Americans unite in being contrary

The highs and lows of the political season remind me of a riddle a friend posed a long time ago.

“What four words are sure to make a sad person happy and a happy person sad?” he asked.

I didn’t have a clue, but the answer made perfect sense:

This too shall pass.

It certainly shall. Especially in these United States, where the single unifying trait of citizens may be our capacity to be contrary.

This speaks well of us, actually. We are not a people to be pushed around or herded. Let a particular person, party or movement get too comfortable in the catbird seat, and watch the backlash begin.

Karl Rove should have known better than to go on with his silly talk of a “permanent Republican majority.” This is the nation that rejected monarchy from the outset; we are not about to let any leader or political party get too high and mighty for very long.

The signs of contrariness are all around us. Only 26 percent of Americans surveyed in a recent Gallup Poll said they were satisfied with the direction in which the country was headed. More people currently prefer the Democratic Party than the GOP.

The notion of shrinking government is out of steam; more than half the people recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center think government should help the needy.

Atheists and other nonbelievers are on the rise, partly in protest of having religious doctrine forced into political debate and public policy. Of course, what was the basis of the evangelical clout displayed this decade if not a revolt against the perceived dominance of secularism in the 1990s?

David Aikman, an author and journalist, took on the subject of atheism in a recent column in the magazine Christianity Today.

“Why a surge by atheists right now?” he asks. “One explanation could be ‘faith fatigue’ among skeptics and the hard-core Left, who ordinarily make up 15 percent of the American people. … After six years of a famously evangelical White House, the secularists have recovered from their repudiation at the polls and have come out swinging.”

I would argue that “faith fatigue” has spread far beyond the liberal intelligentsia. Not everybody is renouncing the deity, but plenty of folks in the middle are alarmed at attempts to downgrade evolution in science curriculums and restrict medical research on religious grounds.

“Another explanation is subtler,” Aikman continues in his column. “American evangelicals, we must admit, have not been immune to triumphal attitudes, arrogance, foolish public statements, and, sometimes, downright hypocrisy in personal behavior.”

Bingo.

Not to pick on evangelicals; what Aikman wrote holds true, sooner or later, for every group that drinks the intoxicating brew of power.

Coaches and sportswriters will tell you a team is at its sharpest and most cohesive when it’s working its way to the upper rung. Once there, the group loses focus. Bickering sets in. Players do arrogant and stupid things. The same can be said of presidents and their staffs, majorities in Congress, and special interests and their lobbyists.

Americans don’t suffer fools gladly; it’s another of our admirable traits. We’re adept at recognizing the point at which the lean and hungry champions of reform become the flabby defenders of an unworkable order.

A few years ago, a popular theory held that Americans had retreated into red and blue camps based on social and lifestyle issues.

That theory was wrong. Gun-packing Republicans and granola-munching Democrats are perfectly capable of forming alliances centered on mutual disgust with failed policies, corruption scandals and unnecessary wars.

Contrary we stand. Right now, in presidential politics, that’s good for the Democratic Party. But lest anyone grow giddy over the prospects, remember the lesson of the riddle:

This too shall pass.