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Monday, November 03, 2008
Deranged
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I had know about it for some time, but I was first confronted with The Syndrome in 2004. I had penned a column -- which in most respects was carefully balanced -- that included critical statements of Democratic candidate John Kerry and praised President Bush on some point. The piece did not include any contact information and it was not a publication that included a space for reader comments. The morning it appeared, I received an email from someone I did not know. "You disgust me," it began, and went on to describe what an idiot I was. I can't go into greater detail because I did not save the note. Suffice to say, the writer, who had gone to some trouble to find my email address, was incensed that I had anything positive to say about president Bush whatsoever. Indeed, the reader's ire was driven more by that, than by any criticism I might have leveled at Kerry.
Conservative commentators have for some years now observed a general "Bush Derangement Syndrome," in which the mere mention of President Bush's name generates such irrational vitriol that it's almost funny (until you get to be its target). More recently, we've seen a bit of "Palin Derangement Syndrome" and even a smattering of "McCain Derangement Syndrome." Ordinarily rational friends and acquaintances will simply lose it at the mention of one of these odious figures, and say the most amazing things.
However, these derangement syndromes are not at all the sole province of liberals and Democrats. My conservative friends are just as prone to bouts of insanity. In one generally conservative outlet in which I occasionally run columns, I have observed that if I merely mention Sen. Obama's name, I am guaranteed to see comments that just go right off the deep end. And, if I want readers to tell me I'm an idiot and to question my motives and patriotism, I need only praise Obama in some slight way -- or, just as bad, fail to criticize him sufficiently.
These episodes point to a broad, troubling trend in American politics. We are losing, ever more with each election, the ability to differentiate an opponent from an enemy. The stakes seem to be ratcheted up ever higher and the "grassroots" seem to go from being an electorate to a mob.
I place the lion's share of the blame for this on the political professional class. These are the people who make their living at manipulating public opinion -- political consultants, "party strategists," and a number of media personalities who trade in invective, ridicule, and fear. Both sides of the aisle are just filthy with them. These folks are good at what they do. They move people -- spur them to give, spur them to rallies, spur them to vote. They do it by villifying the other side until they go from "opponent" to "enemy."
What's the difference? An opponent is someone I hope to beat -- but the integrity of the game is ultimately more important than the outcome. One of us will win and, we will each go our ways.
An enemy, though, is someone who must be vanquished. Facing an "enemy," it's kill or be killed.
As this year's campaign has drawn on, positions have hardened and now most citizens feel it is "very important" that their candidate win. The share of citizens who say this has increased tremendously over just six months ago.
Just about half of the nation will wind up disappointed. What will they do? Will they be able to carry on honorably? Or will they stick "not my president" decals on their bumpers and do a slow burn?
Looking at the aftermath of the last three or four presidential elections, it's a fair bet that we'll see the latter. What will it take for us to take the outcome just a little less seriously, so that we can take democracy itself a little more seriously?Labels: politics
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Saturday, November 01, 2008
What If It Were More Than An Infomercial?
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 If you are reading this, you are not the target of Senator Obama's 30-minute media buy. Which surely means, since I am writing, that neither am I the target. Good thing, too -- I was disappointed.
Oh, sure, my eyes teared up at the right moments, and I enjoyed the homespun blues guitar. As commercials go, it was fine. And as infomercials go, it was a knockout. What I am disappointed by, on behalf of the civic life of America, is the squandered opportunity.
Set aside, for the moment, whom you prefer to vote for (or have already voted for) in the upcoming "historic presidential election." The fact remains that one candidate is so dominating the current electoral scene that he is able to insert a 30-minute unfiltered message into almost all of prime time. He is a candidate who looks and talks differently than most other political figures cluttering the landscape. His charisma is undeniable, recalling orators of yore. He's smart.
At his best, this candidate preaches (and it is preaching) a kind of politics that rests on a partnership between the leaders and the led, where citizens aren't customers of government but are citizens, who hold responsibilities as well as rights. This at times seems a revolutionary idea, coming as it does at a time when politics itself seems exhausted, the rhetoric ground down by the accretion of promise after promise.
