Reflections on Campaign Season

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone! I’ve been pretty quiet after campaigning for Greenville County Council. I am grateful for all the people I met throughout that process, and after long months of talking with everyone, July and August have been a lot of reflection, catching up, and spending time with family. If you're interested, you can read my remarks at the close of my campaign here.

I’m not here today to write about my campaign; I’m more interested in looking ahead to the contentious fall ahead of us. One thing I learned in knocking on all the doors and talking to everyone is that despite the narratives that seek to make the other side out to be mortal enemies, most people want the same things. At the local level, this is especially true: we want thoughtfully considered land development policy, we want our roads to be in good condition, and we generally want the government to stay out of our way otherwise.

It’s very hard to animate voters talking like this; it’s much easier to stoke fear and use that fear to drive us to the polls. But as Yuval Levin notes in an interview about his new book American Covenant, most of this fear is unfounded:

“The idea that if we lose this election, we will lose everything is less true in the 21st century - not more - than it has been through most of American history. And so in a funny way, we've come to think of the stakes of our elections as impossibly high exactly in the moment when those stakes are lower than usual. I think the Constitution, if we become better acquainted with it, can remind us of that - that no election is about everything, and no election is ultimate and final.”

So, as we enter this fall, I encourage you to recognize that while politics is important, it’s not everything we should be focused on, and it should, in most cases, not be a primary sorting mechanism in your life. If we’re always “all in,” we will have no room to see others' perspectives and consider why someone might think differently, making it impossible for us to live lives together. 

So, this Labor Day, take a deep breath and relax, and then let’s get back to building a better community together.