The Lesson Ted Cruz Taught Us

Just like the words in the pre-Revolutionary War song written by John Dickinson, “United we stand, divided we fall.” I agree with whatever the author says in his commentary, but I also kind of disagree with the high standard he set for the politicians.

        The main goal of a political party is to win the election, so as to have a seat in the legislation house, or even win the presidential election. Therefore, it is important to prioritize things. This kind of thing happened in Taiwan too. The candidates of different parties fought for the nomination and spoke ill about each other. However, when the nominees of different parties are decided through the survey, the rivals that lost in the poll in their parties will come back to support them, and very often, the words and issues used by the rivals that lost the poll in their respective parties become the ammunition of the rival parties in the campaign. However, there is no way to do it privately because the parties need to find out which candidate can win the most votes from their supporters. Therefore, either the party has only one nominee, or they have to go through all the fierce (or nasty) debates to find out the nominee that can get the most votes out of their supporters.

        The reason I said I disagree with the high standard the author set for the politician is that I think we do the thing that Ted Cruz did all the time in our lives, and it, prioritization, is a very important “survival” skills we need. Take our U.S. government for an example, how many of us would really read through all the assigned readings thoroughly and digested what we read in order to know every detail about the confederation, federation and constitution from the assigned readings backward and forward? I believe none of us would have the time to read them all because most of us do more than one subject, have a job, or even have a family to take care of; therefore, very often we have to cut right to the point by studying the “study guide” to save us a lot of time. The idealists can always argue that if you only study the “study guide” you won’t be able to have a comprehensive understanding about U.S. government, and that is not the purpose or ideal way of learning. However, most of us who have been through many years of education would know that it is almost impossible to gain so much knowledge in a short time. Sometimes it would take years to build up enough knowledge to make a difference in the way we think or change our life. Therefore, we might spend some time doing the assigned reading, but it would be stupid of us if we are still doing the reading I cannot finish a week before the exam without looking for the answers to the questions on the study guide. I don’t think it is smart to fail the exams and try to finish the reading to get a lot of knowledge that cannot answer the questions in the exams. That is how we survive in all the courses in college, even though we know it is not the “ideal” way of learning, but learning is like a marathon, we will keep learning after the end of the semester; therefore, we will touch on what we have heard in the lecture before if we keep learning, but if we do not keep learning, we will forget everything we learned in the class no matter how much reading I have done in the class.

        It is the same for the politicians. The goal of the politicians from the same party, same faction or same interest group, is to win the power through election. Losing the election will lead to the marginalization of the party, and the party will end up having no voice in the government; therefore, sadly, the members of the same party will have to collaborate with others in the same party to win the election no matter how much they hate the nominees of the party if it is statistically proven they have the best chance to win the elections. It is not the most ideal way to deal with the disagreement, but it is definitely the only best way for the party to win the election, which is the same as the way we study in the sense that we learn the knowledge that is most likely to be present in the exam and leave the knowledge that is less likely to be present in the exam to later time to study. This is why I think what the author says is politically correct but not practical or realistic. When I was doing my Certified Nursing Course three months ago, our instructor also told us what we should do in the “test world” and what we should do in the “real world” because the “test world” can only be used in the ideal world, which has never existed. Therefore, I can totally understand and accept what Ted Cruz is doing right now. All we, citizens (when I am only a resident), have to do is pay close attention to the platforms of the two American president candidates, Hillary and Trump, and figure which candidate would be the better president for the United States. I am not saying the best or correct president because I know both candidates are loved and hated by many people and both of them have some positive and negative things to be discussed, but we just have to pick the less evil one of them to be the president. That is also a compromise that coincide with my opinion against the author’s theory because if we do not vote for the one we dislike less, we are giving the one we dislike more a better chance to win, and from the author’s point of view, we should not vote for either of them because they both have some issues that might hurt the democracy or human right values of the country.