Ideas Have Consequences... Candidates Not So Much

Americans, we are often told, vote for candidates not parties. It is commonly held a credit to our particular national genius that we see through the gossamer of our class, gender, racial and ideological interests (such European stuff) and vote for men of integrity, good character and so on. Proof of this axiom can be found almost anytime you here an "average voter" interviewed. They all want to elect someone who "is sincere," "is like their neighbors" who "will do what they think is right," who vaguely "stands for the right things" or who will "unite the country," if not be pleasent to "have a beer with." You would like to think that our systematic and rigorous focus on character - - and not politics -- would lead us away from temptation, away from the charlatans and into the palace of wisdom.

It hasn't. Instead, it has led to at least two perverse consequences, one annoying and one devastating.

First, all this blather about character and getting to know the candidate just leads down a blind alley. In short, we know the candidates in precisely the way they want us to know them. Small armies of highly paid, intelligent folks spend a great many hours making sure that a certain candidate is identified in a certain way, associated with certain attributes, distanced from certain stances. Their autobiographies are clipped, sculpted and molded to fit whatever portion of American mythology a given voter demographic adopts. (Rags to riches, maverick, hero, etc...) You will not see the candidate unguarded or candid until such time a a consultant decides that candid and unguarded are the themes of the day.

In short, if you think you can discern anything about the candidates character, you probably were disappointed that those ginsu knives really don't cut through tin cans. When we elect our presidents using the same criteria we use for prom king, we get what we deserve.

Second, and perhaps most deadly to our political culture, our superstar approach to politics allows us to forget that ideas -- even more than the men who execute them --are important. I use the last six years as an example. Right now, George W. Bush has an approval rating slightly higher than syphillis. Many Americans now blame America's ills on the the President's callow, incurious, and unprincipled character. That may be partially true, hwoever, the state of America today is not the result of one very bad President. George Bush has but authored only the latest chapetr in an ongoing storyline. The disasters of this Presidency are not just due to a poor leader -- they are the results of poor ideas. More precisely, our predicament is the consequence of a certain set of ideas that have dominated American politics for the last thirty years. Some can be characterized as attempts to roll back the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, others as products of the conservative movement spawned by Barry Goldwater, still other the results of dilligent lobbying by those the ideas benefit. While a complete list is impossible, a few of the highlights include:

a belief in the primacy of private markets and that has led to a darwinian winner take all capitalism that defines justice in terms of economic efficiency;

a concomitant belief that "government is the problem not the answer" that has led to a stream of tax cuts and deregulation which has shifted wealth upward,and left our government crippled and in some cases unable to even maintain our basic infrastructure;

a belief that government assistance or protection of the most vulnerable citizens, or our natural resouces is counter productive and inefficient because it places a burden on business;

government enforcement of so called traditional values and a hostility to protecting the civil rights of racial minorities, homosexuals or women;

a belief that if we only grease the skids for business, increased corporate profits will benefit us all;

a belief in a Pax Americana, that is a world aligned with US interests and values, that may be achieved by force of arms or a "muscular foreign policy.".

These ideas percolated in the pot until they achieved a national voice in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. They then became the lingua franca , the unspoken assumptions of of our political culture until this very day. It is these ideas, and not the character of any specific president, that has informed our current situation. It is these ideas which led us into Iraq, created a two tiered economy, lit the fuse on our culture wars, and destroyed the modern welfare state.

It is ideas like these that should be at the center of political campaigns, but then again Barak is so earnest and Hillary is so bitchy and McCain can be such a grouch and Huckabee really hates Romney, and....