The Most Important Issue Missing in the Race for President Is....

"We must stretch for our better angels instead of falling toward our lowest instincts." 

--former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

What would you ask the Presidential candidates, if given the chance?

Let’s say you got the opportunity to sit before this posse, this herd, this scrum of 23 candidates now running for the highest office in the land, and that your exchange with these men and women would also be filmed for posterity. Since this is a pipe dream, let’s also assume, unlike much of the time in debates and public exchanges, when candidates dodge a question or give a non-answer or are evasive or vague or just downright ignore a query, this time…they actually have to tell the truth. The absolute truth. No stonewalling. No equivocation.

It’s my fantasy, so I get to set the ground rules.

So, what to ask? What’s most important to you as an American voter in 2020? What national problem perhaps keeps you up at night? What worries you when you think about the nation and the world your children will soon inherit? What do you want your candidate to actually do on day one, January 20^th, 2021, when, at approximately noon, the 46^th President of the United States will take the oath?   

If the polls are correct, Americans are as split on the issues that need to be addressed as they are about everything else. According to one national survey from the end of this summer (Rasmussen.com), that polled 1,000 likely American voters, the top three issues for Democrats are health care, gun laws and the economy; for Republicans, national security, the economy and immigration; and for independent voters, the economy, health care and national security.

Is one of these topics what you’d demand honesty about, from your candidates and future president?  Is it “the economy, stupid”, as one candidate’s advisors once infamously declared; what is in, or not in, your wallet and 401k and savings account? Or is health care and our country’s chronic inability to provide affordable, accessible medical care for all? Or maybe the question of immigration? That’s certainly been at the fore of our national dialogue ever since the current commander in chief took office. Keep ‘em all out! Let ‘em all in!          

Now, if I got to be the one to ask a question, I’d take a different tack, one less about specifics, and more about the tone and the tenor and the essence of the one who governs. As a person of faith, I’m certainly very concerned about how well our nation cares for its people, especially those on the edge the poor, the uninsured, the sick and infirmed, the stranger and the prisoner. That’s on my heart. But there’s one civic challenge I see as trumping any policy question, any economic indicators, any law and order stance.

In 2020, I’m most anxious about character. The character of the person who will lead us.  The character of the woman or man who has the courage and the chutzpah to actually want to govern this wonderful and challenged, this soaring and stumbling republic of some 330 million souls.  The character and essential human decency of the one who leads us and for better and for worse, somehow embodies who we are collectively as a people.

So, here’s my question or questions, actually.

What will you do to bring out the best in us, as Americans?  How will you work to appeal to the better angels of our nature, as citizens and neighbors, as fellow human beings who all call the same place home, these United States of America? How will you make each us want to do better by one another and be better in how we live with each other?  How will you lift us all up and not just tear us apart, for a vote, for an office, for an ego, for a hollow victory?

These are the questions not being asked by the media, by the folks in the press who seem much better at treating the election more like a horse race and less like an actual struggle for the soul of America, for how we see ourselves morally, ethically, civically.

I want a President who inspires me, who makes me want to serve others and not just myself. I want a President who appeals to the angel within me and not the devil, who leads not with a clenched fist of conflict but with an open hand of community. I want a President who calls all of us to put aside narrow interest for the national interest, to love country before party, a President who reminds us that the national motto is not “every man for himself!” but instead “E pluribus unum”, from many one.

Will you bring out the best in us? Please. PLEASE! 

I can dream, can’t I?