​Staying positive about politics

Over spring break, President Obama announced chief judge Merrick Garland from the D.C. Court of Appeals as his nomination for the Supreme Court after Justice Antonin Scalia passed away in mid-February. The nomination process immediately became politics as usual when Senate Republicans vowed to unconditionally prevent any nominee from being confirmed. Senate Republicans likely hope to secure a more conservative vote on the Supreme Court with a justice nominated by a Republican candidate who emerges victorious in November. This stubborn, political conflict is a symptom of a larger trend towards playing politics with issues, something noticed by many voters as early as the many debt ceiling crises of recent years.

Congress’s public unwillingness to reach across the aisle on this and other questions is deeply frustrating to many voters. Not all Congressional duties should be overshadowed by incessant politicking. When tasked with judging the competency and qualifications of any Supreme Court candidate, Congress ought to disregard his popularity among the legislative houses in terms of political positions and implications for upcoming cases. By muddling their jobs with political motivations, Congressmen garner disapproval from the public as the Pew Research Center finds a majority of Americans say Congress should hold hearings and vote on Obama’s nominee.

College students find these political maneuvers particularly frustrating with their boundless idealism and big dreams and visions for the world and its problems. Such political gambits lead students to distances themselves from political discussions to avoid disappointment in their representatives and national leadership. It perpetuates the popular trend among students that it is better to care about issues and particular arguments because politics are a mess of gridlock and backroom deals. Whether the root cause is electability or increasing party radicalization, the slow and controversial movements of Congress’s biggest headlines lead many of us to disenchantment. But we cannot allow these moments of frustration to define our entire view of the political landscape or of how political agency manifests.

Congress may not be able to move past this disagreement to go on to hold hearings for Garland, but this kind of stubbornness is nothing new from nominations to trade deals and other legislative negotiations. Disagreement itself is not a symptom of a poorly functioning Congress. It is the necessary mark of a representative one. We should not conflate in our minds dissatisfaction with aspects of political thinking and refining processes with an unwillingness to engage with dissenting opinions, as often as the two do overlap.

We cannot solve the world’s problems by forcing all the leaders who disagree to follow our advice exactly or to gather into a room and talk it all out. Our role in politics should be approached more humbly. Whether we have political aspirations or not, we must engage with political discourse with the acknowledgment that we do not have all of the answers and our leaders are far from perfect. We should aspire to spark more conversations about the nature of progress and our ideals for the future where we do not drown out the opinions we do not share. Our frustration with the today’s Congress is warranted, but we cannot push for them to change if we do not start with our keeping our attitudes forward-looking.