Americans know that they themselves can do better, that they can be better citizens. I hear it as I talk to people throughout the nation. Most would grade themselves a "B" in terms of citizenship, if that. They're waiting for an invitation to step up, and many observers see Obama's candidacy as just such an opportunity.
But he played it safe, sticking to the well-worn talking points and really, it seems, just hoping to make his points through repetition. I guess it is hard to fault someone in Sen. Obama's position for steering a course that minimizes mistakes. After all, he's trying to close the deal, and that's a job not yet done.
But imagine if Sen. Obama's campaign had instead seen these thirty minutes as an opportunity -- not for his own campaign, but for the American people. He might have taken a different tack.
He might have gathered ten Americans from different walks of life -- including, especially, people with whom he disagrees -- and had a conversation with them. During this conversation he might not have spent the time trying to sell his candidacy, but instead to give voice to ordinary people, to probe what they want the public square to look and feel like. He could have even asked them: What will you do, to make this a better nation? This could have been a moment in which to make manifest the very deal Obama seems to want between government and citizens, an equal partnership.
Or, maybe, he might have spent the time weighing the relative merits of his and his opponent's world views. He might have asked a co-host to present opposing views not in a demonic way, but with their best feet forward. After all, Sen. McCain is a serious person and his proposals are worth taking seriously. Why not examine them at their best, and explain why notwithstanding their good points, Obama would go in another direction? And why not point out the downsides of Obama's own proposals – for everyone knows that there are upsides and downsides. This would just be leveling with the American people and telling them what they already know in their gut: there is no silver bullet and no one answer is undeniably the right one. This could have been a moment when the American electorate were finally being treated as the grown-ups they are.
Instead, Sen. Obama's campaign chose to sell us a grill and a set of knives. It probably did his campaign good and it's unlikely that it hurt.
But it could have been so much more.Labels: obama, pjm, politics
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Monday, September 22, 2008
Main Street: Already Lost
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I am not sure who is going to win this year's presidential election campaign, but I already know who the loser will be. It's the same sap who's come out on the short end for the last two decades and more: the person on Main Street.
Wait, you say. Hasn't this election begun to turn on "populism?" Isn't Joe Biden the Working Man? Isn't Sarah Palin the Hockey Mom?
Well, sure they are, but populism is not Main Street. Populism -- the way it's being practiced today -- is all about anger and cultural warfare. Washington, Wall Street, bad. Wal Mart, Target, good.
A recent column by Bob Beckel and Cal Thomas in USA Today has them taking a stab at finding common ground. "The idea of a culture war seems so 1990s, doesn't it?" says one. The other frets, "We're in danger of heading down that pothole-filled road once again." Having expressed their preference for reasonableness, the two spend the rest of the column bickering about whether Americans want more health care or less same-sex marriages. They argue over who started the "culture wars" and who is to blame for continuing them. Finally, almost an afterthought, they find something they seem to be able to agree on, and that is that a presidential election is not the place to find "quieter moments of reflection . . . with honest give and take."
That, in a nutshell, is where we are at. Even people who are trying to find common ground can't quite do so. We talk past one another, our rhetoric filled with anger and finger pointing, until finally we come upon a dispirited realization: that presidential campaigns are no longer designed around the idea of helping citizens make a choice as to who should lead, but instead are built on a foundation of warfare. I win, you lose. Just as war has evolved from arranged battles to guerrilla asymmetries, so too have campaigns shifted from debates to shin-kicks.
Where candidates used to "stand" for election, they now "run." Where they used to seek to "govern," they now say the seek office in order to "fight."
Even within the campaigns (and, more stridently, the supporters) of Senators MccCain and Obama -- of which each man can be made a strong case that they are willing and able to work across divides, placing results ahead of party interest -- neither can seem to refrain from phony outrage and disgusting taunts.
Twenty years ago the political world laid hold of the power of organized fear in the image of Willie Horton which in part sunk Michael Dukakis' candidacy for president. While not the first campaign ad to play on base emotion, it is widely regarded as the archetype. Since then, it's gotten worse each year. Scare tactics are now the norm, not just in commercials but in almost every campaign communication. And they are not limited to one political party.
