We have not always been family advocates and writers. My (Richard) prior life was politics. So before I get to the point of today’s column, let me give it a little context: Right out of graduate school, I co-founded a Washington, D.C., political consulting firm called Bailey, Deardourff and Eyre. Most of our clients were called (and called themselves) Moderate Republicans — U.S. senators such as Chuck Percy, Ed Brooke and Mac Mathias, and governors such as Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney.
These moderates were the compromisers and conciliators who brought the left and the right together and got things done. They saw themselves as public servants who understood how politics are supposed to work. They had the dignity, decorum and discipline that people could respect. And they respected each other as well as those whose views were different from their own.
I took a leave of absence to come to Utah to plan and manage Jake Garn’s first senate campaign, and then was making plans to run for Congress myself against Democrat Alan Howe when I (Richard) was called by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a mission president in London. When we returned three years later, our careers moved away from politics and toward writing and family advocacy.
With that as background, let me make my point: Some of what is happening in the current race for U.S. president is an example of what is wrong today with U.S. politics, and the effects on our children’s attitudes can be worrisome. A candidate’s divisive and insulting rhetoric may be effective in capturing the anger and alienation of some Americans, but it also robs politics and elective office of the three “D’s” that serious candidates should demonstrate: dignity, decorum and discipline. These are the qualities that can bring people together, that allow constructive compromises and balanced policies and that give people — including our children — respect and even admiration for our government and our political system.
Where is the dignity in Republican candidate Donald Trump’s insults and castigations of all of his opponents and even the leaders of other nations that are our allies? Where is the decorum in his bombastic and sometimes profane and egomaniacal style? And where is the discipline (and the realism) in his calls to deport 11 million undocumented Mexicans living productively in this country and to turn away every Muslim who wants to immigrate or visit?
Trump is not the only politician who is moving dramatically away from the three D’s. Candidates on both the left and the right are getting more strident and more critical and dismissive of each other, and it is these candidates with more extreme views who often control the outcome of whom their parties nominate. Republican candidates (think Mitt Romney) have to try to swerve to the right to get nominated and then swerve back to the center to have a chance to win the general election.
And our presidential elections are so long, so fundraising-centered, often so degrading and personally insulting that the most qualified people never even think about running for public office.
I long for shorter, more issues-focused elections (such as in England, where the entire campaign lasts three weeks, and because of the short-term intensity, everyone seems to get involved and interested). I long for the disciplined, dignified and reasonable politicians of yesteryear who understood that they were elected to get things done for the people, not to grandstand their own ideology at the expense of listening to anyone else.
Of course, not every candidate of yesteryear exhibited the three D’s, and of course some candidates today still do — but the trend away from dignity and moderation is unmistakable.
Let’s not let our children become disillusioned with politics or treat the election process as a joke. Let’s be careful that they don’t hear us complaining about the system unless they also hear us talking about the good things and about the kind of candidates we are looking for.
What we need to tell our children is not to lose hope with the process because of some of the current participants. Teach them that our representative democracy is not broken; it is just going through a bad patch. Teach them that they need to grow up with their idealism intact and looking for (and maybe even becoming) candidates who exhibit more of the three D’s.
Richard and Linda Eyre are New York Times No. 1 best-selling authors and founders of JoySchools.com who speak worldwide on family issues. Their new books are “The Turning” and “Life in Full.” See valuesparenting.com or eyrealm.com.