Humility Tuesday · 4 February 2008

The blog has been redesigned but several readers are lobbying for the installation of a widget before Alex brings the new template into being. The widget will set a quota for posts about popular culture and politics, and limit the amount of ineffable nonsense that makes it into these pages.

No widget! Don't do it!  Here, I'll go all-out. A whole post of my opinions about electoral politics. The most distracting kind of politics! And yet for my jadedness, I have suffered this week a little transformation. 

John McCain, old guy, what am I going to do with you? Who would have guessed that you would finally bring it together? Your relative good intentions belie a frightening level of social and fiscal conservatism bound together in a consistency that's even more potent than stupidity. And I'm concerned: if tomorrow ends with a McCain/Clinton matchup, we are in for a traumatic race around all the wrong differences, with all the meaningful differences off the table.

I used to be a political scientist. I joined the discipline with a BA in philosophy and journalism, and no idea the anti-intellectualism, rah-rah nationalism, and paradigm-bound incuriosity I was in for. Six months with the reductionists and it took a spring break in the Grand Canyon, hiking out through the sheer suffocating cliffs of the inner gorge, to make me realize my situation. I had to leave. Went home, rapped on the door of the Soc dep’t, and gave them my reasons. They were only too happy to take a disciplinary refugee. But that year in political science gave me as much respect for the accuracy of statistical models (which I learned to do well) as disdain for their truth claims. GET THIS: for about 80 years of elections and arguably right into the present, the outcome of a presidential contest can be predicted on just three variables: change in real disposable income, whether a candidate is an incumbent, and whether the country is at war.

Hokum? As if people still vote their pocketbooks. And is there even an understanding that the country is at war? What does incumbency even mean when the same two families have had someone on the ballot every election in my voting lifetime?

But still the models tell me something, and it’s more than the stupid heads on the tv. This is why the last two Bush wins didn’t take me by surprise. The reason I'll watch the RDI sink quarter by quarter and see it as socially beneficial process. But still... especially considering the fiscal fear that's building, the spectre of McCain is haunting me enough to change my vote to someone who can overwhelm him.

I’ve been for Hillary all the way through this thing. The argument was (caveat lector): to those in search of an “inspiring” candidate they "can believe in": stop identifying with the country. Heal thyself, nationalist: be citizen of the world! Stop deceiving yourself that America is a nice country. Let's make it a nice country (w.r.t., especially: trade [my obsession], welfare, war, prisons, education, environmental cooperation) before we think we deserve a nice face for it. No top-down national makeover. Hillary is not a nice person, which is why she works on an symbolic level. Way more importantly, she’s got infrastructure. All that matters in government is organizational resources and bureaucratic know-how. This is power. Hillary is ready to rush the power structure because she’s been writing the plays for a decade. She’s the only one I trust to go back and UN-DO as much of the last eight years of policy as possible. She’s the only one whose ego is invested in that. We can talk about “moving forward” after we do some serious policy repair, chez Hillary. "Moving forward" is naive and amnesiac when there's so much horror on the books, waiting to crust over into "the way things are done."

But no matter. She cannot beat McCain in this environment, I think; at least not without insane blood.

I’ve done my best holding out any emotional involvement in the symbolic nonsense. The Obama show with his fake MLK cadences and his plaintive open brow and cute ears and that anything-but-macho way he dips his head and touches a shoulder. Because I wanted a policy juggernaut, not a symbol to help me lie to myself about the deeper nature of the beast.

But this is why the cute man can do it: he can mobilize so many who want to believe in the show. And who are not your father's oldsmobile pocketbook voters (those anti-idealists). The show is a shallow construction, but even constructions made out of the fleeting miasma of culture can have consequences that are real. Enough people believe in the symbol now that it will be real. Who am I to look askance?