This leaves the folks on Main Street in the lurch. It literally perverts them by, playing on their base instincts of fear, hatred, and their urge to support their team at all costs. They see higher stakes, more dire consequences, more reason for outrage, than reality would dictate -- all because the machinery of politics cynically eggs them on. My side is attacked – I must hit back and hard. People, under such pressure, tend to lose their equanimity and act more like face-painted sports fans at the Big Game. They've been ginned up, whipped into a frenzy.
I recently had the opportunity to eavesdrop on a political conversation between adolescent children. Depending on who was talking, each candidate by turns would "stop terrorists," "end global warming," "lower gas prices," or "stop the war." Neither candidate can actually do any of these things. Yet these comments are exactly in line with what we hear daily out on the street, as we circulate through life.
Gone is the sense that we are making a decision, weighing options. In its stead is the building-up of our team and the eviscerating of their team.
People on Main Street, meanwhile, are left with little else to do but go along with the mob, or check out of public life.
Little wonder so many pick the latter option.Labels: elections, mccain, obama, politics
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Monday, June 16, 2008
Google Me.
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 Senator John McCain's campaign has "abruptly canceled" a fundraiser that had been set to take place at the home of a Texas oilman. The host, Clayton Williams, had run for governor against Ann Richards back in 1990 and, during the campaign, unfortunately at one point compared the weather to a rape -- "as long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it." He was trying to be funny. It wasn't. These words were picked up by the media and by Richards' campaign and Williams lost.
In canceling their fundraiser, McCain's campaign spokesman said, "These were obviously incredibly offensive remarks that the campaign was unaware of at the time this event was scheduled." Now the questions begin: Should he give back the money? How will this affect the campaign? What will Obama do? Shouldn't he have known? That last question is, perhaps, worth thinking about. There's a long and proud American tradition of political figures getting torpedoed by words and deeds from the past. Often it is some sort of nominee whose inane or insane remarks from their youth get unearthed. Or weird academic writings that had been read by maybe seven Ph.D.s come to light. Or the figure has a vulgar sense of humor (like our man Williams). Or a family member has a checkered past. Opponents pounce on such things, and that's understandable. But in the past, the test in people's living rooms has been: how does the principal deal with the revelations? For some high-profile nominees, such as for positions that require Senate confirmation, we are dumbfounded that the offense had not come up in the background checks, but for less weighty things there's this sense of sympathy. You can't know everything about everybody. But now that's changed. Really, it's hard not to know more about most people than they would like to have known. Take that fellow who ran for Texas governor and tripped up the Senator from Arizona. One Google search yields his Wikipedia entry as the #2 hit. Wikipedia (and this was current as of March 27), highlights the offending remark. OK, some purists say Wikpedia is prone to manipulation, so follow one more link to the source article. There it is, the remark and the ensuing controversy. That "research" took sixty seconds, including reading time. Yet, the McCain campaign treats the remark as if it was some obscure thing they could not have possibly known. The only way the campaign could have been "unaware of" the remark "at the time the event was scheduled" would be if no one actually looked into who this guy was. Probably a better response from the Straight Talk Express would have been: "We were moving too fast and just didn't do our homework." This isn't just McCain's problem. Senator Barack Obama's campaign has been plagued by similar Google-blindness and tin-ear moves. James Johnson, the consummate insider, reviewing the Running Mates of Change? Please. Tony Rezko, radioactive fundraiser and neighbor selling a strip of vacant land to the senator from Illinois? He was "glowing" at the time of the sale, under investigation by Federal prosecutors. And for intemperate, embarrassing remarks, see the entry under Rev. Wright. Senator Obama's response to criticism that he should have known about Johnson's sweetheart mortgage deals was: "[E]verybody . . . who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships. I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters." This is a classic line. If there is justice, "vetter to vet the vetters" will enter pop culture and get screened onto American Apparel basic T's. At least it deserves something on the Colbert Report. But he does have a point. Johnson's apparently too-cozy Countrywide mortgages came to light (through an article in the Wall Street Journal) only after he was named Chief Vetter. While there are many things that a campaign ought to know, there are just as many things about supporters that campaigns can't know. And the means for many of these things to come to the fore are firmly entrenched in the landscape. Look no further than sites like Pajamas Media. The only certainty, then, is that things will come to light. Candidates need to both up their game and prepare for the mistakes they will definitely make. It won't pass muster to say you didn't know something anyone can find out in less than a minute. But, as former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld pointed out (and for which wisdom he was unfairly ridiculed), there are known unknowns. That is to say, candidates can bet on embarrassing revelations about their supporters, even if they do not yet know, and cannot yet know, what they are. How will the campaigns respond? Circle the wagons? Or -- perhaps too much to ask from the Candidate of Believable Change or from Camp Straight Talk -- with straightforward candor?
