With the national election coming up in just a few days, now is a good time to think briefly about the stuff of politics. Electing someone is one of the basic actions of politics—an activity all of us can get involved in. It’s one of the few times in which anyone over 18 years can “do something” that will eventually impact all of us, one way or another.

So, whenever I get uptight about politics, I think about that little book by Bernard Crick, “In defense of politics,” first published in 1962, but now in its fourth edition. It’s a book on politics, that’s also a lot of fun. Thoughtful--and unforgettable. And it’s more useful this season than many other political seasons of the past. Occasionally, the Brit way of talking gets in the way—especially if you’ve never read a Brit novel, like Pride and Prejudice or Oliver Twist. But it’s still fun right from the first chapter.
Just to get started, Crick emphasizes that politics is not a “set of fixed principles” for the near future, nor even some traditional habits to be preserved. It’s just an activity for a community that’s grown too complicated for its traditions or fixed principles.
Politics, he concludes is just an activity. Simple, eh??
But before he gets to the stuff, he wants you to know that politics is not a thing. Not a granite monument, or a painting—things that could exist if people didn’t have to continue working on them. Instead, he wants you to understand clearly that politics is an activity. A condition in which things are being done. It’s a pursuit—it’s always ongoing. You never get to the end of the journey. And it’s right at this point where the writer draws a brilliant comparison, an unforgettable comparison, a comparison that goes to the heart of the matter of politics.
Politics is like sex.
Both politics and sex are activities in which our personal understandings and experience make “formal principles” unnecessary. The experience is a lot better than the principles or truths you learn from books. Yeah, sex is a more widespread activity than politics.