Kansas primary tells a clear story

We are used to elections being celebrated as the key to democratic self-government. In practice, though, elections often leave us feeling drained and frustrated.

Why? We regularly turn what should be straightforward elections into drawn-out, expensive, confusing processes.

In our ideologically divided country, we often see results that are very close, with partisans challenging the rules from beginning to end, winners claiming ridiculous mandates, losers showing bitter animosity, and ambivalent voters feeling targeted right and left. It’s enough to make some wish we could govern ourselves by some other means besides letting the people themselves choose who their governors shall be.

Fortunately, every once in a while there is an election like Tuesday’s primary, which restores some confidence in these tools we have created to turn the will of the people into actual political legitimacy.

Why the good feeling about this past primary? Not necessarily because of the results (though I won’t deny that I’m personally very pleased by them, and I think most sensible Kansans ought to be also). What was good about this election was that its results were consistent enough to be able to look at what nearly 400,000 Kansas voters throughout the state did with their ballots, and make some real sense of it.

There was a clear story which came out of this election, and that is a valuable thing.

What was this story? That a majority of Republican voters want to be represented by conservatives who are also practical. From the federal level down through state legislative races all the way to county contests, the results showed Republican voters looking to bring back the nonideological, non-chest-thumping, non-fight-picking, practical conservatives of Kansas’ past. Conservatives who may well agree with the majority of Gov. Sam Brownback’s opinions but who are also capable of showing common sense, rather than uncompromising simplemindedness, on such complicated issues as education funding, income taxes, agriculture policy, health care and more.

The history of democracies is filled with instances in which elections really do tell a consistent story about the desires of voters – and yet the governments in office remain unresponsive. That may yet be the case here in Kansas.

So the consistency of the story told Tuesday has an asterisk beside it; it won’t be until November, and the legislative session beyond it, that the remainder of the story may be told.

But for now, this was one of those moments in which the issues were clear enough, and the results consistent enough, to know what a majority of the people of Kansas really do want – namely, less ideology and more responsibility.

Stories like that are ones that can be worked with. Let’s hope Topeka does so.

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 12:04 AM with the headline "Kansas primary tells a clear story."