Elected officials have an obligation to serve everyone

Before I begin this column, I need to correct an item in last week’s column. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, not 1972. Thanks to sharp-eyed reader Don Reck for catching my error. Others may have noticed as well.

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Unlike everything you’ve read in the last few days, this column’s not about the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Well, not specifically, anyway.

Because of the way the publishing calendar works, I have a deadline of Tuesday at 10 a.m. to submit my weekly column to the newspaper. Because Election Day is also on Tuesday, no conclusive results could have been known before my deadline arrived. 

In addition, the outcomes of some close races will not be known for days, and some of them in states that have runoffs may not be known for weeks.

So this week’s election column takes a different perspective from the usual kind.

Every race in every election has a winner and a loser – sometimes more than one loser. The American political system operates with inherent responsibilities for both winners and losers.

All winners have an obligation to those who elected them, and also to those who didn’t vote for them. They represent their entire body of constituents. Election winners take an oath to support the constitutions both of the United States and of their particular state. Egregious violations of that oath can bring legal charges against them. Minor violations can cost them their position in the next election.

But the oath of office is only one kind of promise by politicians to citizens. Other promises reside in what election winners have told voters they intend to do once they take office. 

Sometimes, of course, elected officials for one reason or another find themselves unable to fulfill those promises. Maybe their party is in the legislative minority. Maybe, even if they’re in the majority, their party colleagues object to their proposal and beat it back. Maybe an executive’s plans run contrary to those of the legislature, and the executive vetoes the legislative initiative. 

Or maybe, once candidates get into office and discover aspects of an issue that they didn’t know about during their campaign, they change their minds. In that case, they owe their constituents a frank and thorough explanation, including why their new position is consistent with their basic values.

People desire and deserve to know why their elected officials do or don’t do what they promised to do once they were elected. That requires open, consistent conversations with the public, through various outlets: newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and social media. 

“Conversations” is the operative word. One-way news releases alone don’t cut the mustard. To do right by their constituents, officeholders must make themselves available for two-way discussions, either directly with people or indirectly through news reporters. Some former Iowa governors did just that: Bob Ray held press conferences daily, Terry Branstad did so weekly. 

Today, for some officeholders, open question-and answer sessions with the press rarely take place.

Voters respect and appreciate openness and honesty. Officials who hide from the public, or shade the truth, or outright lie, can find themselves on the outside looking in after the next election.

Losers have different obligations from winners, and more choices. They can simply step back from the political arena. They can stay involved in politics, but not as candidates. Or they can lick their wounds and make plans for their next campaign for office.

(They can also claim, falsely, that their election was stolen and they actually won. That’s not an obligation. Someone who can’t accept that the voters wanted someone else has a terribly inflated self-image. It’s the definition of narcissism.)

All the legitimate responses to electoral defeat are honorable. If you simply step back, it’s OK. People understand.

If you stay involved in your party’s efforts but decline to run again, that’s also OK. Your party colleagues generally admire your election attempt and welcome your experienced help for future campaigns.

And if you want to give it another try on the ballot, that’s certainly OK as well. To do so, you need to remain in the public’s eye in some way, because by the next election things may change. In 1974, a number of congressional candidates were elected for the first time, after losing their initial races in 1972, due to the national uproar that led to President Nixon’s resignation. Among them were Tom Harkin and Berkley Bedell, who both went on to serve in Congress for many years.

The Founding Fathers hoped that political parties would not exist in their new nation, but probably feared they would. Their fears proved well founded: parties sprang up within a few years of ratification, and have existed in various flavors ever since. Our government bodies function almost exclusively in a two-party system.

It’s difficult to win an election at any level, except the most local, without declaring yourself a member of one party or the other. Many candidates campaign on a promise to work “across the aisle,” but when they take office they discover how difficult that is. In part it’s because their party leadership demands loyalty, and in part it’s because their voters do as well.

So political courage, while uncommon, represents another kind of obligation. Elected officials who choose to keep faith with their values, and state openly and honestly what those are, rather than simply carrying a dependable spear for their party leaders, deserve our admiration even if we don’t always agree with them. 

I hope those we elected in 2022 possess that courage.