Of course he is sweet. Of course there’s a little bit of feedback from the ideas he creates of ourselves into the polity we are to become. Of course the symbolic shit and the culture it creates can be beautiful. Of course I can love this man and the new ideology we're giving him (though please don't ask me to sniffle at these bad Scarlett Johanssen videos--I don't have disposable emotion for electoral politics). I hope Obama appreciates all this psychic and emotional labor people are doing for him: charisma is in the eyes of the crowd and it is us creating the Obama tide.

I voted absentee two weeks ago, before the change. So this is my way of changing that vote. By proxy. One owl for Obama, this time around.

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Categories: markets-networks-society , self-deception

Comment

1. For the first time in my voting life, MA is actually a meaningful primary; also, my preferred candidate quit. So I’ve been tossing and turning over Clinton-Obama for a few weeks now. Tomorrow’s the big decision day.

   I’ve been pro-Hillary for a while: she’s smart, competent, tough and she can win a dog-fight. But I don’t like the Clinton’s DLC vision, I don’t want another dynasty and I don’t like her new-found love for the corporate (pharma, etc.) dollar.

   Obama, to date, hasn’t really impressed me. I like him well enough but I’m not sure if there’s any steak beneath the sizzle.

   So now I’m back to my oldest crisis – do I vote for whom I think can win or do I vote for whom I think is more representative of my views?

   I’m not sure if the American public, in the privacy of the voting booth, is ready to elect a multi-racial political newcomer. But he’s more solidly anti-war than Hillary and he’s got more upside. Hillary can probably squeak out a tight win. Obama could potentially deliver a mandate for change (or prove, once and for all, what this country really stands for).

   Tomorrow, I’m connecting the black lines for Obama.

   (sorry for the novel!)

   Posted by: cody · Feb 4, 05:01 PM · #

2. Gobama!

   Posted by: Rachel · Feb 4, 06:28 PM · #

3. New blog format? Ohhh, do I want to see change? ; )

   Isn’t this exciting? No matter what side of the fence people are on. Super Tuesday! I’m going back to study now so tomorrow night I can at least watch some of the coverage. xx!

   Posted by: Anna · Feb 4, 07:02 PM · #

4. Yes, it’s an incredible campaign. I’m loving it and the way it’s made people care about politics again.

   LBH, Rachel was the one who finally brought me to the light. Thank you.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Feb 4, 07:18 PM · #

5. my mother sent me an email a while ago the was forwarded from her homies at PPH that said:
   “Just got back from local Planned Parenthood meeting. Helga Schroeter who is a careful reporter said that Planned Parenthood in Illinois asked both their senators to vote present on some votes so that the anti-choice people could not use the senators’ votes as tools against their reelections. According to Helga, Obama just did what Planned Parenthood Illinois asked him to do.”
   this cemented for me that Obama has a very critical trait that no other candidate really seems to have and that is that he is respectful and humble enough to realize that he is a PUBLIC SERVANT. he is not coming into office to push through an agenda but to best represent the the voters who support him. if that makes any sense. i am off to vote for Obama right now…

   Posted by: cranky housefrau · Feb 5, 07:29 AM · #

6. The more it looks like McCain will be the Republican candidate, the more worried I become. He has his heart in the right place but he’s too blunt to be as pragmatic as what we need in a President right now. And the Clinton-Obama dilemma… that is SO tough. The WA primary isn’t until the 19th so we’re not as pivotal as so many other states are today. But still, it’s hard to choose between the non-cynical candidate that represents symbolic change and the divisive head-butting candidate that knows precisely what she thinks the country should do.

   Posted by: Carl · Feb 5, 01:37 PM · #

7. I don’t want a presidential who thinks a cock of the head, a shoulder shrug and a sweet smile will get him his way. He’s a politician through and through, don’t let it fool you…

   Posted by: Susan · Feb 5, 05:23 PM · #

8. They’re all politicians. Even Clinton is a politician. Her progressiveness isn’t genuine — she’s only in it to exercise her ambitions. What it all comes down to is whether you want the candidate that speaks to people as people, or the candidate that tells people what they need to have done for them.

   Posted by: Carl · Feb 6, 02:11 PM · #

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