10/27/22

10/26/2022

October is a hot month for sports. 

The World Series is upon us. The National Football League is well underway, with millions watching games every Sunday, and other days as well. We’re in the midst of the Iowa high school football playoffs. While neither Iowa nor Iowa State currently provides much to stimulate football passions, the teams’ fan bases nevertheless remain pretty loyal. The preseason national polls rank both universities’ women’s basketball teams in the top ten. And teams in other sports have their dedicated followers as well.

October is also a hot month for politics. 

As you read this, the midterm elections are only about 12 days away. Millions of Americans have already voted early, either in person or with absentee ballots, at rates significantly higher than in the last midterm elections, in 2018. Television screens are filthy with political ads, repeated ad infinitum and ad nauseam. Political signs, some of them giant-sized, populate yards and farmsteads. And the news, in all media venues, talks politics nonstop.

Both sports and politics generate the thrill of competition among wide swaths of Americans this time of year. There certainly resemble each other in some ways: they rivet attention toward eventual victory or defeat, using clever tactics that may give one side or the other an advantage, and spend many millions of dollars over the total course of the race.

Even the word “race” suggests the similarity. Pundits constantly refer to the “horse race” of politics. And intense competition on occasion generates dirty tricks in both venues.

But despite their similarities, sports and politics operate on very different levels, with their outcomes far apart in relative importance. Unfortunately too many of us think of both activities the same way, a mistake I make from time to time. That’s not how it is in the real world. The effect of an athletic contest doesn’t compare in significance to that of a political contest.

To paraphrase author Gertrude Stein’s comment about roses, a game is a game is a game. The vast majority of fans retain devotion to their chosen team, but its victory or defeat is merely emotional for them, not life-changing. The outcome of a campaign, by contrast, can certainly affect people’s lives, sometimes drastically.

Once a game is over, it’s over. It may affect a team’s standing and ranking, but that’s about it, unless you’re a paid coach with a career to worry about or a talented athlete looking to move up to the pros. 

But the outcome of a political campaign hits people where they live: protections in their workplace and their community, the level of their taxes, restrictions on their health care providers, their access to public records and meetings, the quality of their children’s education, and dozens of other ways. Nearly every aspect of their lives depends on what their elected officials do. A far cry from whether their favorite team wins or loses.

There are rules for both sports and politics. Violations should bring penalties in both. Referees enforce athletic rules immediately when they’re broken. But preventing or punishing unethical or illegal campaign activity is sadly much more difficult. 

Some campaign operatives devote their days to lies both in the media and at public appearances, fraudulent messages to constituents, violations of campaign finance laws, even threats and intimidation of voters. When that kind of stuff happens close to Election Day, bringing violators to immediate justice is difficult, sometimes impossible.

In that case, it’s up to the voter to evaluate the questionable message or activity. So voter education occupies a special place in American political life. Rather than slavishly tethering to a party or a particular candidate, voters need to analyze political messaging dispassionately and decide whether the messenger deserves their support.

Easier said than done, given the temptation to sign on blindly to a political entity, the way we often do with our chosen sports teams. 

But for democracy to thrive, we need to develop and apply clear-eyed judgment to the very consequential “game” of politics. This year that need is especially strong. That’s the call to American voters in the autumn of 2022. ♦