Hero Worship Deserves No Place in American Politics

The above title pretty much says it all: hero worship deserves no place in American politics.  When I hear someone getting downright giddy at the sound of a candidate's name while demonizing his or her opponents for no other reason than for having the nerve to run against their idol, it frankly creeps me out.  I'm afraid that this was the case with President Obama's two successful elections in 2008 and 2012.  I supported him in both years, but I went into it all knowing that he was a fallible human being like the rest of us, not a savior or know-it-all guru as some seem to have concluded.  Of course, if you were against him, he just might have been the devil incarnate as far as you were concerned...that, in a way, is also a form of worship, but it's villain worship instead of hero worship.  This 2016 presidential campaign, which began in earnest a year ago (much, much too early), has its own "heroes" that voters have placed high on pedestals in their minds, in my opinion emotionally bonding with them to a level that I find ridiculous and a little bit frightening.  Each party has one of them: the Republicans with Donald Trump and the Democrats with Bernie Sanders.  It disturbs me to see at their campaign rallies masses of fanatics who seem to have thrown away their own capacity to critically think for themselves in favor of riding on every word that comes out of their hero's mouth.  Not that all Trump or Sanders supporters are like this...remember I supported Obama but was capable of viewing him critically...but I can see a trend, and these two candidates give me pause...

You see, in American politics after all the voting is finished and the elected politicians begin their job of governing, you just might discover that the Presidency isn't the only game in town. We have a national Congress with a 100-member Senate and a 435-member House of Representatives, as well as state governors with their cabinets along with state and local legislatures.  But if you're a hero worshiper who just sees your one candidate as the be-all and end-all of everything, then you might well ignore all of these other crucial offices while you're floating high in the clouds, enamored with your guy.  And that's a big problem when whoever does get elected as the president needs elected officials from his or her own party to support the needed policies.  Trump and Sanders say they'll fix this or that problem, but in reality...in this American representative democracy...it takes a lot more than electing a charismatic chatterbox to get things done.  And that means supporting whichever party, to whose philosophy you most strongly subscribe, in all of those other important elections, especially for senator, representative, governor, and the like.  And Trump and Sanders are doing little or nothing to help out their parties with this important facet of the upcoming election.  I suspect that, if one of them does get elected, than many of those who voted for him will sit out future off-year elections in which he is not directly involved (this sadly happened with the off-year elections during Obama's administration).  And if they likewise lose their nominations, in Trump's case most likely to Ted Cruz and in Sander's to Hillary Clinton, then many of their supporters will angrily "pick up their toys and go home"...helping to ensure the general election defeat of the very party that would have more strongly supported their views on the issues...