It was a season of surprises. In the beginning, everyone thought Hillary was a slam dunk winner. At one point, McCain's campaign seemed moribund and many pundits wrote him off. Religious bigotry surfaced and single-handedly slew the campaign of an otherwise highly qualified Mitt Romney (not that I agree with his politics). One candidate discovered that $400 haircuts were a political kiss of death. A man with black heritage became a major party nominee for the very first time.
One of the big regrets I have is that so much of this history making activity occurred in such an ugly, venomous environment. Why does our political discourse have to be so nasty and full of personal attacks?
As I pondered this question I began listing plausible answers. Was it the nature of our two-party system and the hyper-polarized background it creates? Was it the winner-take-all system we have created as opposed to the parliamentary model popular in Europe? What makes politicians willing to attempt to demonize and dehumanize their opponents with statements that would be considered criminally false and slanderous in a court of law?
I thought about a good friend of mine who is very conservative and very Republican (and I mean very). Some months ago I won a steak dinner bet with him by telling him to put his money where his mouth was. His mouth was saying, with absolute certainty, that Hillary would win both the Democratic nomination AND the Presidency. I tried to tell him that it was his fear talking, but he wouldn't listen.
Not that I mind winning the steak dinner, but it bothered me that my friend had succumbed to the Republican party's not-so-subtle efforts to position Hillary Clinton as the anti-Christ. My friend is a highly intelligent man, a mover and shaker, a man eminently respectable in so many ways. Yet he still bought the vicious RNC spin and it ended up costing him.
Don't get me wrong--I am NO Hillary fan. My personal dislike for her is rather intense, but it is based on her stated policies and what I consider to be some obvious and rather ugly character flaws. (Number one is that power is the air she breathes. I think she and her husband crave it above all other things. A close second: she kept Bill around for what appeared to be political reasons after he spat upon their marriage.) My point is this: whatever her shortcomings may be, she is not evil incarnate, and has accomplished much good for her constituents. My dislike for her is rational, not visceral.
That difference is the reason I was able to clearly see what my friend could not. As a result, my rationality has provided very nicely for my visceral needs at the Ruth's Chris over in Irvine. :-D
It may be that this experience provides a partial answer to my original question: why the venom? Why the idiotic, patently false, slanderous character attacks throughout the campaign season?
Because they often work effectively. And that is a stinging indictment of the American public.
My friend fell for it when it targeted Hillary. John McCain's friend, that old lady who stood up in his town hall meeting as millions of TV viewers watched and said something to the effect of, "I am afraid of Obama. He's an Arab and a terrorist, isn't he?" She bought it too. The guy who emphasized Obama's middle name, "Hussein", as a McCain rally introduction--he bought it too. No doubt millions of others have bought it.
Maybe politicians do that crap because too large a percentage of the American public will not only listen to it but swallow it whole.
If that is the case, I think you have to ask if we deserve any better than we are getting now.
I dream of a system where sloppy political proposals are non-starters. A system where the process forces all sides to sharpen their views and bend them to reality as their errors and excesses are exposed and corrected. I dream of a system where partisan punches never land below the belt, and the judges are all post-partisan.
Something is going to change. Congress may be able to ignore their dismal job approval ratings, but they can't ignore the fact that registration in the two major parties is steadily declining, with Democrats currently counting 43% of registered voters and Republicans 33%. A growing chunk (24%) of the American public belongs to neither one of them.
Caveat gubernare.
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