Optimism and Cynicism

Some Cana­dian and Amer­i­can friends have asked for my opin­ion on the upcom­ing US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. What do I think Obama’s chances are?  Isn’t it going to be a Land­slide for the Demo­c­ra­tic party, given the dis­as­ter that Bush has proven to be? Do I think I might return to the US after it’s gone back to being a coun­try more in tune with my beliefs and values?

While for some I may seem unen­thu­si­as­tic or even pes­simistic, I have to admit that my first response has been that I think the out­come is a toss-up. While I’m hope­ful that Obama and Biden will win in Novem­ber, I remem­ber all too vividly how it was to be stunned in 2000 by Bush tak­ing the oath of office, and shocked again in 2004 (no, that time it was more like we were all in mourn­ing) when he was reelected. How could more than half of the Amer­i­can pub­lic be so blind, twice? (More about that in a bit). Being a long-suffering Red Sox fan dur­ing their drought of World Series vic­to­ries and ago­niz­ing defeats to the Yan­kees that lasted the life­time of my mother-in-law (she was born the year after their Word Series win in 1916 and died before they won it again in 2004), I’m no stranger to the despair of an unex­pected defeat. Per­haps I’m just doing my best to guard against that pain a third time in a row.

Repub­li­cans, like the Yan­kees, are Good at Winning

If a win for the Democ­rats is not a cer­tainty, does that mean that McCain and Palin can win? I’m reminded that the GOP is very, very good at win­ning elec­tions. (As Howard Dean used to say that it’s a pity that the Republican’s aren’t as good at gov­ern­ing as well as they are at get­ting elected). They still have tons of money from count­less cor­po­ra­tions and groups made far richer and more pow­er­ful than they were eight years ago. They are still in power and hence, have access to all sorts of advan­tages their oppo­nents don’t have, and they have highly regarded experts with impres­sive track records like Karl Rove (either within the party or hired as con­sul­tants and lob­by­ists) who know how to per­suade vot­ers and per­haps even once again alter vot­ing machines enough to gain an advan­tage in key swing states (Ohio, anyone?).

Amer­i­can Lack of Education

My belief that either party could win goes deeper than just the GOP’s recent suc­cesses (not count­ing the 2006 Con­gres­sional elec­tions, but it’s worth not­ing that even in defeat, they still man­aged to hold on to enough num­bers to make the Democrat’s retak­ing of sev­eral Con­gres­sional seats a non-issue for them; the US Con­gress is cur­rently held with even lower esteem than Bush!)  I believe that for the last 20 years or so the US pop­u­la­tion has been method­i­cally robbed of the abil­ity to think ratio­nally about the choice of who will gov­ern them. With the weak­en­ing of the Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion sys­tem that started at about the Rea­gan era, it is very pos­si­ble that both par­ties — per­haps even by acci­dent — dis­cov­ered that a dumbed-down elec­torate was far eas­ier to con­trol, and hence, eas­ier to gov­ern. I can imag­ine that each group came to the same con­clu­sion: An eas­ily steered pop­u­la­tion would ben­e­fit their agenda. For lib­er­als who believed that indi­vid­u­als deserved help from the gov­ern­ment, this meant that peo­ple could be con­vinced of the worth of social pro­grams by sell­ing them the way that Ford or Toy­ota sold a new car model. For con­ser­v­a­tives, well, we can see that the last 8 years of tax cuts (‘You like tax cuts, don’t you? After all, it’s your money!’) for the rich­est friends of the party and mil­i­tary adven­tures (with cor­re­spond­ing mil­i­tary con­trac­tor feed­ing troughs) have been the direc­tion they’ve got­ten through herd­ing the US’s citizenry.

I’m not alone in this view. Al Gore’s lat­est book deals not with cli­mate change, but this very sub­ject. It’s called The Assault on Rea­son.  There are also books by Richard Hof­s­tadter: Anti-intellectualism in Amer­i­can Life (which ended up being very pre­scient, as it as the Pulitzer Prize Win­ner in 1963) as well as Susan Jacoby’s very recent The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son. There are oth­ers, but I thought it might be good to point some of the more well-known titles. There’s been a lot of ink on this par­tic­u­lar subject.

