Consider the vital duties of citizenship this year
Jefferson envisioned the model American as a “participator in the government of affairs” and solicitous of the common good
Presidential elections give us a chance to ask what type of leader we want in the White House. Perhaps 2020, a year in which we are facing the twin challenges of a global pandemic and an economic recession, is an opportunity to ask a more important question: What type of citizens do we want to be?
Thomas Jefferson envisioned the model American as a “participator in the government of affairs” — assertive, active and solicitous of the common good. What we have become, however, is a nation of clients, heavily dependent on the government without engaging in its process.
The space that citizens vacated long ago was filled by political parties, machine bosses and lobbyists who jockey for influence on behalf of factional interests. Most citizens today — even those who show up to vote — are little more than fans in the bleachers, cheering and booing the real players in American politics. A system intended to form a more perfect union has become instead an arena for vicious team sports and negative partisanship; policy discourse has been displaced by winner-take-all skirmishes.
What do we recommend? As educators at Christopher Newport University, training the next generation of leaders, we suggest a practicable return to the founders’ intent for citizenship. It entails three basic shifts in how we think about politics.
First, we as citizens need to start thinking about our government as a system of which we are an integral part. Instead of seeing the government as an entity separate from our own lives, we should each ask: Where do I fit within the web of decision-making that affects my life and freedom? For most of us this will mean getting a much firmer grasp on the ways in which various offices, from the county real estate assessor to the Supreme Court, impact us but also remain open to our influence.
The second mental shift follows from the first: It is for us to stop looking around for someone else to lead, and instead to practice leadership ourselves. Voting in elections is not civic leadership. If we are suspicious of government stocked with career public servants, then the answer is for a lot more of us to step up and serve.
Short of this, however, we could all afford to put in more appearances at school board meetings or at the city council; any citizen may join in public litigation to overturn laws they believe to be unjust, or file an amicus brief to the federal courts. Even protest — conscientious and sacrificial dissent — has played a vital role in shaping our republic from the beginning. Like any kind of exercise, simply by jumping in and trying to impact the system we can learn much about how it operates, and about better ways to exercise leadership within it.
The third mental shift is probably the hardest. Civic activism must be civic minded. The American system has more than enough politicking motivated by private interests or by narrow perspectives on the public good. Leadership entails working with those who are different from us toward a common purpose. If our only vision for the public square is adversarial — a zero-sum competition for public resources 3 then that is exactly how our system will continue to operate.
But big problems are not solved disjunctively. When it comes to pandemics, crime, substance addiction, clean water and air, human rights and a host of other large-scale challenges, you and I are not competing to win. If our system seems incapable of meeting these challenges, it might be because we as citizens are incapable of convergent leadership.
Far beyond the immediate crises it has triggered, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light a host of long-term challenges that the nation will have to address relating to health, public and private debt, deep social fissures and the functionality of American federalism. Skilled politicians will not be enough to address these challenges. We will need citizens who understand the system, who are willing to step up and lead, and who are capable of doing so for the common good.
William Donaldson is a management professor and expert on systems thinking. Nathan
Harter is a professor of leadership studies and expert on ethics and critical thinking. Benjamin Lynerd is a political science professor and democratic theorist. All three teach at Christopher Newport University in Newport News.