and to act out of shortsightedness. Whether it is a legislator we’re choosing or the chief executive of the nation, we need to be considering national questions. Frankly, unless the candidate in question has a lot of public service experience, we may be left guessing a bit about how he or she will really act with regard to national questions, but there’s an easy out.
You know what the questions are on the national level: War/peace (national security), taxation/spending (economy), common good/individual rights (the place of government in your life), isolation/engagement (international relationships). It’s that and a few things you’ll think of yourself, plus the priority given to each. You can do this. You can listen to debates and read news stories, look up speeches on the Web and send questions to the candidates’ campaign headquarters. It’s not that hard, but I told you there’s an easy out: You can investigate the platform of a candidate’s party as a general guide to what you might expect on the big issues. If you choose to use this out, do it during and after the party’s convention in the year of the election. Things change more than you’d expect.
If you do this, you will find yourself no longer able to vote for a person you just “feel good about,” because you’ll have facts. You can vote for someone you know—almost know—will act in a way that makes sense to you.
It is imperative that you think on the national level, however. Like it or not, the good or ill health of the economy, of the nation’s human rights activities, of the country’s position in the community of nations does influence all things local, a system that only works out best for most of us if the majority of us are thinking on the scale of the office when we choose our presidents, senators and representatives in the House.
When next we meet in these pages, we’ll be talking about the local election, but here’s the thing: the local choices are not sanely made by the same standards or for the same reasons as the national ones. You’ll see.