What passes for political debate at this point is basically free airtime for prepackaged positions on issues deemed important to primary voters. If a candidate aspires to the presidency, he or she must first win the nomination of The Party.
That means gaining support among specific groups of people, sometimes called The Base. For Republicans, it means courting, or at least not offending, that amorphous constituency known as: Evangelical Christians, the Religious Right, Social Conservatives, et al. But as we saw this past week, Values Voters are having a tough time choosing their dream candidate. They also appear to be seriously out of touch with the rest of the Republican Party.
Those who pander to their demands risk being branded flip floppers. They say their earlier positions on abortion, religion, and gay marriage has evolved. But if the conventional wisdom prevails (that primary candidates espouse the views of the base but upon winning the nomination, flee to the center), then all of these folks will have to flip flop again to appeal to Independents and possible defectors from the opposition party.
This could drive a disappointed base to just say No to the lot.
We now see polls, every other day, guessing which candidate would most likely beat Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Has the media already anointed her nomination?
Meanwhile, Democrats of various persuasions, try to gauge the “electability” of Hillary versus Rudy, Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, ad nauseum. Is the field too big? Are all the candidates cut from the same cloth? Have there already been too many close encounters of the campaign kind?
One could argue that positions espoused by the former New York mayor closely resemble those of the Democratic senator from New York. Are they both pandering to their base? Clinton’s recent earmark to build a memorial museum to Woodstock would incline voters from elsewhere to think so. If a candidate were thinking of the general election, particularly in a year when earmarks have been roundly denounced by Congressional leaders, that would make no sense. And except for a few aging hippies, record producers and perhaps pharmaceutical merchants, that mud-soaked orgy deserves no more than a page in history. It’s the Democrat’s answer to the Alaska Bridge to Nowhere.
If, at this early stage in the process, we are so turned off by media attention to the irrelevant, by polls that focus on the trivial, by candidates from opposite parties who seem to hold nearly identical opinions, are we giving up our right, our duty to choose? There are those who say they don’t care because anything is better than what we have had for the past seven years. Point taken. However, that position denies the importance of electing someone who can lead. Someone who can inspire a dispirited nation to take hope that we can do better. Someone who has the gumption to tell it like it is. Someone who can arouse the patriot in us without mongering fear. Arouse the global citizen in us without fear of sounding like Al Gore. If Gore had listened less to his handlers in 2000 and spoken to us from the heart, he might have led us to a better place in the world. We might have been solving the very real problems that face all of us. Instead, a politician who played it safe, followed the course plotted by his image shapers, has led us like sheep into a morass. We aren’t likely to get out of this by electing another who just plays it safe.
If we are to survive another year of turgid rhetoric, parsing of positions and media that manage public discourse in a way that obscures the real issues, we had better stay engaged. It won’t be easy. But the endless posturing that passes for debates is important because there are voices out there that are actually telling it the way they see it. Unfortunately, their poll numbers indicate we aren’t listening.
There is talent, experience, strength among candidates of both parties. Several of them would make good presidents. Republicans want another Reagan. Democrats, another Kennedy. They’re right because what both parties need is a real leader, not a reliable party operative.
Effective leaders welcome dissent as a way to clarify their own thinking. Ideologues tend to quash opposing views as a threat to their authority. We’ve had that for too long and it has severely damaged our nation and its position in the world. The great leaders aren’t measured by stubborn adherence to a position. More often they are followed by people who may disagree with them on some issues but trust they have weighed different options before charting a course.
That’s the kind of leader we need now. We should not give up until we find that voice rising above the cacophony of debate. We must resist the impulse to change channels, to listen only for affirmation of beliefs we already hold. Or to silence the pundits with a flick of the remote. This is too important to opt out.