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?
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.
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 .…
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.
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.
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.
Always like your detailed, insightful posts . Thank you for sharing your perspective.
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.
@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?
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.
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”.
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?
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).
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:
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).