Enough Already!

 By Howard Weinberg 

For more than a year we’ve experienced the extreme acrimony and the bizarre absurdity of American presidential politics. Enough already!  The countdown clock shows 63 days — 9 weeks — until the November election, but we’ve forgotten both the needs of the future and the lessons of the past.  Obsessed with or sickened by name calling and charges of dishonesty, we’ve been unable to consider seriously how to improve our electoral politics.  

We are victims of a damaged political system — even wealthy political donors believe that, as you can see in Alexandra Pelosi’s incisive, humorous and important new HBO documentary MEET THE DONORS: DOES MONEY TALK?  What Pelosi hasn’t covered in her film, she freely admits, are the more sinister and less transparent aspects of how wealth influences politics.  She couldn’t get Charles and David Koch to sit for an interview.  But New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s new book DARK MONEY describes the efforts of the Koch Brothers and other like-minded extreme conservatives to push their agendas by filtering donations to politicians through non-profit associations and foundations. 

Many find the role of money in our political campaigns abhorrent and believe that the Supreme Court should reverse its 2010 Citizens United 5-4 decision that legitimizes the distorted notion that freedom of speech prohibits restricting a non-profit corporation’s independent political campaign contributions.  As Mae West famously said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!”  Not in politics, however, where too much money for attack ads and too much repetitive media covering the “horse race” make one wonder, “What’s so wonderful?”   To enlighten voters is not the mission of most of our media. Rather they aim to garner attention, to entertain and, first and foremost, to make money.  Most politicians, whether or not they admit it as Richard Nixon did, believe pro-football coach Vince Lombardi’s classic aphorism: “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.”   

To fix the structural problems in American democracy is a formidable challenge, but we might start with what the two parties agree on: controlling presidential debates and gerrymandering.  Democrats and Republicans alike are unable to resist gaming the system.  When they collaborate to gerrymander congressional districts, the two parties are agreeing to avoid real competition.   They clear a pathway for extreme candidates because a local candidate in a political monoculture doesn’t have to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters.  In the process our democracy is deprived of the ability to test future leaders in the crucible of real local elections.  A prestigious non-partisan commission could develop rules to reign in the excesses of the two major political parties.  No candidate or party should hold itself above playing by fair, equally-applied rules.  Nonetheless, Democrats and Republicans connived together to remove the non-partisan League of Women Voters from its role in organizing and running presidential debates as it did from 1976 to 1984.  A  proposed Commission To Reform Electoral Politics should restore the League of Women Voters or find another independent organization to run presidential debates.

Since many courts have rejected efforts across the nation to restrict voting rights, it’s time to examine and adopt nationally the strongest possible state laws that will improve and facilitate voting: 1) Make Election Day a National Holiday or Create an Election Weekend,  2) Use Preferential Voting or Instant Run-off Voting,  3) Extend Early Voting and Make Absentee Voting Easier,  4) Provide Instant Registration. 

A non-partisan commission could reduce the entire presidential selection process to less than 18 months, focus public attention and increase voting by grouping states in successive regional primaries that would cover the Northeast, Midwest, West and South.  Would the revenue-hungry media countenance such obstruction of their profits?  Those changes would expand the current narrow emphasis on Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and California during primary elections.  

It’s no solace if the state of our democracy was worse in 1860 or 1968. What’s different now is that we are living in a media-saturated world.  In essence Ronald Reagan offered a preview.  He’d managed to get elected Governor of California before running for President, but his claim to fame was as a movie actor and a television presenter — not as a politician or statesman.  The people surrounding Reagan sold his persona in an era when media was less fragmented than today.  Seeing him close-up in the Oval Office as his Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver controlled my CBS News crew’s access, I felt Reagan was very much an actor preparing to hit his mark and waiting to read his lines. 

Trump, by contrast, seems to run his own show and sells his celebrity in a YouTube world where “stars” are even more readily “known for being known” than for any actual  accomplishments.  Trump is a pre-eminent self-promoter and entrepreneur at a time when boasting and self-promotion are highly valued in our society.   Hillary Clinton has the disadvantage of being “too well known” — often the peril of a Vice President who would succeed a President (see Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Al Gore).  The media, given the opportunity, enjoy saying to Democrats and Republicans “a plague on both your houses”.   After all, it’s easier than committing to reporting in depth on each candidate and party. 

Our democracy clearly can do better:  According to the Pew Research Center, U.S. voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election was 53.6%.   Yet according to the Census Bureau, 65% of the U.S. voting-age population were registered in 2012, compared with 91% in Canada and the UK, 96% in Sweden and nearly 99% in Japan.

