I’m guessing (hoping) many of you tuned into the first presidential debate last night, and if you’re anything like me, you probably cycled through a range of emotions from frustration and anger to despair and hope. Now I won’t get into my personal political views here—although I’d just like to reiterate that choosing between an unpredictable lunatic with the vocabulary of a 5-year-old and a history of discriminatory tendencies and zero political experience (or knowledge) and a proven policy expert with a lifetime of experience in public service shouldn’t be that difficult. But I digress.
Regardless of who you vote for in November, you have a responsibility to yourself and your country to be as informed as possible. First off, get your facts straight. It’s bad enough that politicians lie and conceal their meaning behind half-truths, but allowing yourself to be lied to is worse. Consult nonpartisan fact checking organizations to verify any and all claims. FactCheck and PolitiFact are both great resources, but there are others.
Second, read books about politics. Know the players AND the game. Here is a list of some of my favorites, in no particular order:
- On Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Republic by Plato
- Dark Money by Jane Mayer
- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
- The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
- The Fix by Jonathan Tepperman (just started but so far so good)
- The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
- The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Two Treatises of Government by John Locke
Some of these are difficult reads, but they should give you an outstanding foundation on which to approach political discourse. (And yes, I realize some of the above aren’t strictly about politics, but they’re relevant and revealing reads nonetheless.)
So now I ask our readers: What did you think of the first debate? What are some of your favorite political books?
