PERIMETERS OF HATE IN THE QUADRENNIAL MADNESS OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

PERIMETERS OF HATE IN THE QUADRENNIAL MADNESS OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 30, 2008

“We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.”

Caleb C. Colton (1780 – 1832), English clergyman

BEING IN BUT NOT OF POLITICS

In the presidential campaign of 1964, when incumbent President Lyndon Johnson ran against Senator Barry Goldwater, I was president of the Young Republicans of Marion County (Indianapolis, Indiana). I had previously been asked to run for the House of Representatives by a delegation of Republicans from my district, which had been recently gerrymandered to ensure a Republican Representative in Congress. I demurred. I was involved in politics but I was not of politics.

I had gotten involved in politics, as I was a friend of Mayor Settles of Lawrence, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, where I lived. He appointed me Secretary to the Board of Zoning Appeals of Lawrence Township, which was in a rapid growth mode at the time. As leader of the Young Republicans, I was active in the Goldwater Presidential Campaign, organizing canvassing and a Young Republican rally in which the governor of the State of Indiana and senator Goldwater’s son took part.

You get a sense of the energy, excitement, and contention surrounding presidential politics within and without the “perimeters of hate.”

It is a surreal climate made more so when you find yourself sitting across the kitchen table in a lawyer friend’s home (Lloyd DeWester) with Governor Matthew Welsh and Lee Hamilton, a member of the House of Representative from Noblesville’s, going over campaign strategy.

Forty-two years later, Representative Hamilton, now a private citizen, along with James Baker, formerly of the George H. W. Bush administration, would head up the “Iraq Study Group Report” and present it to President George W. Bush in 2006.

Now, nearly a half-century later, you remember the intensity, irrationality, and the hysteria surrounding the campaign, and look back seasoned with life at the madness of it all.

QUADRENNIAL MADNESS TODAY

Hatred and vituperation if anything have increased exponentially over forty-four years (1964 – 2008).

Decency, proportion, humor, reason, and good will have gone up in flames fueled by slanderous rhetoric, negative ads, and improbable promises. I voted by mail as soon as it was possible, and given what is to follow, I feel obliged to tell you I voted for a Democrat, Senator Barak Obama. He doesn’t come unscathed in this missive nor does his opponent.

That said I never expected the day would come in my lifetime that I, a white middle class American, would have an opportunity to vote for a black man. But that is not why I voted for him. His intellect and sober bearing resonate with my spirit, as much as his rhetoric does not. I think of Adlai Stevenson, also of Illinois, twice nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, but in the twentieth century where eloquence and elitism were held in contempt.

Senator Obama shares a common eloquence with Stevenson and another man from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. The challenges for the new president, should Obama be elected, are as huge as they were for Honest Abe. Like Lincoln, he is mainly untried but shares Lincoln’s smarts, turn of mind, and brooding power.

There are several dimensions to this quadrennial madness, which is bounded by what I call “the hate” of why, what, where, and how. Negative campaigning is abhorred by both candidates, who always promise to maintain a positive campaign, but ultimately resort to mud slinging because hate in politics sells, and nowhere better than on the Internet where legends can be created that don’t have a grain of truth to them.

“THE WHY” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE

The United States of America in the truest sense is neither a democracy nor a republic, but a fragile linchpin between the two attempting to be both.

Once a member of the House of Representatives is elected, there is more than an eighty percent chance that he or she will be reelected until he or she dies or becomes caught in some type of scandal.

Since Congressman are elected every two years, they spend most of their time campaigning for the next election, while spending from Tuesday to Thursday in Washington, D.C., if that much time with the balance in their home district or on some jaunt about the globe at the taxpayers expense.

Senators are elected for six-year terms, and also reelected more than sixty-five percent of the time. Senators Stevens of Alaska, recently found guilty of corruption, is running for reelection, while Senator Byrd of West Virginia, former member of the Ku Klux Klan, has grown old in the senate where he has been since 1958.

Longevity is much the same for federal and municipal court judges, while Supreme Court Justices are lifetime positions. The only level where longevity is not the norm is at the governor’s level. They can serve only two four-year terms, and often fall short of that.

Currently, the Congress of the United States enjoys popularity in the single digits with the electorate, which is even below President George W. Bush.

Presidential campaigns find the candidates going on the road and getting in the trenches where they romance the electorate, while the electorate plays its part in the charade by venting its frustrations. Large rallies like those that once graced the coliseum in Rome become common fare. Here the ghost of wrath is exorcized from the belly of the beast with campaign rhetoric and promises as the remedy.

It is a dreamlike experience and nothing short of a religious transformation as one candidate is meant to personify change and hope while the other more of the same and despair. One candidate is charismatic transporting the electorate to the promise land while the other candidate is seen to block the path to this utopia.