At bottom, however, what’s most missing today is cultural more than organizational: we seem to have lost our sense of the commonweal.  We have forgotten the virtues of compromise, the belief in fair play, and the ability of argument to win adherents.  We are missing a culture-wide understanding of the benefits of government AND business — neither trying to dominate or to destroy the other.  While we deeply need self-restraint, we only get excess.  We define freedom as the right to do whatever we damn want.  And that includes the right to exploit our fellow citizens — a return to the 19th Century shibboleth: Caveat Emptor, “Let the buyer beware.”   We haven’t really adjusted to the new technological world that we’re living in.  We haven’t agreed upon rules of behavior in the global economy — nor even in our own society.  In Texas this has led to the tolerance of guns in the classroom.  We celebrate disruption, and we get chaos.  We haven’t moved toward software and hardware compatibility lest we deprive some of a profit opportunity.  We want courage, and we get cowardice.

Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, warns of closing borders, of protectionism.  In a recent GE newsletter, he says, “The relationship between business and government is the worst I have ever seen. Technology, productivity and globalization have been the driving forces during my business career. In business, if you don’t lead these changes, you get fired; in politics, if you don’t fight them, you can’t get elected…”  In the U.S., we want exports but seem to hate trade and exporters.”

Underlying American politics is a pervasive sense of income inequality, a reality of stagnant incomes, fewer union jobs paying decent wages, a decline in manufacturing, and an increase in competition from new places and new methods, an increased fear of the other — the immigrant, the hacker, and the terrorist.   

Chris Matthews said on MSNBC that Republicans ignore the fact that most Americans are employees — 90% of Americans are employees, not entrepreneurs.  The media, too, prefer to focus on the latest technology and on start-ups rather than on efforts to organize unions and to raise the minimum wage.  Trump, who hangs around with entrepreneurs, may enjoy fast food, but that’s about all he has in common with his admirers who feel ignored by the 1%, the wealthy and powerful with whom Trump has proudly and loudly consorted. 

Today’s fractured media fails to provide the historical and logical analysis that the public needs to make decisions.  Social media have shown us that the smaller the audience, the louder the shouting.  “Click-bait” trumps significant reporting.  Politicians mainly look to what will play well rather than to what makes the most sense.  It’s so easy to call for reducing taxes, and hard to seek funds for rebuilding roads and bridges, for expanding mass transit and high speed internet.  

Are we better off today than in 1970 when Senator Roman Hruska of Nebraska urged the Senate to confirm the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court?  Responding to criticism that Carswell had been a mediocre judge, Senator Hruska claimed:  “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?  We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”   Senator Hruska faced considerable criticism for his comments, and Carswell was eventually defeated.  Today’s U. S. Senate has refused to hold a hearing or vote on President Obama’s March 16th nomination of the unambiguously excellent Judge Merrick Garland to serve on the Supreme Court.  Are we really better off?  

In President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union speech he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: The first two are guaranteed by the U. S. constitution: Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship.  We are still fighting to secure the other two: Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear.   

By some measurements, poverty has decreased worldwide — 35 years ago more than 50% of the world’s population lived in dire poverty.  Now it’s about 14%.  Yet in the United States the official national poverty rate was 14.8 percent in 2014, that’s 46.7 million people living in poverty.  In June 2016 the International Monetary Fund urged the U. S. to address its poverty by raising the minimum wage and offering paid maternity leave to women to encourage them to enter the labor force.  

As to fear President Roosevelt said:  “the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”  He spoke 11 months before the United States declared war on Japan, December 8, 1941.

There are plenty of reasons for fear today — especially acts of terrorism.  We would benefit from a leader who could articulate and assuage our feelings of fear.   Instead, the media focus on the name calling and bickering in our presidential politics, and our leaders fail to realize the goal set forth in our Constitution — “to form a more perfect union.”  

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(c) 2016 Howard Weinberg

Howard Weinberg is a television documentary and public affairs journalist who has covered politics extensively. See www.howardweinberg.net.  A script-doctor, teacher and mentor, he was Executive Producer of LISTENING TO AMERICA WITH BILL MOYERS — a 27-program PBS series that The New York Times called the “best political journalism” of the 1992 election campaign that “elevated the dialogue of democracy.”   A Founding Producer of THE ROBERT MACNEIL REPORT and THE MACNEIL/LEHRER REPORT, he covered political stories during the 1976 election; he produced political documentaries for BILL MOYERS’ JOURNAL during the 1980 election, and produced political stories for CBS 60 MINUTES in the 1984 election.