As we swing around the clubhouse turn in this election cycle and prepare to enter the home stretch after Labor Day, I hear more and more of my friends and neighbors asking themselves (and very occasionally asking me) which campaigns they can most effectively support with a contribution. For those of us who aren’t among the filthy rich, it can sometimes be hard to see how the little we could give to a campaign that has already collected many millions of dollars could make any real difference. Yet we know that small contributions have fueled some very big campaigns, so we can’t write off the possibility of our mite being worth what it costs us. The truth is that I have very little advice to offer my friends on this subject, and none to offer strangers.
Except this: however you decide to allocate the resources you feel you can devote to election campaigns this election cycle, give some thought to setting aside some small percentage of your overall political giving and devoting it to the larger cause of healing our democracy. I don’t mean to suggest that the contributions you would ordinarily make are themselves lacking in democratic potency or significance. But the fact is that our political system itself is so wounded and diseased that, no matter who gets elected (or unelected) this fall, those ailments in our body politic are going to make it very difficult – and often impossible – for our favorite candidates, even if they win, to accomplish much of what we hope they might do. Whether it’s the unrestrained influence of partisanship, or of wealth and privilege, the deeply systemic failings of our political system are going to continue to plague us no matter who wins any particular election.
Which is not to say that those elections are unworthy of our closest attention or of our hard-earned contributions, but only to suggest that some of us might want to establish a practice of setting aside something like a democracy tithe – devoting some percentage of our overall political giving to the cause of healing our democracy itself.
In the last chapter of Citizens Uniting to Restore our Democracy, I raise the possibility of nurturing such a practice, and also perhaps expanding it into the creation of a democracy lobby as effective in promoting the cause of democracy as the gun lobby has been in pursuing its objectives. The citizens-uniting.org website highlights some organizations already doing excellent work in the field of democratic restoration, from election reform to the Electoral College, campaign finance and redistricting. Perhaps there’s one of these reform arenas – or one of these other democracy-strengthening sectors that might be worthy of your own democracy set-aside during this election season. Please take a look — and then tell us about other organizations, books, articles, podcasts or blogs that we should add to the site.
Dr. David Mathews, President and CEO of the Kettering Foundation, has a new publication, With the People: An Introduction to an Idea. In this book Dr. Mathews outlines why a strategy of government working with citizens in democratic and complementary ways on shared community problems can strengthen our democracy. Free copies of the publication are available at: https://www.kettering.org/
Thanks so much for inviting our readers’ attention to Dr. Mathews’ publication, Valerie. We had given our own shout-out for his booklet on the Citizens Uniting website. The core theme of his publication reminded me strongly of a train of thought I had pursued in my own way in Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy. In Chapter 3, I had put it this way: “There is nothing new about voters reminding elected officials in one way or another that ‘you work for us.’ … But what if we started hearing, not only “remember that you work for us,” but also “remember that you work with us”? That is a message that I believe must become second nature to millions of good citizens if an effective movement of democratic reform is to take root and flourish. It is the kind of message that should come naturally from the lips of engaged and active citizens, accustomed to relating to their local officials in just that way.” As a former public official yourself, I’d be interested in your own view of this subject, Valerie.