This piece originally appeared in The Hill.
Mercifully, the 2024 election has finally come to a close. Good riddance.
This fractious, divisive and emotionally exhausting spectacle is behind us at last. Now it’s time to move on — not just from the candidates and the campaign, but from the entire enterprise of politics itself. What we need is not merely a temporary respite from partisan warfare, but a fundamental reassessment of politics’ proper place in American life.
Our founders understood this imperative well. As John Adams famously remarked, he had “studied War and Politics” so that his “children might have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”
The implication was clear: Politics was a necessary evil, to be endured so that the true work of living could commence. They saw political engagement not as an end in itself, but as the scaffolding upon which a rich civil society could be built.
Yet somewhere along the way, we have lost sight of this fundamental truth. Politics has become an all-consuming obsession, a Leviathan that threatens to swallow up every aspect of our lives. We wake up to it, we go to bed with it, and in between, it dominates our conversations, our social media feeds and our very sense of self. The result is a peculiarly modern form of voluntary servitude — we have become willing prisoners of our own political obsessions.
Enough.
It’s time to remember that there is so much more to life than the endless tug-of-war between left and right, red and blue. There are the joys of family, the wonder of nature, the thrill of discovery, the solace of faith, the challenge of intellectual pursuit, the camaraderie of community — all the rich tapestry of human experience that lies beyond candidates and campaigns. These pursuits, not political warfare, are what give life its texture and meaning.
These are the things that our Founders sought to protect and preserve when they designed a system of government limited in scope, constrained in power. They never intended for politics to become the sole focus of our attention, the lens through which we view the world. Indeed, they would likely view our current political monomania as a kind of civic pathology, a distortion of their original vision.
The tragedy is that our obsession with politics has not made us better citizens, but worse ones. The more we focus on political conflict, the less capable we become of the very virtues — prudence, moderation, wisdom — that make democratic self-governance possible. We have confused the means with the ends, mistaking the machinery of democracy for its purpose.
As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s worth reflecting on the wisdom of another American leader who recognized the importance of stepping back from political turmoil. In 1863, at the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday, calling on the country to come together in “the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union.”
Lincoln understood that even in the midst of profound national strife, there were deeper wells of meaning and purpose to which we must return. The bounty of the harvest, the fellowship of family and community — these were the wellsprings that could sustain us, if only we had the courage to look beyond the relentless conflicts of the moment. His wisdom speaks across the centuries to our own politically saturated age.
So as we gather around the table this Thanksgiving, let us heed the lessons of our history and rediscover the fullness of life that has always been our truest inheritance. For it is only by stepping back from the ballot box that we can reclaim the joys, the wonders, and the higher callings that make us truly human.
The election is over. Let us give thanks for that — and then let us move on to better things.