The charismatic candidate lifts the electorate out of its passivity, if only for a moment, while the other candidate is seen to offer no lifelines.

The candidates know there is powerful need to believe. So, they look for hooks like in a popular song to create slogans and catch phrases to ride the tide to victory.

Voters long for the assurance that the candidate can wave a magic wand and quell their fears. This means candidates play on voters’ self-ignorance. If voters don’t know themselves than they are vulnerable to the puppet master, to the magician that has the sleight-of-hand skills to manipulate the moment to his candidacy. This strategy of quadrennial madness is based on hate.


“THE WHAT” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE

The nightmare of fear is one its boundaries.

The brokers of fear play on voters’ sense of lack, that is, the belief that voters cannot extricate themselves out of their paradoxical dilemma without governmental help. Credit card debt is not their fault. It was necessary to maintain their standard of living, which they no longer could afford. Having obsolescent skills is not their fault. Employers expected them to get more appropriate technical skills on their own time and at their own expense. How could they do that and keep up with the Jones? Voters are reminded of what they lack every four years with presidential candidates promising to mitigate this lack once in office.

The brokers of fear play on voters’ sense of limitations, that is, the belief that they don’t have the brains or brass to embrace their challenges. They need asset relief because what they are and what they have is all they see themselves capable of doing. They are a painted bird, victims of a society that has marginalized them. They believe they need help, and it is music to their ears when the candidate informs them help is on the way. Overachievers are the enemy.

The brokers of fear play up the hindrances to voters’ well being. Political speak is of barriers to economic, social, political, ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, psychological and personal justice. These barriers are seen as unjustly keeping voters from being all that they could be. They need the candidate once elected to knock down these hindrances, as they cannot see doing it on their own.

The brokers of fear play on voters’ paranoia, that is, those invisible but silent invaders lurking in the shadows that voters see compromising or stealing their identity or security.

Presidential candidates use quadrennial madness with the precision of religious zealots postulating doomsday scenarios as if this is the end of days. Voters are reminded of the enemy without but never the enemy within, which is a greater threat to their security. It is easier to sell other directed hate than to turn the light on self-hatred.

In voters’ lack, they see a champion who will erase their nightmares. In their limitations, they see a leader who will remedy their anxieties of low self-worth. In being haunted by barriers, they see a social engineer who will lift these hindrances. In a climate of deception, they see a straight shooter who will ease their paranoia.

“THE WHERE” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE

The prize of the presidency may be an ambition that the candidate has harbored since a lad. Lincoln confessed as much to a friend saying, “I’ve always wanted to be president even as a small child.”

So, the heart of the candidate wants his moment with history. It probably never occurred to him that the obstacle to this ambition is where hate resides. In good times, hate transmogrifies easily into personal attacks that vary from the petty to the scandalous, but these are not good times. Troubles are poignant and disaster looms on the horizon. It is a time when quadrennial madness must vent its spleen. It is a time of war between MAIN STREET and WALL STREET, as if they had nothing in common.

Candidates make Wall Street the fall guy for the sins of Main Street. It is an easy target because the wealth creators and brokers of wealth live the life that books and films are made of, and so Wall Street is an easy to hate.

But it takes two to tango.

The subprime meltdown took buyers as well as sellers to the cleaners. They were co-conspirators who didn’t mind playing quick and dirty with real estate loans, loans both buyers and sellers knew were bogus contracts. But who’s to worry, house prices always go up, don’t they?

Hedge fund operators didn’t mind increasing the risk and complicating the process because it was only paper transactions. They took their cut and moved the derivatives on. Everyone was complicit in the affair. With every economic collapse, there must be a rogue and a victim. Main Street was the victim and the roguish greed of Wall Street was the scoundrel. No one mentions that greed works two ways. Main Street was living beyond its means.

This failure of Main Street to grow up and act adult and Wall Street to act responsibly has come to roost. Public trust has gone up in smoke. Panic has reduced the climate to bailouts, rescue and stimulus packages with money that does not exist. The Federal Reserve says, “No problem, we’ll print more.”

Hate always finds a culprit. What better one than deregulation and the failure of oversight? The fact is Wall Street has created such a web of financial wizardry with its instruments of intrigue that nobody, and that means nobody knows what will and won’t work because the problem is buried in the deception.

Before Americans were no longer buying American made automobiles, before air travel became as uncomfortable as covered wagons, before the steel mills were shutting down and Americans were importing steel, before American manufacturing became a hollow industry, before exports were only a fraction of imports, before quality education became measured by money not performance, before high school graduates couldn’t read and write, before college test scores in science and math were the lowest in the international community, before our roads, rails, bridges and rivers were wanting for attention, before our dependence on foreign oil was a punishing reality, the man on Main Street and Wall Street knew there was a problem, but chose rhetoric to resolve. Presidential candidates know this and use it to suit them.

