“BO we’ll see you at the polls.”

Where will they see Obama?

“BO we’ll see you at the polls.” I clearly remember a newspaper photo in the run-up to the 1971 general elections of a man carrying a poster with those words. That man was taking part in a rally organized by trade unions which had some industrial dispute with the Borg Olivier’s government. This poster is not a solitary occurrence. Politicians are all the time faced by this kind of attitude manifested, for example, during mid-term elections, local council elections, one to one meeting, negotiations with trade unions, etc. What should they do? Sometimes it is an easy decision. They can change or mend their ways. However, if what they are doing is, for them, in the best public interest should they choose popularity or principles?

“Let Obama be Obama”

Let us look at this question from the perspective of the mid-term elections that have just been held in the United States. If, for starters, we look overseas and not to the local situation we can perhaps have a calmer and more fruitful introduction for our discussion.

Ambassador Kmiec made interesting comments in an interview with the Times given immediately as the results were known. Kmiec, contrary to the prevailing sentiment of the day suggesting that President Obama change his direction, proposed the opposite. He said that the result of the midterm election was “not very likely to alter US-EU relations or foreign policy, nor should it.” On the domestic side, the Ambassador believed the President, as a man of principle would become more, not less, Obama – that is, a political figure who believes government can be a source for good, and in particular, “the common good.” “Let Obama be Obama,” the Ambassador told Tony Manduca.

He has a point. After all, it should be less important to hold the office of the presidency than to use the presidency for the common good.

Was the outcome the result of Obama being out of touch with the change he promised before the presidential election? His supporters answer in the negative. Obama, they say, has significantly wound down the war in Iraq and secured some semblance of public health care for 32 million people who lack the same. He stabilized a badly fractured set of economic institutions that had betrayed all professional standards and banking and finance; and he was well on his way toward addressing even a complex and politically explosive topic like immigration reform in the United States. From an international perspective, he recognized that the United States needed to be understood not as a superpower but as one country among many responsible countries promoting human rights and human dignity and environmental common sense.

Examination of conscience: people or politicians?

One of the differences between this and the presidential election is that Obama lost the Catholic vote. In the 2008 campaign, Obama won by sizable margins the Catholic vote in, for example, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. In these mid-term elections, the president's party lost badly in each of those states. His supporters argue that from a Catholic social teaching perspective, president Obama's first two years should have merited the confidence and the vote of the Catholic electorate. So why didn’t he get it?

Could it well be that the examination of conscience that is required in the United States is not one that needs to take place in the Oval Office, but in the hearts and minds of those who would elevate narrow, libertarian perspectives over those which seek to find common ground and promote the common good?

It is said: vox popoli, vox dei. Is it always like that? When there are differences between the politicians and the people are the politicians always wrong and the people always right? Could it not be that sometimes the people do not represent the common good but an unholy alliance of sectarian goods just fueled by short-term gains? How should politicians behave when they believe, in conscience, that this is the case? What should one say about politicians that in time of difficulty paint mirages as realities in order to get the people’s vote?

The Catholic moral vision

Let us return to the US mid-term elections.

Did Catholics, for example, vote the way they voted as they were inspired by the Catholic moral vision that privileges the vulnerable or because they were reacting to self-interest and short-termism?

The Catholic moral vision is characterized by its traditional concerns for social issues like the defense of the unborn, support for the poor, welcoming the immigrant, stewardship of the environment, and so forth. Quite naturally, choices are never easy as there is no one party which represents one hundred per cent the Catholic moral vision. Such a scenario puts more responsibility on Catholics to discern whether their voting patterns are more a function of partisanship or belonging to a particular socio-economic group or self-interest than faith.

After all, from a Catholic perspective, it is always less important whether Democrats or Republicans prevail in a given election than whether the politics of the day are advancing civility and tolerance and the common good. The role of the Catholic voter in terms of the Church's teaching is to promote a politics of the common good. Common good politics are not motivated by partisanship or ideology or private self-interest. There are signs that the tea party devotees in the United States are driven more by the latter than the former. Their success in elections is a bad omen for Catholic social teaching. As the American Catholic bishops have thoughtfully pointed out, Catholic voters have an obligation to review their political participation to ensure that their political allegiances reflect the Church's teaching on the common good and how this can be achieved through the compromises that are an essential part of politics, which, after all, is just the art of the possible. True enough, but to make sense of that and to not have a disconnect between a faith dearly held and midterm votes inconsistently cast, Catholic voters ought not succumb to aiding and abetting the worst forms of excessive partisanship or ideological extremism or sectorial self interest or let themselves be blinded by vague and illusionary promises.

Back to Malta

How do you view this argument if we transpose it to the Maltese situation?