Five weeks left in this year's midterm election campaigning and I can't wait for it to be over. I'm beyond disgusted, I'm bored with it all!
The two major parties have perfected their pitches to an ever-dwindling cadre of partisans with little thought to expanding their bases, appealing to independents, or trying to win over people from the opposition camp. Energizing your base, they call it. Karl Rove is a disciple of this approach. Practiced by both the Republicans and the Democrats, it makes me sick!
It's all about getting "our team" on top. To what end? So that we can keep "our team" on top. It's politics reduced to something like betting on the Super Bowl. And, sadly, it seems to be effective.
This sort of campaigning has little or no regard for principle. Even rank-and-file partisans have bought into the approach. Proof? A new Marist Poll shows that Rudy Giuliani is the most popular of contenders for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination among ordinary Republicans. Rudy Giuliani? Ultraliberal Rudy Giuliani? Yep. Why? Because people think he can win. "Hooray for our team!" they say. (Meanwhile, the rank and file disdain John McCain, the third most conservative member of the US Senate, a guy more hawkish on the war in Iraq than President Bush or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.)
Mind you, I'm not commenting on whether Giuliani (or McCain) should be the Republican nominee. Others can opine on that. (I've almost gotten to the point where I don't care anyway.) It's just that Giuliani's popularity demonstrates how much more partisanship is about winning than it is about his party's supposed principles.
To some extent, I suppose, this--this partisan pliance for the sake of winning--has always been around. Huey Long, the Louisiana dictator whose life and politics were turned into a novel by Robert Penn Warren, used to excoriate the Democrats and Republicans. Each were offering political snake oil, he asserted: one offered high populorum, the other low popuhirum.
I'm not saying that there aren't real differences between the two parties. There are. (Nor do they have to be philosophically pure; I believe in the big tent. But, even in the big tent, there should be some broad common understanding of principles beyond a common commitment to winning at all costs.)
Savage personal assaults that pass for political campaigning, untrue and misleading caricatures of opponents, don't reflect those real differences or help us decide who best can govern.
I've been a political junkie all my life. But not any more. I'm disgusted and I'm bored. If the politicians have managed to turn someone like me off, imagine what they've long ago done to people with more sense than me!
A bored, repulsed electorate is certainly unlikely to keep our Constitutional system going. If we lose that, we lose America. And if that happens, history will show that we were destroyed not by terrorists, but by thirty-second "contrast" ads.
[Cross-posted at RedBlueChristian.com.]
[Thanks to Rick Moore for linking to this post!]
5 comments:
Our political campaigning has become more like the Jerry Springer Show over the past several years.
Not exactly the political junkie you are but man I am tired of it all too.
Good post.
Marty
Mark,
I'm with you. Though, for me, it's not the 30-second ads that kill me... it's the banality of the entire process. Candidates, for the most part, refuse to engage in meaningful debates. Their materials, their public statements, everything they say is carefully monitored to conform to certain "talking points", certain messages they want to portray. Do we believe any of it any more? I sure don't.
My recommended solution? Change the voting system. Allow people to vote for multiple candidates, giving priorities. There are a few proposed systems out there, and none of them are perfect... but the system we've got is far from perfect, too. Let people vote their conscience, while still voting for "electability" with a second or third choice. That will give the third-party candidates a much larger voice, and a much more real chance of getting into office. More diversity of opinion will hopefully lead to more substantive dialog... at least, that would be my hope.
Mark
Marty:
It's interesting you mention Springer since he's a one-time Ohio pol. My feeling is that if he ever does run for office again, which I'm sure that he wants to do, he will likely have to take pains to avoid the kind of Springer Show-incivility that is so off-putting. Ironically, Springer could run a campaign marked by civility and substance...something people would welcome even if they didn't like his politics.
Mark:
I think that banality goes with incivility. If you're not dealing with substance, you go to charactr assassination.
Multiple choice voting is interesting.
But in the end, I think a lot of what we find so repulsive about politics these days is cultural. If our culture is transformed, our politics will be transformed.
That isn't to say that reforms like those you mention aren't worthy of examination.
Thanks for the comments.
Mark
Mark,
Well, I'm sick of politics as usual, but I'm energized all the same -- mainly about a proposed amendment to our state constitution which would legalize cloning and destruction of human embryos, pay women to donate eggs, and open the state coffers to pay for worthless and morally compromised research.
What's particularly vile is how backers of this amendment prey on people's anguish over ill loved ones. We saw it in 2004: "When John Kerry is President, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of wheelchairs and walk again."
The proposed amendment is bad research, bad politics, bad economics, bad ethics. This is the most deceitful, manipulative, evil piece of legislation I've ever seen. And the way it stands right now, it's going to pass. But I'm not going to let it happen without a fight.
By the way, this is also in response to your earlier post about whether the church should be involved in politics.
In this case, I don't think there's a question. If the Church doesn't have a prophetic voice here, when will we?
chr:
I'm only basing that on the assessment of conservative watchdog groups who have quantified McCain's Senate voting record.
Jeff:
I definitely can see the Church getting involved in causes, so long as the stakes are and the call of God are unambiguous.
Thanks to both of you for writing.
God bless!
Mark
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