A very long time ago, I put in a month on jury duty. The law was since changed to limit tours to a day or a trial, but back then, jury duty meant getting your employer to give you a month’s leave of absence. This was rarely a problem; in fact, most employers supplemented your court per diem to make you whole.
The most memorable thing about my month’s tour in the jury pool was my discovery that my fellow man, though not always reliable as an individual, was completely trustworthy as a group of twelve. There was something about the gravity of the situation (my tour included a case of homicide) that brought out the very best in man. You come to know your fellow jurors pretty well after weeks of chatting, having lunch together, and swapping stories, and, inevitably, you find that some of them are a bit rough around the edges. But put twelve of them on a jury, and a miraculous thing happens: Everyone assumes a higher dignity, a refined sense of responsibility, a rationality that would have been impossible without the special chemistry of the jury.
That experience informed my attitude about the American electorate. I believe that, no matter how many attacks one hears and how many whackos among the candidates, the American public as a group can be relied on to deliver the goods. The larger the voter turnout, the better the odds. A five- or six-man jury is not as trustworthy as a dozen.
Much is made of voter polarization these days, and many people will indeed vote emotionally rather than logically. But the sum total will, like a jury verdict, be a true expression of the public's best reading of the situation at hand. As a compass, you just can’t beat it.
So let’s not hear any Wednesday morning quarterbacking about how voters were deceived by lies or mountains of evil money. The voters en masse will have done a good job.