Labels: mccain, obama, pjm, politics
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Monday, March 24, 2008
What I Would Say To Eliot
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I wonder what I would say to Eliot Spitzer if he were my neighbor.
 Watching his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, in that first hastily-called press conference, I thought to myself, That's a deep wound he's left. Eliot Spitzer apparently took extraordinary actions to get what he wanted, jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop put in his way by his contact at Emperor's Club VIP. The payments they requested ratcheted up and up with each telephone call, if the affidavits from the wiretaps are to be believed. It seems clear this is not the only time he's been a customer at such an establishment. It's hard to argue that it was a momentary weakness. The facts are quite damning. They get worse the more we learn.
Preamble aside, here's what he said he planned to do in his initial announcement: "I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."
That seemed a tall order to me then, and it still does. It is likely to take a bit more than "some" time.
Many say Spitzer's troubles are quite pleasing because of their irony. Spitzer was known as a crusader, with a carefully cultivated squeaky clean image, and with few friends, so this episode goes beyond a simple john-caught-in-a-sting story. Indeed, even the admissions of marriage on-on-the-rocks dalliances years ago by his successor, and even racier ones emerging from the neighboring Garden State somehow don't carry the same weight. Roger L. Simon called it correctly when he pointed out: "The outcry against Spitzer was not because he was some man seeing a prostitute, but because he was a guy who puts prostitutes in jail seeing a prostitute."
But, I'm putting aside for a moment the laws, his political career, and his storied lack of allies. I neither despise his policies nor particularly applaud his successes.
Instead, at a distance, it is possible to think of him as a man who is a husband and a father, whom I have to believe will want to try to make amends to his wife. At least, that's what he says.
A measure of compassion -- not for him, but for the spot he is in -- emerged as I heard the line about his plans to "dedicate some time" to regain his family's trust. As if it is a project to be tackled over the weekend, or a gardening holiday. It sounded like the desperate hope of any male who thinks he can just focus in and fix things. But anyone with close relations to any other human being, and especially people who have hurt, or been hurt, knows that such pain does not go away quickly. Breached trust is not regained after just "some time." It takes much longer. And it takes a much different attitude.
Watching, I placed myself in his shoes, listening to that press conference. What must it be like to be caught so very publicly and red-handed, to have to ask your wife of twenty-one years to accompany you to the dais, to desperately want the clock to turn back? A living nightmare.
Hate the sin, love the sinner. What would I want to say to my pretend neighbor, perhaps while we met one another on the way down the street to pick up the dry cleaning? At a time, in other words, when he was not a governor but just another person? Like he is now?
I'd want to say: "Don't think it's all going to get better right away. But if you have true remorse, and truly want to change, it often can turn out OK. It can take years, decades, and the outcome is not always assured. If I were your wife, I would want to ask you how I can be assured you are really trying to change."
I would want to talk about the difference between an apology -- that really just amounts to regret at being caught -- and truly making amends. When you make amends, you recognize your own wrongdoing and set out to put it right. "Sorry" gets you a do-over. Making amends begins to address the problem.
You get the sense, watching public figures do their public business, that people begin to believe their own press after a time. Celebrities "become" their personae, as do politicians. This is Spitzer's domestic challenge now, to take himself down a peg and do more than "dedicate some time."
He hasn't been seen much lately so maybe that's what he's up to.
We've all hurt people and we've all wanted to make it right. And we have all experienced the feeling of remorse over not having truly made it right. How many of us mutter an apology and move on -- when far more is required?
