Political Science Fiction - Part I

So, anyone that knows me knows that I am a political being, albeit reluctantly so in more recent times. I tend now to focus more on issues than candidates or parties, which is hopefully an indicator of some greater political awakening that happened when I graduated from college and realized what the wisest of us learned without the degree: that the world is complicated and binary systems do a poor job of accurately portraying the spectrum of opinions. Then again, it could be like the old audiophile argument between mono, stereo or surround sound: maybe two speakers correspond to two ears.

Ultimately, this leads me to take empathetic, relativistic positions on candidates in politics. I will admit to a fair amount of knee-jerk liberal stuff (empathy for the disenfranchised, an uneasiness with conflict, an inability to find Larry the Cable Guy charming), but more so than anything I want results that reduce suffering and misery in ways that are preventable. This truth may seem self-evident, until you sit down and watch or read political coverage in this country for long enough for someone to stick a very large foot in an correspondingly large mouth.

Tonight, I sat down with some friends to watch the last of the results of the Pennsylvania primary, otherwise known as the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. Like much of the Democratic primary process, it was confusing, incoherent, infuriating, emotionally manipulative, and generally lacking vision. And that was just Chris Matthews! Zing!

We mocked and ridiculed Hillary's, uh, subtle invocation of Rocky Balboa, confused by which Rocky movie she was referencing. Was it the first one where he loses gracefully and in doing so truly appears as a winner? Was it the one where he fixated on anachronistic Cold War rivalries that no longer reflected the contemporary political landscape? Was it the one where his brain damage caused his dialogue to sound over-rehearsed, leaving the audience begging for a break? Was it the one that was billed was a publicly-mandated comeback that nobody actually seemed to want? Or was it the one that seemed vaguely racist because he was kicking the crap out of a black guy? Regardless, these are the kind of shenanigans that make you wonder who exactly these politicians intend to reach when they deliver platitudes as vetted reality.

I do not spare Obama in this respect either. Besides the fact that his "concession" speech made me wonder how much Abercrombie and Fitch had to pay to reach their ideal demographic--college student-targeted product placements in "reality tv"--Obama has routinely made me question this experiment in campaigning where he answers every question the way we (being educated, affluent, elitist college graduates) wish someone running for president would answer it, while not necessarily having the teeth to back it up. At least when Toby snarked at the press on The West Wing, he was meeting with Republicans to broker a deal on the farm bill or explaining to the Religious Right that they did not have a monopoly on spirituality in this country. Instead, Obama has backed himself into a corner where bipartisanship is a proxy for likability and hope stands in for truly audacious positioning. Frankly, if Obama were as talented as everyone on both sides seems to think he is, he would have sold all of us on much more ambitious changes for the future, rather than repackaging Kerry/Edwards '04 for the Subaru/Ivy/Pitchfork crowd of 2008. Thus, Obama's largest liability moving forward, similarly to Eliot Spitzer's tumble in some respects, is the constant worry that his audacity is disingenuous and, much much worse, hypocritical.

Sadly, this isn't the man's fault. He is an exceptional human being that has, in retrospect, made some commendable choices that have unfortunately tied his hands. One can only wonder what kind of campaign Obama would have run with Michael Bloomberg's war chest, gall, and propensity to reference his mother. But that would have meant that the years as a community organizer and legal scholar being sacrificed in favor of the seemingly less utilitarian pursuit of riches in the business world. He isn't the only one to struggle with this problem; every day I and many of my contemporaries wonder whether we are even coming close to helping the vulnerable communities we have committed ourselves to while costing us in financial and communicative resources. Every arcane little regulation that Bloomberg manages to shelf makes me question my choice.

Normally, in any other election year, we manage to convince ourselves that what is at stake is generally trivial or benign enough that the formulaic appeals of politicians running for higher office are not only entertaining, but charming in their lack of sophistication. After all, we need something to talk about before baseball season kicks into high gear. But given the global climate that we live in at this very moment, this kind of systematic jerking off
is no longer adorable or tolerable. If anyone of these campaigns were in tune with anything, they would've changed their slogans to "McCain: Just try to spell 'China' with those letters; you can't" or "Hillary: Because maybe menopause is exactly what we need to stop fucking all of this up so much" or "BHO: damnit, go buy an iPhone already so I can spam you and be a good American." Instead it's the same old shit, except with the new-found injection of process reporting where substance take a back seat to the metaverse of polling strategies, touchscreens and cable network inter-office banter.

I could spell out for you what the challenges are but I would run the risk of sounding pretentious and possibly a little bit over-urgent. And that is what Part II is for....