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?

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By David Drucker | Filed in Politics, US | August 31, 2008 12:15 am

13 Comments to “Optimism and Cynicism”

  1. AvatarJan Karlsbjerg
    Posted: Aug 31st, 2008 at 2:06 am
    1

    I’m much more hope­ful than you, David.

    I think there are sim­ply too many weak points for McCain that will start show­ing badly now that the intra-party squab­bles (Dem vs. Dem and Rep vs. Rep) are over and the actual elec­tion race is on for real.

    I even think there’s a good chance that the McCain cam­paign will implode before Novem­ber and we’ll have a nice, unex­cit­ing elec­tion. I think Obama will win with some­thing very dif­fer­ent from the 50.1 pct. of the votes that W called “a clear man­date from the Amer­i­can peo­ple” in 2004.

    A cou­ple of weak points that I think will sink McCain:

    - McCain seems to be cam­paign­ing on an image of being an out­sider from power (after 23(?) years in the sen­ate), when the truth is that he was just a rel­a­tive out­sider in his own party (irre­press­ible spurts of integrity made him not toe the party line often enough, I think).

    - His VP can­di­date is a no-go. Cheney is the best qual­i­fied, best con­nected, most pow­er­ful evil genius VP who ever sat. And McCain wants to replace Cheney with the least con­nected, least expe­ri­enced VP he could’ve pos­si­bly cho­sen, by the looks of things. Sarah Palin’s only claim to fame seems to be that she’s a gun and bible totin’ child rear­ing woman. The con­ser­v­a­tives attacked Obama for being untested; they’ll have to stop say­ing that now. And just imag­ine the upcom­ing VP can­di­date debates between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. That bat­tle will be even more unbal­anced than Gore vs Quale in 1992.

    - McCain’s much hailed mil­i­tary credit con­sists of scrap­ing through mil­i­tary acad­emy, being a bomber pilot, being shot down, and then being held pris­oner and tor­tured for years. He may have done a lot of good since, in pol­i­tics, but from what I under­stand, in his actual mil­i­tary career he was never a mil­i­tary leader. His mil­i­tary career should earn him medals and a pen­sion, it shouldn’t earn him the presidency.

    - McCain’s char­ac­ter and integrity may stand head and shoul­ders above his Repub­li­can rivals, and that may be why he won the nom­i­na­tion (I didn’t fol­low that well). But unless actual, lit­eral human skele­tons are dis­cov­ered in Obama’s actual bed­room closet, Obama will win big on char­ac­ter. Obama is a bet­ter exam­ple of “the Amer­i­can dream” that the Repub­li­cans love so much that they want to claim it as their domain, than is McCain. And it’s my strong hope that the Amer­i­can vot­ers are ready for an actual accom­plished self-made man now that they’ve expe­ri­enced what a lucky, family-made moron can do.
  2. AvatarWest End Bob
    Posted: Aug 31st, 2008 at 8:20 am
    2

    Excel­lent post, David.

    We totally agree — espe­cially the last para­graph. If the dems blow this one, they don’t deserve to exist. Start over with a clean slate. Some­thing the NDP should do here provin­cially in BC, as far as I’m concerned .…
  3. AvatarJan Karlsbjerg
    Posted: Aug 31st, 2008 at 2:57 pm
    3

    America’s polit­i­cal sys­tem (first-past-the-post / win­ner takes ALL) is geared toward a two party sys­tem, and you pro­pose that the under­dogs (in terms of orga­ni­za­tional power to make things hap­pen) — whose views you gen­er­ally agree with — should dis­band themselves (!)

    Well, that’s cer­tainly one way to cre­ate a sta­ble one-party polit­i­cal system.
  4. AvatarArjun Singh
    Posted: Aug 31st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
    4

    Also want to echo what an inter­est­ing post! My really brief think­ing: the two sides will duke it out, but Obama is still ahead by most accounts. It will take an out of the ordi­nary suc­cess or fail­ure to shift that, I think.
  5. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Aug 31st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
    5
    Author Comment

    Jan — I think I should have made it clear that after the Demo­c­ra­tic party was dis­solved, another one with bet­ter man­age­ment (and the right mes­sage to win an elec­tion) should imme­di­ately begin to be formed. This has hap­pened before in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. In fact, the ‘Grand Old Party’ of the Repub­li­cans is actu­ally the younger of the cur­rent two par­ties. Prior to the mid 1850s, there were two par­ties, but they were the Democ­rats and the Whig party. I know next to noth­ing about the Whigs, except that William Henry Har­ri­son was one of them. At any rate, it’s pos­si­ble for par­ties to come and go over time, and if the Democ­rats lose this next elec­tion, I’d like to sug­gest that their time is up.

