If you use mass popular media as your primary source of information to make decisions then you’re severely limited in understanding what a presidential election is all about is. Mainstream media treat presidential politics like a high school race for student council president – basically, a popularity contest. That’s reflected in the way we talk about presidential campaigns; we ask, “Who do you like?” or say that “voters seem to like candidate X or Y.”
You should think of presidential candidates the way professional sports teams think of athletes: not as people or even personalities, but as talent you need in order to build a championship team. If you happen to like them, that’s a bonus but not a requirement. Coaches and general managers cut players they like every day.
Before you can decide what kind of talent you want or need, you have to know what kind of team you’re trying to build, and that depends upon your theory about how you want to play the game. You pick political talent based upon what you believe government should be trying to get done for you. Based upon that, certain players get eliminated from the jump, while others get careful consideration because they fit into your political game plan. Then you can consider: Do they have the talent to compete and win?
This where the black community has a major political weakness. Like bad owners of professional sports teams, we have no consensus theory on how we believe the game should be played, so we regularly make bad personnel decisions. It’s ludicrous for us to want the choice for president in November 2020 to be between two white political leftovers of the Baby Boomer generation, one who is actively ignorant, recklessly incompetent and morally vacuous and the other who is a marginal political mechanic on best day who has already failed three times to win the Democratic nomination.
With the clock running, we’re confronted with having to make a political personnel decision. So, who should it be? It depends on what you want done if you win, and that depends upon what you believe the government ought do in promoting and protecting your interest in the general welfare.
There are three things a lawyer takes into court for every case: the facts, the law and the theory of the case. Of the three, the most important is the theory of the case, because the trial, whether it’s decided by a judge or a jury, is all about who has the best theory of the case supported by the facts and the law. If a lawyer who goes into court without a theory of the case, his client will not be saved by the facts or the law.
That’s a good way to look at politics from a tactical standpoint. What is the narrative that supports a specific public policy decision or initiative? It’s not the way you should think about your overall political philosophy. Your political philosophy is much more like your religious faith; in fact, you could argue it’s the secular version of religious faith and, like your religious faith, it’s a categorical imperative. And like all categorical imperatives, it’s true before the fact and it’s true at all times.
This is where the rich, the powerful and the privileged have a political advantage over those of us who are not rich, powerful or privileged. They treat politics like religion while encouraging the average citizen to be at least a political agnostic, if not an outright political atheist.
So what does this have to with picking the best white political nominee if you’re black? Shouldn’t you first pick a faith before you pick a preacher?
To be continued.