With a pub­lic so eas­ily influ­enced and turned to the advan­tage of who­ever is the clev­erer mar­keter, either out­come is pos­si­ble. It comes down to a game of duel­ing com­mer­cials between the cam­paigns (and isn’t it appro­pri­ate that the same word ‘cam­paign’ applies to both the activ­ity of sell­ing soap as well as polit­i­cal candidates?)

The Press is Play­ing for Time

Sound cyn­i­cal?  There’s more: The press has it’s own agenda, but it’s a dif­fer­ent one. At a slightly later date after the erod­ing of the pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem, many news report­ing orga­ni­za­tions were bought up by a rel­a­tively small num­ber of own­ers, and also placed under the enter­tain­ment bud­get of their respec­tive own­ers’ busi­nesses. This is par­tic­u­larly the case with TV News, not to men­tion the 24-hour cable net­works. We almost take for granted the fact that The News is now clearly in the rat­ings busi­ness. That means that they not only have to com­pete for atten­tion, but they also ben­e­fit if the Pres­i­den­tial race is close and peo­ple stay tuned in and engaged as long as pos­si­ble. I’m not echo­ing the com­mon tirade that the press has a con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­eral bias. Instead, they have a bias towards any­thing that makes the race closer, and in turn gen­er­ates more ad rev­enue. It’s very likely that the see-sawing lead between McCain and Obama in the polls is a con­certed effort by the news media to make sure that their view­ers stay on the edge of their seats until November.

Per­haps it isn’t duel­ing com­mer­cials, but a Pro­fes­sional Wrestling match. It’s cer­tainly not a debate of issues. You get the appear­ance of a con­test, but it’s really all just the­atre. Pol­icy dis­cus­sions are, well, just too bor­ing and dry for an une­d­u­cated elec­torate. They want to be enter­tained, and in the final analy­sis, may end up vot­ing for the most enter­tain­ing and telegenic can­di­date, and depend­ing on how you define telegenic in this case, I don’t think that Obama’s youth and hand­some­ness will nec­es­sar­ily guar­an­tee that he gets more votes, par­tic­u­larly if vot­ers want to be reas­sured by an avun­cu­lar or Grand­fa­therly McCain. This could cer­tainly be the case if the Repub­li­cans can once again play the fear card, and there could, of course, be another ter­ror­ist attack before the elec­tion. I’m not quite cyn­i­cal enough to believe that the Repub­li­cans will stage a fake attack, or even sur­rep­ti­tiously notify some group of a secu­rity hole, but give me time.

So with an igno­rant pub­lic that’s ruled by emo­tion and cam­paign manip­u­la­tion,  orga­ni­za­tions (like some within the GOP) that have no qualms with a lit­tle cheat­ing here and there, and a media that mainly just wants to keep the con­test excit­ing for as long  as pos­si­ble, I don’t expect the out­come to be pre­dictable based on real facts or sit­u­a­tions. So, I’m opti­mistic, but won’t at all be sur­prised if the Repub­li­cans find some way of win­ning once more. The out­come was never any­thing that you or I could pre­dict in the first place.

It’s Their Last Chance

One final thought; if the Democ­rats do man­age to lose, they should absolutely and with­out any fur­ther dis­cus­sion be dis­banded. Sell off all the assets at a fire sale and start with a new party with a new name and all new per­son­nel. If I was light-hearted in any of the above dis­course, I’m dead seri­ous about this. If the Democ­rats lose in 2008, get rid of them for good. For­get about Hillary in 2012; That’s not even an issue at that point. If an oppo­si­tion party can’t win after the appalling two terms of rule by Bush and Cheney, who with all prob­a­bil­ity will go down as the worst Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent in his­tory, it doesn’t deserve to exist.

Bit­ter? Moi?