And so I would want, finally, to say this to my neighbor: "It's time to devote your life to deserving the trust of your family. You can do it, but only if you want it deeply enough."Labels: pjm, politics
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Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Paying For Health Care In America
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 I wanted to share a project that I have been working on with my friends at the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums. I'm quite excited about it.
It's a new issue book called Paying For Health Care in America: How Can We Make It More Affordable? I've finished the "issue brief" and am now working on a larger "issue book." The 12-page brief is available for free download here. The issue book (which will be slightly larger and have more research and quotes and such) will be sold for a nominal fee.
Like all National Issues Forums issue guides, this one looks at a difficult public problem from three different perspectives, or "approaches." The guide is meant to be the core of a small-group discussion where participants wrestle with the choices and trade-offs embedded in the issue, and come to their own view of how we ought to proceed as a nation. The book does not advocate for any one choice.
Here's a recap of this particular guide:
Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance while costs continue to spiral out of control for those who do have coverage. The nation spends more than any other country on health care, but many are still dissatisfied with what we have to show for it. Now it is time to face the difficult choices needed to make the U.S. health-care system function properly.
Approach #1: Focus on Personal Choice and Responsibility
There is neither enough individual choice nor enough personal responsibility when it comes to health-care coverage. The real costs are hidden because it always looks like someone else is paying. We need to place individuals more in charge of their health-spending decisions; this will create incentives to reduce spending and improve service.
Approach #2: Provide Coverage as a Right for all Americans
It is an outrage that, in the wealthiest nation on the planet, more than 15 percent of us lack health insurance. We are all in this together, as a society. We rely on government to protect us from fire and crime and to provide education; it should ensure our health too. We need to provide health-care coverage as a right to all Americans, not just those who can afford it.
Approach #3: Build on What is Working
The U.S. health-care system is facing real problems right now-- and there are real solutions available right now. Holding out for a "perfect" answer is not reasonable. We can institute a modest set of reforms right away, which will bring real strides in increasing health insurance coverage and reducing costs.
Watch for an announcement of the full issue book, which should be available later in the spring.Labels: health care, kettering, politics
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Change, The Real Thing
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 There is another race that Senator Barack Obama has won hands-down.
He's the only one with a decent logo. The Obama campaign has developed a contained, clear graphic that conveys just about everything most folks feel they need to know.
People know Obama's got good design on his side, too. Next time there's news of an Obama speech, take a look at the photo: often, it'll be a stark image of the Senator against a dark background, so he stands out. Hovering, a bit out of focus, behind the Senator, will be that logo.
 The fact of this logo's existence says more than you might think about his candidacy. No other candidate has one. Sure, other candidates may say they have a logo -- but it's all just little wavy flags or bold stars surrounding their names. That Obama logo marks that the campaign, in part, has been about building a "brand."
 But we are not in an ad campaign; we are in an election campaign. The competition is far different than that between soft drinks. If I buy The Real Thing today, I can turn around and Do The Dew tomorrow. But the act of voting is more than simply stating a preference.
We go to a special place in order to vote, having in most cases waited in a line with others who are about to do the same thing. Tension mounts; we see our neighbors. The American flags and officious posters on the walls, the intent poll-watchers skulking about, the earnest volunteer election judges -- it all adds to the seriousness. Even if I was not really focusing last night, or the week before, I sure am now, in line.
As I enter the booth, the import of my task strikes me. (I hear a similar thing happens among juries.)
On some level, I begin to realize I am not just saying who I "like" more, or who I would more rather go to Applebee's with. Nor am I "hiring" someone for a "job." I am, instead, making a choice that I believe ought to be binding on my fellow citizens. I am choosing for them as much as I am choosing for me.
Veteran political consultants know that the rules of the commercial world do not fully apply in election campaigns. While the two worlds use many of the same tools, they are different in important respects. Candidates who consciously proclaim "a different kind of message" run a risk when it comes to be crunch time. Because, for all of our complaining that campaigns have become a beauty contest -- it's not exactly so. Buzz, as we saw during Howard Dean's candidacy, does not necessarily translate into votes.
