Fire to the Straw Man

The day after the election—this is the day difficult to imagine ever coming.  In the thick of the piercing attack ads, the tightening polls, and the wild prognostications, a clear-cut conclusion seems forever out of reach.  But time keeps ticking, Election Day comes, and the dust eventually settles.  Wiping away the dust after this election cycle revealed the re-election of President Obama in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression.  The Left is exuberant while the Right scratches its head.  And inevitably, with the beauty of hindsight, the analysis begins.

The election was decided by two essential factors—and neither one of them pertains directly to policy.  The first one is demographics; the second one is personality. From the Republican point of view, the latter is easily remedied but the former should be absolutely terrifying.  As no stone is left unturned by the thousands of pundits and experts that craft opinions of events as overwhelmingly analyzed as presidential elections, I’m not claiming that these two factors have not already been explored at length.  Nonetheless, these two jump out at me.

America is becoming more diverse.  There’s no sidestepping that fact.  The percentage of white people in America is fast declining.  Here’s a little “if A, then B” logic with serious demographic generalizations worked in: the Republican Party is the party of old white men and the Democratic Party is the party of the others (young people, minorities, single women).  If old people die off while America becomes less white, Democrats by default will increasingly receive a larger share of the vote into the future.  Period.  As long as age and race remain a good predictor of one’s vote (which is a sad reality), the Republican Party in its current form will be rendered obsolete.  The Republican Party has absolutely no choice but to expand its net—it has to appeal to, cater to, reach out to, whatever-you-want-to-call-it to minorities, single women, and young people, or risk going the way of the Whigs.  Fittingly, prominent voices on the Right are already softening their stance on illegal immigration or calling for outright amnesty.

The personality factor is an all-encompassing term I’m using to describe charisma, likeability, and personal story.  Mitt Romney fell flat on this.  Though the Romney campaign was successful in a late push to ameliorate the profoundly negative persona painted of him by the Obama campaign, the feeling that Romney was out of touch and weird was still entrenched.  The best barometer for this phenomenon in American history is my mom.  She has a near impeccable record of voting for the winning presidential candidate.  I’d call her the quintessential middle-of-the-road, average, persuadable nonpartisan American voter.  At the end of the day she simply votes for whom she feels cares the most and for whom she sees as the most normal and likeable person.  That’s it.  When she voiced dislike of Mitt Romney for being stiff, unlikeable, and awkward, I knew it was over.  This woman voted for Obama in 2012 and 2008, Bush in 2004 and 2000, Clinton in 1996 and 1992, and she thinks possibly for Bush Senior and Reagan both times (and possibly even Carter and Nixon).  She’s not hyper political so she has trouble recalling her voting record from previous decades, but you get the point.

Encouragingly for the Right, the personality factor is remedied much easier than the demographic one.  They can blame the vessel, the messenger, not the message (though no one is arguing the bizarre rape comments from some Republican senate candidates helped).  But Romney did much to shoot himself in the foot, primarily with the 47% comments.  A more at-ease, amiable candidate closer to resembling an average person would have had a great chance of beating Obama.  But either way, the Republican Party has some work to do.  It appears that some sort of civil war might ensue between the Tea Party/purist wing and moderate/establishment arm.  There’s the conundrum they face where one side says they lost because the candidate was not conservative enough, claiming that Democratic-light or RINO (Republicans in name only) candidates always lead to losses (McCain, Romney), while the other side sees a far right-wing agenda as being out of touch with main stream America and, therefore, guaranteeing  losses.

Martin Luther King Jr. said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” That’s how I view this election.  That the hateful speech of the far right-wing was rejected, and that the Republicans were not able to get away with ignoring minorities, young people, and single women is proof of the above quotation.  The reality that a competition will ensue between both parties to appeal to the traditionally ignored segments of society benefits everyone and represents that bend towards justice in action.

So, it’s that old presidential election season again.  And boy is it in full swing right now.  Mitt Romney pounded out President Obama in the first debate; Obama outmaneuvered Romney in the second debate; the polls have tightened; friends you thought were apolitical are now Rush Limbaugh and Ed Shultz on Facebook; and negative ads are blowing up TV screens across your nearest swing state.  It’s insane.  The opposing sides both honestly believe they are obviously correct.  So obvious, in fact, that they see the other side as nonsensical and laughable, or to put it in a less politically correct way: absolutely retarded.  I wrote about this exact thing with the rift between John McCain and Barack Obama supporters in 2008 (“Level Headedness”).  It’s pretty apparent things don’t change much.  But thinking about this situation made me realize something about which I find myself in a paradox: I enjoy topics that are open for interpretation, but then struggle with the reality that one side cannot win.

