Next American melodrama—2012 Presidential election

In changing times, when there is no plot or sure outcome, and compromise is exhausted, American politics have taken on the appearance of an awful melodrama—a presidential election that becomes a canvas for immense simple choices, exaggerated characters, and paranoid connections. Complexity and respect for the evidence are set aside.

A country that prides itself on its amateurish politics turns its leading politicians into demigods and devils in a Greek drama. The stakes for America become unbearably high.

Back in 2009, Republicans started preparing for exactly this kind of showdown and now look a little snug in their battle dress. They always want a candidate to really believe in but will probably settle for irresolute Mitt Romney.

Conversely, the Democrats are working up a truly dramatic proposition—vote Obama for the survival of America’s social union and activist federal leadership at home as well as abroad. However, a two-great-choices election led by no-drama Obama against weather-vain Romney will require strenuous pre-game work-ups. 

Getting liberals into the spirit of this kind of Manichaean politics, however, is moving along quite nicely. In New York Magazine, Frank Rich, possibly print’s most astute liberal observer, penned an extraordinary piece entitled “What Killed JFK. The hate that ended his presidency stalks us still.”   

“At least in 1963, polling showed that only 5 percent of the country—a fringe—subscribed to the radical anti-government views championed by the John Birch Society and other militants of the right. These days, that fringe, whether in the form of birthers or the tea party or the hosts of Fox & Friends, gives marching orders to a major political party.”

Rich acknowledges that Kennedy was not the victim of a criminal conspiracy and that a climate of violence didn’t literally pull the trigger. 

However:

“On the other hand, read Manchester or 11/22/63 (Stephen King’s latest novel) or any other account of that time, and the vitriol that was aimed at Kennedy in life seems as immediate as today. It’s as startling as that “You lie!” piercing the solemnity of a presidential address like a gunshot—or the actual gunshots fired at the White House last week by another wretched waif. In the end, that political backdrop is what our 44th and 35th presidents may have most in common. The tragedy of the Kennedy cult is that even as it fades, the hothouse brand of American malice that stalked its hero stalks our country still.”

Click on: http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/jfk-2011-11/index2.html

Historian and author James Piereson’s article “Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination: Frank Rich and the Paranoid Style” smartly chides Rich for relying on a novelist to prop up the idea that right-wing nuts and their theories inspired Kennedy’s assassin.

Click on: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/22/revisiting_the_kennedy_assassination_frank_rich_and_the_paranoid_style_112154.html

Associating the tragedy of Jack Kennedy and the vulnerability of Barack Obama, nevertheless, can’t be undone. An urbane liberal president stood up to hatred and extremism and was assassinated. Liberals, as passionately as conservatives, have their narrative of the 60s.  

Obama Democrats would look silly trying to sell optimism by re-inventing the innocence and arrogance of Kennedy’s Camelot. In truth, the tragedy of those divisive years is infinitely more affecting. Obama will more likely evoke passion in Democrats not by pretending to be Harry Truman but by being himself—a civil thinker, easily as articulate and as attractive as Jack Kennedy.

Feasting on an American tragedy

Nobody, in the land of the free, takes being called an accomplice to murder lying down. Accordingly, the far right is raising hell, in its own defense. Whether, they can regain the political offensive remains to be seen. Sarah Palin, possibly the cockiest politician to come along since Mayor Richard Daley, has the biggest problem: innocent as driven snow as she thinks, her charm was born of her blithe and reckless style. And reckless political rhetoric will, for some time, match drunk driving for bad taste

Jared Lee Loughner’s rampage may have a long impact on American politics. There is nothing exotic or foreign about any of it. A single issue—like, racial equality or the right to strike—was not at issue and isn’t at hand to resolve. The victims were not Presidents or radicals but ordinary, affable Americans living in a community still optimistic about the future.

As a Canadian neighbor, one thing that is starting to embarrass me is the verdict of outsiders that America’s political style is murderous, that violence emanates from America’s peculiarly abrasive political culture and commercial media.  John Doyle, a Toronto film critic said:

“What Fox News has sown is now being reaped. . . . Fox News does indeed define the U.S. political culture and the manner of debate inside that culture. It is to blame, but blame must be tempered by our understanding that Fox News is America and America is Fox News. There will be neither silence nor a change of tone until the Fox News Channel changes or shuts up. That’s not going to happen. Look at the ratings. The ratings don’t lie.”

—John Doyle, “How fox changed the tone of American political debate,” The Globe and Mail, January 11, 2011

Click on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/television/john-doyle/fox-news-and-the-poisoning-of-american-political-debate/article1864663/

Fox News is a delicious whipping boy.  If Fox News, rather than Radio Free Europe was broadcasting in the 1980’s, the Berlin Wall would probably still be standing. Nevertheless, if Fox was the voice of America today, Barack Obama would not be President. 

The notion that rough debate somehow causes Americans to kill one another and that that rough debate is something that America’s civilized friends have, thankfully, put behind them is offensive.

Let’s hear it for partisan civility. But let’s not pretend that good manners in Washington will civilize the fevered margins of America’s culture. When the US Congress was dominated by so-called bi-partisan elder statesmen, blacks were regularly being lynched and civil libertarians and peace protesters were being clubbed by the police.

Americans are not passive people. However, labeling their aggressiveness as an expression of a people “fearful of change and hostile to opposing viewpoints” is, coming from a Canadian, cheap. 

American protest movements and political fights have authored much of Canadian and Western political discourse for decades. Americans argue in public about the most sensitive tensions in their culture and their conduct in the world. Nothing is excluded in Washington simply because it’s not mainstream.

In cocktail parties in Toronto, it’s easier to have an intelligent discussion about what Americans are excited about than how we govern ourselves. Just try having an interesting argument about Canadian foreign policy or why we have an appointed Senate.