In just three short weeks the 2008 election will be over (probably). If we’re all very lucky sometime around 11:00pm Eastern Standard Time on November 4th the television networks will put up flashy “Obama Wins” graphics and the long nightmare of George W. Bush will finally have a (somewhat) happy ending. If things are really going well we might even get to watch some of the Red Senators who sleazed their way into office during the war hysteria vote in 2002 go down to defeat. I’m looking at you Messrs Chambliss, Coleman and Sununu. But I’m getting ahead of myself; we’ve still got nearly three weeks of genuine political engagement to enjoy.
Politics is everyone’s business but only a minority of people follow it on a year round basis. Attention from the broader public bubbles up a little during the primaries (more so this year than usual owing to race/gender novelty and the fact that both parties had genuinely open contests), spikes during the conventions, and then slowly builds as we get closer and closer to Election Day. As that fateful Tuesday approaches a great swell of general interest overwhelms the usual background blather of talking heads, op-ed columnists and on-line prognosticators. Then we vote, and then it’s over and the cycle begins again.
I count myself among that overly interested minority and a feeling I’ve encountered a lot lately amongst my fellows is one of fatigue. In person, in print and on-line I’ve heard people basically saying, “At this point I just want it to be over” or something to that effect. It’s an obnoxious and exasperating sentiment. Paying attention to stories about Hillary Clinton’s cleavage, Mitt Romney’s bizarro memories of his dad and Martin Luther King, Barack Obama’s gutter-balls, John McCain’s green screen challenge, New Yorker covers and all the other campaign moments little noticed outside of the echo chamber doesn’t mean jack squat come October. Expending serious energy and emotion on such obvious trivialities is just plain dumb and yet smart people do it anyway, that’s the exasperating part. But it’s the whiff of entitlement and superiority that comes with thinking the election is almost passé that makes it obnoxious.
This is the good stuff, when ordinary Americans perk up their ears and make their decisions. Just because you made up your mind for Obama or McCain months ago doesn’t make you any better or cooler than someone who hasn’t. You can see this nonsense expressed best in the reaction to the debates. Jim Lehrer, Gwen Ifill and Tom Brokaw came in for a lot of criticism for letting the candidates basically just recite their talking points. And the candidates were derided for doing little more than regurgitate half digested chunks of their stump speeches. Why is that considered an inappropriate thing for them to do? The reporters and pundits who’ve heard it before are not the primary audience; the people who haven’t been paying attention are. When else are these four people going to get to be on all three networks plus cable? Mock Sarah Palin all you want for wanting to avoid the “filter” of the media, but on this, at least, she’s correct. It’s a powerful opportunity to talk to the American people and to squander it trying to appease an empty suit like Tom Brokaw would be borderline negligent.
The debates are a great way for candidates to communicate to voters because it requires almost no effort on the part of the voters. All Sally Housecoat and Johnny Lunchpail have to do is turn on the television and they can evaluate both candidates at the same time. It’s two for the price of one. Indeed, post debate polls have shown significant gains for Obama which means that it’s new to somebody, and those somebody’s votes are just as legitimate and count just the same as someone who rushed off to blog about how dumb the level of discourse was.
Yes the debates are conducted on about an eighth grade level, so what? Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, for Pete’s sake. He knows how to write, speak and think on the highest levels of the English language. McCain’s certainly not going to win any academic contests, but whatever else you want to say about the man he’s clearly not a dunce. (Unlike, say, the current President, who quite probably is a dunce.) I’ve seen what I thought were reliable statistics that the average adult literacy level is about what’s expected of an eighth grader (sadly, I could not find an on-line citation to back me up). If that’s even close to true it means that Obama and McCain were pitching their remarks right at their intended audience.
Bitch about the idiocy of pundits and columnists all you want, but don’t for a minute think that every word that comes out of candidate’s mouth isn’t carefully weighed and considered. The vocabulary might not impress the Oxford Dons but knowing your audience is far more important than sounding smarter than the other guy. If you want to say that we do a poor job of educating people I’ll agree with you; and expecting modern American citizens living in the twenty-first century to be able to converse on the same level as a recent high school graduate doesn’t strike me as unreasonable. But if I may paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to the polls with the electorate you have, not the electorate you might want.
We’re three weeks out and I promise you that three weeks after it’s over the popular attention will again recede. The NFL playoff picture will be taking shape, Oscar hopefuls will be flooding the googolplexes of America and the holiday season will be upon us. It is only now, in this precious little window, that we get to see the true political nature of this country. After that it’s right back to untestable opinion polls and op-ed speculation for two whole years.
This is when we get to see our American polity for what it truly is, no virtues pretended, no vices hidden. Glorious victory or agonizing defeat are close at hand so whatever you see or hear these next three weeks (passionate advocacy, ugly racism, earnest belief), you know it comes from the heart. Politics is usually a sideshow, right now it’s the main event; enjoy it while it lasts.
