One week out from an election night can be a pretty cynical time. Americans are tired of many things: Campaign ads, polling calls, door-knockers, and outrageous accusations among them. It’s a time when people tend to express either relief that the end is in sight or a dismissive attitude that often sounds like, “I don’t really pay attention to politics.”
■ Perhaps the retort is too much of a cliche: Whether or not you’re interested in politics, politics is interested in you. It’s merely the condensation of a thought attributed to Pericles: “An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.” Such were the views of democratic politics in 430 BC.
■ Disinterest is counterproductive, but so is ignorance. Anyone who succeeds in any human institution must have acted politically to get there. Politics is merely the skill set of achieving interests within a body of people. Successful generals are, in a very practical sense, practitioners of the political arts -- in a word, politicians. Successful business executives? Politicians. Hospital leaders, university presidents, and non-profit managers? All politicians. That is not all they are, but it is something they cannot fail to be.
■ Even religious leaders are, by definition, politicians, and they are duty-bound not only to be aware of how the public interest is seen and pursued around them, but also to ensure that they develop political knowledge and skills of their own. John Paul II masterfully engaged in politics as Pope in order to hasten the fall of Communism, and he made the world better -- and holier -- for it.
■ To understand and attend to politics is akin to understanding language or mathematics: As an essential tool of how the world is formed and how people live, from which abstention (or unaccountable naivete) only makes one not harmless, but potentially useless to communities of goodwill.