    McCain does have some weak points, and yes, his VP choice is about on par with Bush I’s choice of Dan Quayle (another attrac­tive, young, right-wing con­ser­v­a­tive) who was utterly unqual­i­fied and unready to be Pres­i­dent. PS: Bush I won any­way, even with Quayle on the ticket. I remem­ber a Sat­ur­day Night Live skit with Jon Lovitz play­ing Michael Dukakis utter­ing the line we were all think­ing: “I can’t believe I’m los­ing to this guy!”

    As for the POW not being a good enough cre­den­tial for office, I sus­pect that there you are get­ting into ‘emo­tional’ ter­ri­tory, and there­fore, my the­sis that Amer­i­cans vote based on their emo­tions rather than rea­son­ing would immu­nize him from crit­i­cism. (Indeed, try sug­gest­ing that he is not a leader because he was just a POW to any Repub­li­can and I’ll bet they’ll bite your head off. It’s taboo to even bring such a thing up.)

    The last point about Obama being the ‘Great Amer­i­can Suc­cess Story’ is inter­est­ing, espe­cially in light of the way Rove, McCain and oth­ers have been try­ing to paint him. By mak­ing Obama the elit­ist and McCain the self-made man, you have a repeat of the last election’s logic of Kerry painted as a trai­tor who would shoot a man in the back and George W. Bush being the hand­some young cadet. Again, remem­ber who won that elec­tion and the stretch was far greater. The dif­fer­ence this time is that the Obama cam­paign won’t allow the ‘Swift-Boating’ of their man, and the fact that such a phrase has entered the ver­nac­u­lar means that it can be used to short-circuit the most obvi­ous of those re-definitions of the candidate.

    I had a brief dis­cus­sion about the out­come of the elec­tion with my father today, and we both agreed that if McCain wins, the US is in big, big trouble.
  6. AvatarMJ Ankenman
    Posted: Sep 1st, 2008 at 8:07 am
    6

    Always like your detailed, insight­ful posts . Thank you for shar­ing your perspective.
  7. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Sep 1st, 2008 at 9:00 am
    7
    Author Comment

    Thanks, MJ. I’ve been think­ing of this one for a while.

    Isn’t it lucky for Bush and Cheney that a Hur­ri­cane has given them an excuse to be absent from the Repub­li­can Con­ven­tion? It avoids the awk­ward­ness of the cur­rent candidate(s) hav­ing to be asso­ci­ated with these criminals.
  8. AvatarJan Karlsbjerg
    Posted: Sep 1st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
    8

    @David: There have been char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tions on both sides of the line. I bought into the whole Demo­c­ra­tic line about Bush 1 being “poor George, he can’t help it, he was born with a sil­ver foot in his mouth”.

    All the arti­cles I’ve read in the past 9–10 years that com­pared Bush 2 to Bush 1 have made it painfully obvi­ous to me that I had been tricked. Turns out Bush 1 was a really accom­plished man in his pre-presidential life!

    That dis­ap­point­ment still stands out for me a reminder about pol­i­tics (with ref­er­ence back to your post title about cyn­i­cism): If I could be mis­led that thor­oughly by “the good guys”, what else am I being mis­led about?
  9. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Sep 1st, 2008 at 10:16 pm
    9
    Author Comment

    Jan — I lived through Bush I, and one of the worst things he did was remove the tax deduc­tion for Health Insur­ance costs if you were self-employed. It was a move for Big Busi­ness and bla­tantly against the ‘lit­tle guy’, and it hit Pam and me hard. I had been work­ing as a Con­sul­tant for quite a few years, but the inabil­ity for me to get a fair shake with health insur­ance after George H. W. was what made me decide to work for com­pa­nies for among other rea­sons, the health insur­ance, which sud­denly became a much big­ger deal.

    Bush I also appointed Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court. You prob­a­bly remem­ber Thomas’s stormy con­fir­ma­tion hearings.

    It’s worth not­ing that it was Clarence Thomas’s vote in 2001 that put George W. Bush into office, by halt­ing the recount in Florida. He usu­ally favours the police over indi­vid­u­als in cases of unrea­son­able searches and seizures, and was one of the few mem­bers of the Court that believed that that mil­i­tary com­mis­sions set up by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to try detainees at Guan­tanamo Bay didn’t vio­late Geneva Convention.

