Will You Support the President in 2013?

Depends who’s elected, you’re probably thinking to yourself. 

But, think about it.  Supporting a president you voted for is just getting what you want.  It doesn’t say anything about your commitment to a better future for our country.

I don’t mean to dismiss your heartfelt belief that one candidate is better than the other.  We should all do our best to understand the issues and decide who we want to support.  Then we should fight for what we believe in—speak out, work the precincts and contribute money if we can.

But the concept of a “loyal opposition” stands for the proposition that we can continue to work towards the type of government we want without demeaning the presidency and the country by attributing wickedness, stupidity or illegitimacy to the winner of the election.

When I was on executive staff of a Fortune 1000 company, the CEO had a rule.  Important decisions about the company’s direction (which product lines to pursue and which to drop, whether to restructure reporting lines of major units, etc.) would be made one of two ways: (i) exec staff consensus or (ii) CEO edict.  When exec staff was trying to reach consensus on one of these important decisions, people would fight like cats and dogs for their preferred outcome.  But the CEO had a rule:  Once the decision was made, everybody must agree not to sabotage it by complaining to their staff, delaying implementation or putting up road blocks.

I wish our American democracy had a rule like that.

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