Politics and Nonpartisanship

“War is politics continued by other means.” – Carl von Clausewitz

There is a lot of discussion about “partisanship” in this election with a current culmination point as a Letter to the Editor at the Informer. (https://tinyurl.com/mwb38pxb) I think a lot of folks misunderstand what nonpartisanship is and why it is important, especially the author of the letter and the incumbent candidates for whom he is acting as an overenthusiastic surrogate. I’m not going to rebut anything specific in the letter, which quite frankly is a mess. As an example, in the first paragraph the author states “Every political decision, policy stance or institutional action reflects values, priorities and interests — and those are inherently political.” So the idea of this sentence is every political decision is…political? Sure. Most of the rest of the letter reads like that as well, but I do want to address the notion that “nonpartisan” means “unbiased” or “nonpolitical” because it absolutely does not mean that.

By the way, the author of the letter completely ignores the fact that I’ve stated numerous times – speaking as a patron before the board and at the DNEA forum -- that board members are politicians and as a candidate so am I. It is hard to tell because he and others have repeatedly conflated “politics” and “partisanship” and “bias” when those are all three entirely different concepts. Again, this letter and its argument are a mess.

I lead with the Clausewitz quote because the military is a good illustration of the difference between political and partisan. It is a common misconception to regard the US military as apolitical. It isn’t. The military is political because it is a political instrument, and politics touches everything in the military from its use in war to its doctrine and peacetime training. The Generals and Admirals are political creatures. However, it isn’t partisan. It serves the political framework as the country as a whole and isn’t oriented around one particular political party or any group smaller than America as a whole. Nor is it oriented around a particular ideology, though each service has its own ideology that frames its views. Put a bunch of Navy Admirals with Army and Air Force Generals in a room and ask about projection of power and you will get answers that are biased around each service’s viewpoint. The services do have ideological bias which is why it is important to have them all under the umbrella of the Defense Department to coordinate and sort through those biases.

So how does that apply to us here in the Derby area? Most school boards and city councils are nonpartisan in the strictest sense because they don’t allow candidates to formally affiliate with American political parties on the ballot. No party labels. Many states schedule these elections as far away from our big November elections to drive as much distance between party activity and local offices. Why? Because the political party framing, and much of the ideological grouping that accompanies it, functions at the national level but breaks down at the local level. I’ll write another post about that later but for length I’m setting it aside here.

Once you sign onto a party you get caught up in its way of thinking. Instead of thinking, what would I as a local member of this community want, one starts to think what would I as Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/etc do? What would I do as a Christian/Jew/Muslim/etc? This thinking narrows ones focus to themselves and their own interest group rather than the community as a whole. It isn’t great at the national level but due to the system our Founders gave us, it does have a function. At the local level however, it’s toxic. We are all Americans, Kansans and members of the Derby Schools community. That is what is important for local governance – we are all in this together folks.

I can’t speak for other candidates but not being a member of a party and generally adverse to political associations I’m nonpartisan in the proper sense of the word. I still carry biases, just not party biases, and I still use frameworks that shape my view. I’m upfront with these and will go into them further in this space and others. And even if I was a registered member of a party it’s still possible to set aside most, but not all, of the framework that goes with political parties if the focus is on the community as a whole.

So if no one is invoking a political party is it fair to accuse the incumbents of partisanship? Yes. And everything about their communications tells the tale.

Their signs have icons like the Cross which is both wholly inappropriate and partisan (because it invokes an exclusive group even if not a political party).  This merits its own post later.

Some of their signage says “Save our Values” which invokes values not as individual beliefs that guide each of us but a way to delineate groups. It isn’t listing a value – its grouping themselves in with others in a nebulous way – pure partisanship. And you can’t “save” values – that isn’t what values are. This statement has nothing to do with values and everything to do with trying to separate folks into groups – that some folks matter (those who share our values) and some folks don’t. It is exclusionary. It is partisan in the worst sense of the word.

They drape the US flag over everything. Fine. All Americans should get to use the flag – it is inclusive and should be a unifying point. But their door hangers say “Proud Patriot” as if they lay exclusive claim to mantle of patriot. All of this corrupts things as it turns icons and concepts that normally unify into articles of division. It is also absurd because two of us other candidates spent 20+ years of our lives dedicated to the protection of this country in the armed forces. I’ve been shot at because of that flag that I wore. The difference between me and the incumbent candidates is that I would never advertise myself as a patriot because I don’t think I am any more patriotic than any of my neighbors. The solider or airman isn’t more patriotic than the teacher or the doctor or mechanic or barista. As a veteran my default assumption is that all my fellow Americans are patriotic until they demonstrate otherwise and I detest using patriotism as a dividing factor. It cheapens it.

And ultimately that’s what partisanship – whatever its form -- does at the local level. It fractures ties when we should be building them. It cheapens concepts that should otherwise be celebrated. It seeks to gain power by corralling off and then ramming things down people’s throats rather than collaborating and building consensus.

So sure, I’m biased. I have my values. I am – oh how I hate saying this – a politician,  for this season at least. But I’m not partisan because I understand the toxicity of that here even if the incumbents and the author of this letter do not. So follow along folks, let me share some of my values and examine the values of the incumbents. A couple of weeks to go and we need to get this right…