    If ever there was a Supreme Court appoint­ment worth going back in time to stop, I’d say it was Thomas. He’s proof that the Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions of a Pres­i­dent in the past (in this case, the early 90’s) can have a far-reaching effect on future events.
  10. AvatarJan Karlsbjerg
    Posted: Sep 2nd, 2008 at 10:23 am
    10

    I didn’t say George H.W. Bush was a won­der­ful US pres­i­dent whose legacy delights me to this day.

    I said George H.W. Bush was no bum­bling fool who was given every­thing. From what I’ve since read (in arti­cles con­trast­ing him with his son), GHWB was an accom­plished man (beyond his priv­i­leged back­ground) who got things done his whole life. And yet I was sold the oppo­site story by “the good guys”.
  11. AvatarJan Karlsbjerg
    Posted: Sep 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
    11

    First of all: I’m sorry I used such to a hard tone in my last comment. :-/

    Sec­ond, I’ve been think­ing a lot about your idea about the press play­ing for time, want­ing to “keep it interesting”.

    The idea seems at odds with the media out­lets’ var­i­ous degrees of affil­i­a­tion with either party. But I can’t find any other rea­son for there being so much focus on the one big aggre­gated poll num­ber (e.g. is can­di­date X up by 51–49 or down by 48–52). Every­body knows the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion isn’t decided by one pop­u­lar vote but rather by the Elec­toral Col­lege sys­tem (which in my opin­ion isn’t so much obscure and con­vo­luted as it is stiffling and insane).

    At CNN.com you have to dig a lit­tle to find their cov­er­age of the elec­toral col­lege here. Which has Obama ahead at 233 del­e­gates from “safe” and “lean­ing” states; McCain at 189 (ditto); and 116 del­e­gates in real play (“tossup”).

    A friend also told me that the cur­rent polling num­bers all come from land­line phone inter­views. Is that right? That would skew the results away from young vot­ers, urban vot­ers, etc. Right?
  12. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Sep 15th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
    12
    Author Comment

    Jan -

    No wor­ries about the tone. You are right, GHWB was no idiot. The son is a case of own­ing ‘Faded Genes’.

    As for the media ‘play­ing for time’, I note that the items that attract the media (par­tic­u­larly CNN, Fox and MSNBC), like a small child attracted to the newest shiny thing, is all over the stu­pid accu­sa­tions that float around (‘Lip­stick on a pig com­ment’, claims of Obama want­ing peo­ple to teach sex to young chil­dren, any­thing related to Sarah Palin, etc.) because those news items get the most atten­tion because they are sim­ple and sen­sa­tional. Run a seri­ous and sober dis­cus­sion of the issues (aside from the debates, which are more a game of ‘who can appear more pres­i­den­tial’) and the view­er­ship will drop off. Run some­thing about McCain claim­ing that Obama will put a Mus­lim prayer rug in the White House and the rat­ings will shoot up into the stratos­phere (and so will ad revenue).

    The rea­son for the focus on the aggre­gated poll num­bers are clear: most Amer­i­cans don’t under­stand the elec­toral col­lege at all, and if you told them that their vote could mean more in a swing state, they’d be sur­prised to hear the rea­son why.

    Re. the cur­rent polling num­bers com­ing from land­lines only and hence, leav­ing out most of the young vot­ers, you are absolutely cor­rect. This is the one thing that is never dis­cussed, and I hope that higher urban youth par­tic­i­pa­tion might be the story that saves the day. How­ever, I heard this might be a fac­tor in 2000, and then in 2004, and each time ‘The Youth Vote’ was a no-show. Maybe the third time’s a charm. Some­times I think that Obama should ‘do a McCain’ and sug­gest that if McCain is elected, that he will be forced to re-institute the draft. That would get the youth vote out faster (but again, depends on the dis­en­gaged, unin­ter­ested young urban pop­u­la­tion actu­ally learn­ing of this in time to reg­is­ter, which is another piece of the puzzle).
  13. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Sep 15th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
    13
    Author Comment

    By the way, Adam McKay, in his post­ing “We’re Gonna Frickin’ Lose this Thing” post in The Huff­in­g­ton Post says a lot of what I said above, par­tic­u­larly with respect to the Press. He adds the chill­ing observation:

    …And with­out a real press the cor­po­rate and reli­gious Repub­li­cans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that’s the 51% advantage.

    When I orig­i­nally wrote my post, the McCain cam­paign hadn’t started their bliz­zard of lies. Now it seems as if the lack of a press now presents them with a dis­tinct advan­tage (unless the Democ­rats now lie just as much).
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