You could get dizzy from the back-and-forth about who is lying and who is so honest sainthood is in the wings. There are no saints in politics. When there is something of value at stake and more than one person interested in obtaining it, politics is in the mix. When it comes to presidential politics, the stakes are enormous and the only people capable of even reaching the final group are extraordinary street fighters.
That is why no matter how much people carp about Clinton, Obama, or Edwards positioning issues to detract from the competition, you can bet that they're all doing their share. The same is true among Republicans. To think otherwise is to be ignorant of politics or too enamored with one candidate over the others to see the forest for the trees in terms of strategies.
These people are pros. If we don't want their type, we need to find another means of electing presidents. Politicians struggle for power and do so in ways that appeal to what matters to us. They study how we organize concepts in our minds, what we'll accept as evidence and how quickly we'll adopt a theme promulgated by the media if it helps us organize our political thinking or advance the chances of our favored candidate. And that's just for a start.
Astute politicians play with our perceptions to achieve for themselves advantages over their opponents. How many of them have told us about their difficult roots or what "regular" people they are? What does that have to do with today and what they'll do for us tomorrow?
None of the candidates who are still in the race are regular people. It's disingenuous of them to suggest otherwise.
We are the only ones who can keep them from going too far. They are strategists and so we need to become strategy savvy. My friend, Peter Samuelson, has argued that we may have reached a point where the political machines are so well oiled that near ties in competitions are inevitable as each outsmarts the other in turns at a game for which they've become too expert.
"Might it be that the computerized Rovian brains running our candidates' campaigns have created a circular eddy of analysis leading to counter-attack, of thrust leading to parry... and if the pollsters and the Carvilles and the Roves are all using the same software and the same tactics, does the relentless calculus of mass media advertising not virtually guarantee a tie? Any movement away from the middle leads to an equal and opposite advertising barrage, precisely targeted to the shifting demographics of the support-base. That pushback then leads to yet another counterattack that exactly nullifies the shift."
It pays to step back once in a while to recognize the nature of the activity in which we're involved. Otherwise we're like sheep -- the lot of us. We despise those who disagree with us about a candidate even though we actually know little of that person. It's a form of ignorance -- the same kind that delivered George W. Bush into our lives twice.
So what should we do? We should observe and critique -- not like the many MSM "experts" whose lips move but nothing of substance comes out -- but as people who aren't voting for prom king or queen. The next president will need to protect us from the demise of democracy, the economic fall of a great country, and respond to the needs of Americans instead of their own lust for power or unquenchable greed. That calls for opening our eyes and seeing all of them as first and foremost politicians and then deciding, after considerable observation and skepticism, the one among them who is competent, compassionate, and capable of rising above his or her thirst for power to do what's best for us.
See also