27/07/07, Rex Murphy, Gimmicks won't fix politics
Post
The Democratic contenders for their party's presidential nomination had another of their debates this week. This one was a little different from those, by now, almost ritualistic encounters.
The edge of novelty came from CNN's call for the questions to be posted on the versatile and popular YouTube. CNN then picked from the great torrent of postings what it felt were the best. Host Anderson Cooper, more emcee than moderator, introduced the Internet mini-productions and directed which candidates were to answer which questions.
It was, in most ways, no better or worse than other so-called debates.
It certainly didn't suffer from the absence of a panel of journalists asking obligatory and predictable questions. But neither was much gained by the scattershot of mostly equally predictable queries from a handful of wired ordinary folks.
But it did have its moments. We knew there would be a global-warming question. But we did not know, and perhaps few would have had the stomach to guess, that it would come from a man, dressed up as a melting snowman, who asked in a nerve-grating, whiny, maudlin squeak: “I've been growing concerned that global warming, the single most important issue to the snowmen of this country, is being neglected.”
Cute can be so painful at times.
Now, to begin with, a snowman in July shares with hell's proverbial refrigeration the property of statistical freakishness. But, no matter.
Our deliquescent YouTuber capped his Socratic moment with the inquiry: “As president, what will you do to ensure that my son will live a full and happy life?” The proper answer might have been “I will make sure that candidates for the highest office of the most powerful country in the world will not again endure the camp of answering questions on live television from adults ridiculously dressed up as snowmen, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or any other manner of self-displaying kitsch.”
That was not to be.
Mr. Cooper gave the snowman question to Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, perhaps the likeliest of the eight candidates looking to soak up the preschool vote, and Mr. Kucinich, after a prelude on moving away from dirty coal and dirtier oil, offered this inspired piece of uplift as his closer: “We don't have to have our snowmen melting and the planet shouldn't be melting either.”
Has it come to this? That a potential nominee for the U.S. presidency is offering reassurances to his fellow citizens in midsummer about “melting snowmen?” Somewhere in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Ill., you would have heard the bones of Abraham Lincoln rattling in desperate rotation and ricocheting around the crypt.
How far, I wonder, from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or from the chilling ardour of Patrick Henry's “Give me liberty or give me death” has the U.S. system travelled when mock cartoon characters or chatter about snowmen occupy electoral discourse? The infantilism of both the format and the affected mannerisms of the inquiry were deeply depressing.
The YouTube dimension might have been new, but the silliness of this part of it wasn't. Nor was the willingness of those seeking the highest office to surrender some portion of their dignity in the hope of appearing to be in touch with the ordinary folk, or hip or non-pretentious – all obligatory genuflections in the mass campaigns of a media-driven politics.
Back in the early days of Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency, Mr. Clinton, always a pioneer of new formats for politics, went on MTV, and in response to a question from one of the policy wonks who crowd every MTV studio, alerted America to his preference for boxers over briefs. It is amazing, but until that moment, the underwear of potential presidents had been left unexplored – at least in public – in every campaign since America had had a president.
Politics has been bleeding away from what it should be about – the issues and challenges of governance – and from the dignity that is one of its essential supports. Hence the search for novelty, in its presentation or its content, and the increasing reliance on staged moments of naturalness (the reality-television syndrome). Remember John Kerry dressing up as a “real” duck-hunter for one day?
These are trivial moments but they are telling. They are signals of politics in flight from itself, taking on any guise other than that of the seriousness of a real public calling and real, unadorned, public service.
Turning debates into ersatz game shows, blending them with the latest Internet fad, and inanely pious declarations that Americans should not put up with “melting snowmen” is one more lamentable illustration of how feeble and false, alas, democracy has become.
The edge of novelty came from CNN's call for the questions to be posted on the versatile and popular YouTube. CNN then picked from the great torrent of postings what it felt were the best. Host Anderson Cooper, more emcee than moderator, introduced the Internet mini-productions and directed which candidates were to answer which questions.
It was, in most ways, no better or worse than other so-called debates.
It certainly didn't suffer from the absence of a panel of journalists asking obligatory and predictable questions. But neither was much gained by the scattershot of mostly equally predictable queries from a handful of wired ordinary folks.
But it did have its moments. We knew there would be a global-warming question. But we did not know, and perhaps few would have had the stomach to guess, that it would come from a man, dressed up as a melting snowman, who asked in a nerve-grating, whiny, maudlin squeak: “I've been growing concerned that global warming, the single most important issue to the snowmen of this country, is being neglected.”
Cute can be so painful at times.
Now, to begin with, a snowman in July shares with hell's proverbial refrigeration the property of statistical freakishness. But, no matter.
Our deliquescent YouTuber capped his Socratic moment with the inquiry: “As president, what will you do to ensure that my son will live a full and happy life?” The proper answer might have been “I will make sure that candidates for the highest office of the most powerful country in the world will not again endure the camp of answering questions on live television from adults ridiculously dressed up as snowmen, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or any other manner of self-displaying kitsch.”
That was not to be.
Mr. Cooper gave the snowman question to Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, perhaps the likeliest of the eight candidates looking to soak up the preschool vote, and Mr. Kucinich, after a prelude on moving away from dirty coal and dirtier oil, offered this inspired piece of uplift as his closer: “We don't have to have our snowmen melting and the planet shouldn't be melting either.”
Has it come to this? That a potential nominee for the U.S. presidency is offering reassurances to his fellow citizens in midsummer about “melting snowmen?” Somewhere in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Ill., you would have heard the bones of Abraham Lincoln rattling in desperate rotation and ricocheting around the crypt.
How far, I wonder, from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or from the chilling ardour of Patrick Henry's “Give me liberty or give me death” has the U.S. system travelled when mock cartoon characters or chatter about snowmen occupy electoral discourse? The infantilism of both the format and the affected mannerisms of the inquiry were deeply depressing.
The YouTube dimension might have been new, but the silliness of this part of it wasn't. Nor was the willingness of those seeking the highest office to surrender some portion of their dignity in the hope of appearing to be in touch with the ordinary folk, or hip or non-pretentious – all obligatory genuflections in the mass campaigns of a media-driven politics.
Back in the early days of Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency, Mr. Clinton, always a pioneer of new formats for politics, went on MTV, and in response to a question from one of the policy wonks who crowd every MTV studio, alerted America to his preference for boxers over briefs. It is amazing, but until that moment, the underwear of potential presidents had been left unexplored – at least in public – in every campaign since America had had a president.
Politics has been bleeding away from what it should be about – the issues and challenges of governance – and from the dignity that is one of its essential supports. Hence the search for novelty, in its presentation or its content, and the increasing reliance on staged moments of naturalness (the reality-television syndrome). Remember John Kerry dressing up as a “real” duck-hunter for one day?
These are trivial moments but they are telling. They are signals of politics in flight from itself, taking on any guise other than that of the seriousness of a real public calling and real, unadorned, public service.
Turning debates into ersatz game shows, blending them with the latest Internet fad, and inanely pious declarations that Americans should not put up with “melting snowmen” is one more lamentable illustration of how feeble and false, alas, democracy has become.
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