Cynicism: Obama, McCain, The Pols, the Press and the People
Barack Obama has announced that the McCain campaign is not racist but cynical. And what campaign is not? by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Monday, August 4, 2008
After being accused of "playing the race card" for suggesting that John McCain might use racist appeals against him, Barack Obama announced that he does not think the McCain campaign is racist. but he believes it is "cynical".([link edited for length]
This is a misstatement, since the professional campaign staffers are not cynical but opportunistic. This means that they believe "Any stick will do to beat a dog". The other side of this attitude is, "Promise them anything and give them the shaft." Cynicism is the attitude of the press in trying to present what the candidates and campaigns say as truthful and reasonable statements, and of the people who vote on the non-issues while believing all politicians are liars
Lies and opportunism, of course, are nothing new in American politics. While running for President in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt made a speech in Pittsburgh in which he promised that, if elected, he would cut government spending and balance the budget. In 1936, sheduled to speak in Pittsburgh in his campaign for re-election, he asked speech writer Sam Rosenburg to find some way to justify the actions of his first administration which would not be contrasted with his speech of 1932. After some struggling with this task, Rosenberg told FDR, "Deny you were ever in Pittsburgh."([link edited for length])
And there are evidences of the same attitude this year in both the candidates and their staffers. Having, apparently, defeated Senator Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, Senator Obama has chosen to remove some of the campaign staffers who helped him to win, and replace them with Clinton staffers who tried, but failed, to defeat him. This has been acompanied by an effort on Senator Obama's part to claim many of the Clinton positions that he opposed while they were competing for votes. If the new staffers can show him a path to winning the votes of a group he did not appeal to during the primaries, he is prepared to go down that path.
The campaign managers and staff make their living running successful campaigns. The career of Dick Morris is an example of the professional staffer approach.( [link edited for length]). Morris is regarded as a premier political manager since he ran the Clinton re-election campaign in 1996. He also managed the campaigns for a number of Republican candidates, notably Governor William Weldon of Massachusetts and Governor Pete Wilson of California. After a falling out with the Clintons, he took his show on the road and ran the campaigns for both left and right wing candidates in several Latin American countries. Morris, like any professional politician, is not concerned with the ideology or policy positions of his candidates except insofar as they win votes.
This year, Morris has served as a political analyst for Fox News and writes a column for a number of publications. During the fight for the Democratic nomination he was pumping up Senator Obama and tearing down Senator Clinton at every opportunity. Since Senator Obama has emerged as the almost certain Democratic nominee, Morris has been pumping up Senator McCain and tearing down Senator Obama every chance he gets. There is nothing particularly evil in this, but it rather plainly illustrates the nature of the campaign managers and the campaigns they run.
The press corps knows all this and has a certain benign contempt for the candidates and the political professionals who tell them what to do, where to go and what to say. But the media persists in presenting every shift, every blunder and every brouhaha of the campaign as not only significant but wise. The media, like the pols, does not take ideas or proposals seriously except insofar as it makes a good story. Thus, the coverage of the campaign, like the campaigns themselves, cannot be taken seriously.
And the voters, unfortunately, don't care. They do not regard voting as the one chance they have to govern the country, but at best as an incovenience and at worst as a chore beyond their capacity to perform. Thus, they complained this year about being offered too many choices in both the Democratic and Republican races. Rather than making a choice which requires some thought, they would rather vote Yes for one candate because of where he is from, and No for another candidate because of his name. And on the day after the election, most will say they voted for, or would have voted for whoever wins. And if conditions are bad in a year's time they will put on their car a bumper sticker saying "Don't blame me, I voted for (The Loser). And they will say, "You can't trust politicians and the media are biased", but not take responsibility for letting them get away with it.
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