But, from observing the Obama campaign's mien over the last weeks, it seems the Senator or his strategists do indeed know the difference between ads and elections -- you see that logo less and less these days.
The Clinton campaign now has a slim reed on which to hang, which is that the hard work that has gone before will pay dividends and allow her to hang on into the spring. But it is not a foregone conclusion that the slogging work of politics can overtake the undeniable allure of a powerful message and a charismatic messenger -- which has now begun to focus like a laser on closing the deal.
I am a bit hopeful that the primary season will wear on, tiresome as it can be. I do know it may well be over soon. But the fight does the candidates good, and pays dividends to us citizens at home: Watching the repeated primaries, I am invited to check my own opinions -- Who would I have voted for last Tuesday? How about the Tuesday a few weeks before? My thoughts become clearer week by week and, eventually, along with my neighbor's and fellow citizens across the country, they build up to a collective judgment of who ought to be the nominee. Such judgments are improved by age.
I may be old-fashioned, but I am glad there is still an area of public life that we continue to keep closed off from the marketers. When we draw the curtain in the voting booth, even if we may not articulate this to ourselves, each of us stakes our own tiny claim for the seriousness of the task before us.
(Images from campaign websites.)Labels: elections, obama, politics
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Sunday, February 10, 2008
White Men Can't Talk
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There is a priceless moment in Oliver Stone's unfairly maligned The Doors, when our heroes are prepping to go on the Ed Sullivan Show. They are met by a stage assistant, a real twerp, who informs them that, "The network guys have a problem with one of your lyrics. 'Girl, we couldn't get much higher.'" He goes on: " You can't say 'higher' on the network, so they asked if you could say instead: 'Girl, we couldn't get much better.'"
 The band looks at him, bemused. He finishes with: "Could you dig that?"
That dork's use of the word "dig" in this context perfectly illustrates what often happens when mainstream folks try to appropriate street talk: they get it wrong, either by not understanding proper usage, or just plain sounding silly. While we play such things for laughs, they ring true because we see the same thing every day.
I remember a song by a milquetoast rapper named Vanilla Ice, called "Ice Ice Baby." You probably remember it too. It's your standard 1990's fare, filled with braggadocio about the protagonist's many fine exploits. I can't help laughing when I hear some of the lines in the tune. Vanilla says he is "Rollin' in my 5.0" at one point. We all remember the angular 5.0 liter Mustang that was popular then. Vanilla spends three couplets on his "5.0," with evident pride not just in its fanciness but also in his street cred for knowing such slang. Thing is, that's not what the term "5-0" meant at the time -- it meant "police," as in "Hawaii 5-0." (Vanilla, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, is a far more mature person now and a new crowd has come to enjoy his music.)
All this came back to me as the David Shuster saga unfolded. In an intemperate moment, our chalk-stripe-suited host says that Chelsea Clinton is being "pimped out" by her mom's campaign.
This has generated a firestorm and Shuster is now suspended for uttering such a derogatory remark. For my part, I would have wanted to suspend him for not understanding the language he was trying to use. He pulled a Vanilla Ice.
Dig: "Pimped out" means "made very fancy," as a stereotypical pimp might decorate something. There are overtones of exploitation, too, as in when something is "tricked out" -- that is, made alluring enough for a trick.
What Shuster probably meant to say was that he felt Chelsea was being "pimped," as in "exploited." It's a small slip, like Vanilla Ice's slip when it comes to his car, but it matters. On its face, Shuster's remark meant the campaign was dressing Chelsea up. In context, it was incoherent. In trying to appropriate so-called street lingo, he botched the job and made the same mistakes any foreign speaker makes when idiomatically out of their depth, with similarly hilarious results.
When I was in high school, I hosted an exchange student from Belgium. He fancied himself quite the Casanova, but most of my friends thought him the opposite. We taught him that the term "doughbrain" was our slang expression for "ladies' man." I regret it, now, as it was just mean -- but, man was it funny at the time.
If I were advising my exchange brother now, I would say to watch out and double check what idiomatic expressions mean, because you might just wind up sounding like a real Newman.