“THE HOW” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE

Presidential candidates have a way of transcending reality creating a motion picture in our heads. They take us out of our angst and into our pleasure zones, bypassing the dark corners of our minds that terrify us. It is the same mechanism used in religion. Religion draws our attention away from “what is” to “what could be” without any need for proof or verification. Have you ever notice God is always telling preachers to do this or to do that, and no one accuses them of schizophrenia?

Well, presidential candidates do the same. They tell us they are going to cut taxes, boost incomes, create jobs, and give relief on school loans. They promise to find a way to offer universal health coverage and to see that everyone has access to a college education. They have a drop-dead date when we will no longer be dependence on foreign oil, and promise to reduce hydrocarbon emission by 80 percent by mid-century, of course, when they are no longer in office. They paint a picture of sparkling clear water, fresh air, green pastures, and money in our deep pockets. You don’t have to die to enjoy paradise for it is heave-on-earth.

The rhetoric is successful because we as voters want to believe. We want our ambivalence dashed to pieces. It is all about want and not about need.

What we need is a dwelling to live in but what we want is a fancy house we can’t afford. What we need is transportation to get to and from work but what we want is a huge gas-guzzler that puts us high above the traffic. What we need is a balance diet of meat, fruits and vegetables but what we want are empty calories in food and drink that makes us overweight but feel good. What we need is exercise to maintain mind and body health but what we want is a pill to bypass the need.

We voters know what we need but we don’t want presidential candidates to remind us of what we need.

We voters desire the good life, and look for presidential candidates to assure us that one; we deserve it, and two, that their candidacy has the formula to provide such satisfaction.

We don’t want to hear life is not fair, that some are more gifted than others. Neither do we want to hear about equal opportunity nor about the small business owner who works twelve or fourteen hours a day seven days a week to meet the bills with little profit, but about the employees who work for the owner who haven’t had a raise in five years.

“The how” of the politics of hate operates playing one group against another, dividing and conquering, while talking almost incessantly about building a community. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if MAIN STREET and WALL STREET were pulling in the same direction rather than pushing against each other?

That is not possible in “the how” of the politics of hate because there has to be a fall guy, the Bush Administration, some ethnic group, something that can build the consensus of hate at one pole against the opposite pole. If a sitting president’s popularity is low, as if president Bush’s, he is the punching bag of both presidential candidates. You would think the president is an authority on to himself.

Supposedly, the Executive Branch of the presidency is checked and balanced by the Legislative Branch or the US Congress, and they both are checked and balanced by the Judicial Branch or the US Supreme Court. Where were these other two branches in the affair? Do we have a putative dictatorship? I don’t think so.

Why do we have 435 Congressmen and women, 100 Senators, and nine Supreme Court Justices if the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, the collapse of the economy, the high energy prices at the fuel pump, rising unemployment, the pressing recession, and all the rest if they are the exclusive fault of the president?

THE MYTH OF QUADRENNIAL MADNESS

Every four-year voters look for a new president to rescue them from the reality of their ways. They love the utopian platforms of the two parties, which deceive them with hope. This approach is successful because there is something in them for everyone. The candidate’s words sooth us as they tell us we come first when we know better.

It is music to our ears when our favorite candidate tells us change is on the way but we don’t have to change, don’t have to tighten our seatbelts, don’t have to make sacrifices, don’t have to grin and bare it at all much less for a year or two, don’t need to do anything but go out and vote because “as soon as I am elected . . ..”

Presidential candidates talk about change, change in administration, change in policies, and change in parties. They talk about reform, reform from the way it is to the way it will be. But doesn’t change and reform require sacrifice? Don’t they involve failures and setbacks as the change models work out the flaws? Won’t things get worse before they get better? If so, why are we not hearing about this?

Voters understand there is no possibility of reform or change without pain and inconvenience except cosmetically. Change and reform take nine times more courage than hope. Courage involves action; hope waits for results.

There is little talk in a presidential campaign about austerity, about the possibility of losing our dominate status in the world community, about the language and technical skills required in a global economy, about the changing complexion of the new world order, about the US being a player but no longer the dominate player, about the danger of embracing the world as it was not as it is, about progress no longer being our most important product, as the planet is dying because of the insanity of progress.

With more than two billion souls on this planet making less in a year than the average American makes in a week, and with Americans consuming 25 percent of the world’s energy resources while being only 5 percent of the world’s population, there is a disparity of wealth and health that must be addressed, or the world may one day self-implode.