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President Thomforde urges tolerance, informed voting on Election Day

By Christopher M. Thomforde
October 28, 2004

St. Olaf President Christopher M. Thomforde sent the following message to the St. Olaf community prior to election day, Nov. 2:

I wanted to take a moment and share with you some of my thoughts regarding the great electoral process in which the country is engaged. A number of students, faculty, Board members, and friends of the college have asked for my opinion, and as a result of these conversations and my own reflections upon the daily news and the debates, the following thoughts have occurred to me.

First, it is important to vote. A short while ago, I was driving north of the Twin Cities in the general neighborhood of the intersection of Highway 35 and 694. Two large billboards struck my eye, each of which said, "Don't Vote!" I also read an article written by a highly respected historian, which explained to the readers why he was not going to vote.

In spite of these admonitions, I believe that we must exercise our franchise, one of the great privileges of free men and women, and vote. The process, the candidates, the issues presented may not be the ones we had wished for or the ones we thought most urgent. Nevertheless, I would encourage all of us, who are eligible, to register and vote.

Second, I have been thinking about the difference between being a member of a political party and being partisan. At their best, political parties gather men and women around a certain set of principles and policies, which they believe will advance the best purposes of the nation. Working together, we have a better chance of promoting that which we believe will be good for the nation as a whole. Partisanship, however, seems to engender an inappropriate kind of loyalty to a candidate or to a set of policies giving them a greater sense of ultimate value than they deserve. The party and its advancement of its goals seem, in partisan politics, to transcend the good of the nation as a whole. I encourage us to work and to think and to argue as members of a political party but I encourage us to avoid partisanship, which confuses penultimate loyalties and aspirations and policies with that which is ultimately good for the nation as a whole.

Third, I am asking myself the following set of questions as I listen to candidates in the hopes of discovering for which candidate I will vote. Is the policy advocated by this or that candidate reasonable? By this I mean to discover whether there is a careful analysis of the problem addressed, whether there is coherence between the understanding of the problem and the solution proposed and whether this is presented in a sensible way. Also, does the policy advocated by this or that candidate promote justice? By this I mean, will it encourage a greater balance between those who are advantaged in life and those who, for whatever reasons, are disadvantaged.

Finally, I ask myself is this policy sustainable or is it a solution that is only a short-term response which might help to bring about other problems? By sustainability, I include long-term economic viability, care of the earth and our natural environment, and the long-term effects upon human vitality.

Is it reasonable? Is it just? Is it sustainable? Those three questions come to me as a result of a recent reading of one of Luther's treatises, Temporal Authority: To What Extent it Should Be Obeyed (1523). This brings me to my fourth point, I believe it is important that we do some reading of documents from other times and places to give us a sense of perspective upon the candidates and the policies their parties are advocating.

To this end, I have taken upon myself the discipline of reading for about an hour each day a book of essays on American history given to me some time ago. The book is entitled Understanding the American Past, edited by Edward N. Saveth. It was written in 1954 and so it does not address directly many of the issues debated among us now. It does however provide me with a longer view upon these matters that press in upon us now. You certainly need not read this particular book and, of course, I have a sense of the jam-packed quality of most of our lives.

But I do encourage you to set aside a bit of time here and there for reflection upon the issues and policies being set forth by the various candidates. I fear that without some reflective distance, we will be overwhelmed by the rhetorical power of the media and the manner in which it presents the candidates and their policies to us. Soundbytes and advertisements and polls are of some help, of course, but seem to me to be finally inadequate in addressing the complexity of the issues at hand, the importance of the historical moment, the actual full dimension of the candidate's character and personality, or the scope of our own concerns as a citizens.

Finally, in order to avoid the strident, angular, or mean tone of the political campaign, I encourage us to be of good humor about the candidates and ourselves. Political satire, though sharp and biting, is meant to be finally humorous with its ability to make fun of our capacity to become inflated with our own sense of importance. Political sarcasm, however, seeks to destroy the opponent and defame the adversary rather than to poke fun. I am for the good laugh that humanizes us all rather than the jab, which wounds.

As election day approaches, therefore, I encourage us all to register and vote, to align ourselves with others of shared vision and aspiration but with a sense of what is finally of ultimate value, to ask questions, to read and reflect from a distance, and to be able to laugh at a good joke, even if it is about us.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.