Boyd Matheson: It is time to choose the present

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As we enter the waning days of the 2024 election season it is time — to talk about time. In fascinating ways, our political campaigns have become about time.

Politicians are often brilliant at playing with time. And far too often voters and citizens believe that, somehow, elected officials and those running for office can control time.

Now, I spent years as a business consultant trying to convince executives and employees that there really is no such thing as “time management.”

By definition, manage means to hold, mold, shape or form. It means to control, influence, or have direct control over. None of which you can do with time. You can’t hold time. Neither can you shape it or form it. You can’t influence it to speed it up or control it and slow it down. You really can’t manage time.

Instead, I believe in choice management because you can manage your choices and what you choose to do at any moment — in the present.

Time and choice management in politics

So, what does time and choice management have to do with the 2024 political season?

In a brilliant essay for Christianity Today, Myles Werntz cautioned that time is not, should not, and must not become a political promise.

Werntz described what politicians and candidates are doing with time saying, “This promise takes different forms for different politics. Some candidates pledge to bring a better future. Others say they’ll return us to a better past. The direction of the promise matters less than the fact of it. Once we have decided that time can be thus managed, it’s just a matter of picking which time we prefer.”

As an example, Werntz pointed out how the two leading contenders in this year’s presidential election have particularly obvious, dueling notions of time. “The Harris campaign’s catchphrase, “We’re Not Going Back,” rejects the past, while the Trump campaign’s promise to “Make America Great Again” lurches in reverse. Despite their policy divides, both campaigns trade on dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and both look to some other time as the solution.”

Werntz concluded, “As a political strategy, it’s effective. Discontent with the present, Americans ask when, if ever, life was better than this—and both candidates have a ready answer. Former President Donald Trump’s reply is a particular rendering of the past, one that omits historical wrongs and insists old greatness can be recaptured. Vice President Kamala Harris peers into the mists of the future. She may not be able to offer certainty about what the future holds, but whatever its challenges, she assures, it’ll be better than what’s behind us.”

Neither of these political strategies is the answer to what ails the country and cannot provide the solutions the nation actually needs.

The potential danger of backward-facing mantras

Backward-facing mantras of past success, disconnected from the present, only provide of form of cheap nostalgia and often false hope. Likewise, dredging up the grievances of the past might help justify our current anger and angst, fear and frustration about present problems — but nothing more. Truly the good old days have been and gone and are impossible to bring back and rehashing past wrongs breeds bitterness and contempt, but does nothing to improve the present.

It is true that we should learn from the past, lean on the principles that propelled freedom, justice, self-government and upward mobility. But we have to apply those principles in practical and pragmatic ways — today!

An old proverb says, “A society grows great when old men [and women] plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” You cannot go back and plant that shade tree 20 years ago, or 10 years ago or even yesterday. You can only plant a shade tree in the present of today.

Likewise, you cannot “grow great” and plant shade trees tomorrow or in some far-off distant time or place. It also has to be done today.

Roman Krznaric, a public philosopher and former political scientist is challenging citizens and political leaders around the world to abandon the fantasy that comes from an irresponsible “colonizing of the future.” He wrote in the BBC:

The time has come to face an inconvenient reality: that modern democracy — especially in wealthy countries — has enabled us to colonize the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please. When Britain colonized Australia in the 18th and 19th Century, it drew on the legal doctrine now known as terra nullius – nobody’s land – to justify its conquest and treat the indigenous population as if they didn’t exist or have any claims on the land. Today our attitude is one of tempus nullius. The future is an ‘empty time’, an unclaimed territory that is similarly devoid of inhabitants. Like the distant realms of empire, it is ours for the taking.”

The delusion of empty political promises

Empty political promises in the empty time of the future are delusional and often irresponsible. Sometimes the sweeping generalities of such political promises keep us a safe distance from solving real problems and planting those shade trees for future generations.

A society “growing great” should be the objective of every leader at every level of government, business and community. Growing great includes the kind of prosperity that strengthens the institutions of civil society, increases opportunity, and maximizes upward economic mobility. Such greatness is only to be had when “old men” (which includes women and men currently leading) put the principles of past success and future-focused visions to work in the present.

The value of focusing on the long view

To win the immediate election or political battle it is easy to breathlessly proclaim the need to go back to what once was or declare hollow and empty promises and policy proposals that are never likely to see the light of day. It is easy to declare a prospective tax cut. It’s easy to excitedly promote the interests of well-funded special interests to secure campaign donations. It is easy to passionately proclaim freebies including college tuition, healthcare, and guaranteed income. Also easy to poke holes in the past, undermine trust and sew doubt about the future. But if our leaders are “mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with their present political problems, there is no energy left for truly imagining America’s future” — today!

If we want America to continue on the path of “growing great” as a society we all need to focus on the long-view efforts that will “… plant trees whose shade we know we shall never sit in,” — today!

When it comes to political time perhaps one politician, Ronald Reagan, got it right when he said that it wasn’t a time to go back to the distant past, nor was it a time to leap into the far-off future. It wasn’t a time to go to the political left or the political right. He simply declared that it was time to choose. A time to choose — that is Something you can only do in the present. Reagan declared that what people choose to do today is what will ultimately impact that future rendezvous with destiny.

The work of the present

Reagan concluded that our choices today, in the present, will, “…preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” Such a choice is always the work of the present.

Winston Churchill said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.” So there is a time for choosing duty — in the present.

Leaders can remind us of past greatness and success. Leaders can give us a compelling vision of the future and what is possible. But leadership only happens in the present. Choosing leaders who will do the hard work and heavy lifting of governing today are the leaders worth following and voting for – because true leadership only happens in the present – and it is time for each of us and all of us to choose.

Boyd Matheson is the host of Inside Sources on KSL NewsRadio. Follow him on X and LinkedIn.