Cerebral Catholic Dad

I am watching North Carolina and Texas on this primary election night.

I’m sure my more committed conservative and progressive friends will think me Pollyannish or naive with this post, but here goes. 

One of my first memories of politics is watching the 1996 DNC and RNC with my dad. I was about 9, almost 10. I think my parents voted for Clinton that year, but I distinctly remember Dad telling me that Sen. Bob Dole was a war hero and a good man. I also remember being fascinated, and it being the first time my dad said, “Maybe one day you can be ‘Senator Lewis,’ bud. That’s the great thing about America—if you work hard, you can do just about anything you put your mind to.”

Today in Texas, Sen. John Cornyn, a reliable Conservative who votes with the President 99% of the time, is in a very close primary race with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a pugnacious figure who has spent his time in office filing lawsuits against 50-year-old disability rights statutes, under ethics investigations and impeachment by the GOP-controlled Texas legislature, and a messy, public divorce that his wife says is on “biblical grounds.” (For those who don’t know, that’s Evangelical parlance for “Ken has problems keeping his pants on.”) The race has come down to who is more “Trumpian”—the genial, but reliably Conservative Cornyn, or the pugnacious, outspoken Ken Paxton. 

Similarly, in North Carolina today, State Senate leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) faces a tough challenge from a horseback-riding, swashbuckling Rockingham County sheriff, Sam Page, who asserts that Berger, who has led the Republican senate majority in Raleigh since 2011 and has moved the state markedly rightward since, is a “RINO.”

Full disclosure—in 2012, I served as a staffer to Sen. Peter Brunstetter (R-Forsyth), who was part of Berger’s leadership team and a very astute and honest Air Force veteran, partner in a top southeastern law firm, and a no-nonsense guy who did his job and went home. I still respect Sen. Brunstetter immensely. 

Lest one thinks only the GOP is dealing with internal divisions, U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC), whose sons my sister and I grew up with in Chapel Hill, is facing a challenge from the left, as are two Black State Legislators in NC. 

I’ve literally known Rep. Foushee since I was 5 years old, when I was in Head Start with her younger son. I’ll be 40 this year. Foushee is no conservative in the same manner that Berger and John Cornyn are no liberals, but politics today seems to be a contest to see how extreme and intransigent both major political parties can get, and how quickly. 

If anyone was still hoping for a return to a politics of “normalcy” in 2028, I’ve got oceanfront property in Wyoming that you may be interested in buying. 

I’m not sure how replacing Phil Berger in Raleigh or Valerie Foushee in Congress with a more ideologically “pure” candidate is going to result in any policies that are measurably more conservative or progressive given the replacements would be backbenchers with no seniority, but I get the sense that, as former U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner wrote in his memoir, many politicians on both sides of the aisle these days are far more interested in “making a statement” and being booked on Hannity or Lawrence O’Donnell on any given night than they are in actual public service and solutions to national issues that serve the interest of the common good. 

Alas, such is the age of social media and clickbait. Partisan outrage raises much more money than solving problems. 

I didn’t really get interested in politics again after that until I was in high school, after 9/11 happened. 

I began as a freshman in high school, what my oldest sister, born in 1974, called my “Alex Keaton” phase, which would last well into my 30s. I took out subscriptions to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal using what little money I made working as a lunch shift host at the Spotted Dog, a restaurant in Carrboro, NC, at which I would work off and on until I was 26 and moved to Virginia. 

I suppose in many ways, I still am, like Alex Keaton from the 1980s sitcom Family Ties, an old man at heart-I love a physical newspaper, a nice Brooks Brothers suit, and lively discussion……my coworkers were scandalized the first time they saw me without a coat and tie. But I digress.

I was very close to my grandparents growing up, who were devout Catholics and political conservatives who had become increasingly Republican after abortion rights became a part of the Democratic Party’s doctrine in the 1980s. Prior to that, they had been your typical stalwart, blue-collar, Boston Irish-Catholic FDR and JFK Democrats. For their generation, the Church was the center of their life, and they could no longer reconcile their Catholic faith with the increasingly leftward drift of the Party they had supported for decades.  Politics was an interest I shared especially with my late grandfather, with whom I spoke at least once a week until he passed away in 2020.

Most who knew me in high school and well into my early 30s can tell you that I exuded a very cocky, rigidly black-and-white view of politics and religion, and could be very alienating and off-putting. 

Looking back at my younger years, I am very grateful that the adults who care about me and love me—parents, relatives, teachers, mentors, and friends—tolerated my intense idealism and narrow focus for so long, even though I’m certain that I drove them to distraction at times. 

Around the same time, I became interested in policy and politics, and my teachers noticed my writing ability. Naturally, I started writing about politics. I wasn’t an athlete and didn’t really have any hobbies. I went through a very long period of trying to figure out my place in the world. I had been told I was good with the written word, so I ran with it and began writing opinion pieces for the school newspaper. I continued that throughout college. Oftentimes, my efforts at sarcasm and humor came off as abrasive and arrogant; I was often told not to paint with a broad brush and that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. 

It took me a while to absorb those lessons, but better late than never, right?

As I’ve gotten older and become a parent, I’m thankful that my upbringing in a university town exposed me to people from all different backgrounds, cultures, religions, creeds, and races. Chapel Hill is definitely a dot of progressivism in deep red North Carolina, so I had exposure to diversity on one hand, and to my more conservative relatives, some of whom are devout Catholics and others who are businessmen, on the other. The skill of being able to communicate with individuals across the spectrum, before social media poisoned society, has served me very well in my life and my career as an advocate. 

Sadly, our algorithm-driven social discourse has siloed us all off and rendered us incapable of having friendships or even conversations with people who have different perspectives and views than we do. I’d venture to say that social media is also the driving force behind intraparty primary battles between those looking to get things done and more extreme purists seeking a larger platform from which to hear the echo of their own voices. 

Experiences of job loss, having to rely on public benefits, and other humbling circumstances have made me realize that it’s quite ok to sit by yourself and not be a staunch partisan. It’s definitely gotten me criticism from friends and acquaintances on both sides who are deeply committed to their political affiliations and can’t figure me out sometimes. 

Rigid views of politics often lead nowhere good—as a perfect example, there are plenty of people on both the left and the right who seem to believe with a religious fervor that only their ideological opponents are implicated in the Epstein files. 

I’ve seen people on the right refuse to criticize anything that President Trump does, as well as folks on the left who take any disagreement with their worldview as a personal attack. 

I find both instances extremely tedious and tiresome. I reckon I’m not alone. 

As for me, I plan to keep interacting with and learning from my acquaintances, colleagues, friends, and relatives across the spectrum. I find it makes life interesting, keeps me on my toes, and sharpens my intellect. 

I remember the time before the ubiquity of social media, when having principles didn’t preclude fruitful friendships or sow suspicion and animosity among friends and even family. 

I hope I can show my children the old world the way it was shown to me.