I guess David Shuster could use the same advice.
ADDENDUM: Looks like I made a mistake, and relied on my recollection and the lyric sheet when it came to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” — instead of re-listening to the song itself. He doesn’t say “five-oh” (which is what I remembered) but says “five point oh.” Commenters at Pajamas Media who have pointed that out are right. Kicking myself. You should, too! They’re also right that it knocks a big leg out from under my point, but not entirely: Shuster sounded really silly saying “pimped out,” like a suit trying to talk street, and (this much I still maintain) misusing the term in that way. Labels: culture, elections, media, pjm, politics
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
A Reformed Reformer
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Recently, there was a little-noticed gathering of graybeards in Oklahoma, designed to place the political world on notice that things have gotten too partisan. I say little-noticed because, while the collected firepower in the room was sufficient to garner some approving mentions in the press, especially from the handwringing contingent, the statement issued by this group appears to have come and gone without leaving much in the way of ripples. Good thing, too.
 Long ago, I led an initiative of which the Oklahoma summit would no doubt approve. Armed with hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foundation, I spent multiple election cycles trying to get opposing candidates to agree to simple ground rules for their campaigns and then stick to them. From my vantage point now, with no vested interest, I can say that in all honesty we had almost no success. Of course, we trumpeted battles won and progress made, and built an impressive book of press clipping -- and we did so in sufficient volume to get investment from other foundations too.
Still, when all was said and done, the chief bit of learning from this lengthy effort is that candidates' campaigns are not interested in "fighting fair" or working in "bipartisan" ways. They are interested in winning, so their candidate can then go on to govern.
It may be true that I just botched the job and someone else would have led the project to a more bipartisan glory. But I was not alone in my efforts. Across the nation in the late 1990's, well-meaning nonprofit organizations tried to change the way election campaigns seemed to be going. For every small victory (a public financing system here, or an instant-runoff voting system there), there were far greater setbacks.
I've come to believe that, by and large, people are not interested in "bipartisan" approaches to "solutions" to our nation's "problems." They are interested in having the feeling that they are being led and led well, by someone who cares about their concerns and will honestly do their best. This was the political genius of Bill Clinton and of the team behind George W. Bush. They made 50% plus one feel that way.
By contrast, this is something that the technocrats who have spent long years in the halls of power do not seem to get. Having made policy for so long, they seem to believe that ordinary Americans want solutions, when what they want is leadership. This was the failure of Senators Kerry and Dole, who in retrospect seemed more to be applying for a job in government, than they were fighting to lead a nation.
People who do a lot of thinking about Democracy are worried sick about things these days. They see a hyperpartisan landscape that has choked government's ability to act. They see an electoral system that favors style over substance. They see mean-spirited campaigns filled with veiled (and not-so-veiled) name-calling. They see a primary schedule run amok, with a yearlong presidential campaign already underway.
But I see a system that has responded well to the desires of the ordinary Americans who do not tune into C-SPAN and care little about the full text of White House press conferences. This is an America that mistrusts a government that "acts," that bases any number of day-to-day decisions on an intuitive sense of "style" (I do not mean fashion), and that appreciates a good fight.
At the end of our early primary season, we will have two candidates poised to do their best to convince us that they, and not their opponent, will lead us best. And people will decide -- some by reading the white papers, but more by listening to the repeated sound bites.
Those sound bites, and bumper stickers, and slogans say more than the concerned would care to admit.
Long ago, I stopped "attending films" and instead decided I preferred to "go to the movies." Around that time, I stopped basing my cinematic decisions on reviews but instead used movies' own advertising to influence whether I would see a particular show. After all, a lot of thought goes into deciding just what aspect of a movie to highlight, in order to drive audiences. You can get a pretty good idea of whether you want to see something by reading its ad. My grand experiment has by and large worked very well. Even with the dogs (and there are a few), I am rarely surprised by what I get.
This is what the presidential candidates are trying to do. So far, they have done a pretty good job and the choices I face, along with the nation, are clear. Each party has a small handful of competing directions and will choose from among them. Those two will battle it out.
I hope they really go at it.Labels: elections, pjm, politics
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