I see myself as a fairly objective person capable of seeing both sides of an issue.  I also consider myself intelligent, well-read, and reflective.  When I research something, read up on it, and reflect on it at great length, I feel as though my opinion is solid, respectable, and correct.  I feel like I’ve arrived at the position of common sense, the position that informed people would arrive at as well.  But then here’s the kicker: another person just as “intelligent, well-read, and reflective” as me, who’s researched, read, and reflected at the same length about the exact same issue, can arrive at the polar opposite conclusion.  This is especially true in politics, and really gets pulled to the surface during presidential elections.  It’s hard to wrap my brain around.

Religion and politics are two arguments you cannot win.  At the end of the day you’re dealing in opinion.  It’s almost like trying to convince someone that red is better than blue or that the fall is better than the spring.  Good luck with that.  Let me know when you convince someone to change her favorite color or season.  In concert with that observation, for the sake of mental tranquility, I’d almost be tempted to leave this inquiry at that: it’s just opinion, everybody’s got one.  But politics is different.  Unlike colors or seasons or even religion (as you pretty much just choose one), certain elements of politics play out in real life and are tangible and testable, primarily on the fiscal and monetary side.  Lowering and raising taxes, interest rates, and government spending have real consequences for the economy that can be tracked with empirical studies.  But somehow these topics remain primarily opinion.

For instance, brilliant economists can be diametrically opposed as to the best way to grow the economy.  Some on the right believe lowering  taxes on corporations and the wealthy is the best way to grow the economy (trickle-down economics), while some on the left believe in a progressively steeper tax structure, with an expanded safety net, to grow the economy from the middle out.  But isn’t there only one reality?  What do the numbers show?  That’s the problem.  Each side can produce its own numbers, focus on the agreeable stats, and, in a sense, create its own reality.  That is what I have a hard time dealing with.  This example is from within the intelligentsia, from the academia that eats, sleeps, and breathes this stuff.  And they’re on opposite sides of reality? What does this mean for the average Joe and Jane trying to decipher the mess?  It doesn’t bode well for consensus.

To add to the annoyance of it all, head to head competition—elections (the people speaking)—doesn’t solve anything.  Unlike with other competitions in say, war or sports, where when one side wins, the debate is over, in politics, if anything, the grudge match intensifies.  The loser becomes more defiant, digs in its heels further, and looks for ways to discredit the victory of the nemesis.  In sports you’ll find the same gloating and boasting pre-championship, but when the final buzzer sounds, that’s it, it’s over.  The losing team says, “Hey, they got us; they beat us.”  And that’s the end of it.  When a country loses a war it waves the white flag and says, “Ok, we surrender; you win.”  Not so in politics.  If Obama wins, do you think Rush Limbaugh will congratulate him and say Liberalism won?  Yeah right! If Romney wins, do you think Ed Shultz will congratulate him and say Conservatism is the better political option?  You know the answer.

I love the saying that opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.  I enjoy the political back and forth, the campaign wars, the tactical punches and counterpunches, and the opposing talking points.  I enjoy defending the positions that make the most sense to me and trying to come up with counterarguments to the counterarguments against my arguments.  At the same time, I have to accept that the struggle is the end.  There is no “winner.”

Not many people, despite how laudable it is, support Communism as a realistic and workable economic system.  It’s not that they necessarily disagree with the idea and essence of Communism.  I bet a decent percentage of people would favor a true and complete equality of resources if it could be honestly achieved.  The problem is just that, it cannot be achieved.  It’s not realistic.  If you try to distribute resources evenly, everybody will end up worse off.  Karl Marx’s vision that people, even if knowingly receiving equal resources, would obtain a higher sense of consciousness, one in which everyone would contribute equally and not want to take more than his fair share, is a delusion.  It runs counter to human nature at the most fundamental level.  Inefficiencies would abound; people would cheat and look for shortcuts; people would get lazy and dependent, knowing they’re going to get what they’re going to get.   Conservatives love to use that reality as a way to bash the whole idea of income redistribution – progressive taxes, entitlement programs, welfare, government spending on education, healthcare, and infrastructure, etc. Ironically, when examining the way the Right believes the world should work, they espouse logic from the exact same economic fantasy they discount.

Mitt Romney was recently recorded saying that 47% of the population is dependent on the government, considers themselves victims, and cannot be convinced to take personal responsibility and care for their lives.  His reasoning, which is standard conservative boilerplate, is that the way to get people out of poverty and grow the economy is to slash government spending and have nearly unfettered regulation and taxes for the top income earners and “job creators” in order to grow the whole pie and allow more people to enter the middle and upper classes.  To people on the right, this statement is gospel and a big “duh!” But it’s not that simple.  First of all, opportunity is not free.  Most people were not born with silver spoons in their mouths or can simply borrow money from their parents.  Eliminating programs that provide a boost for the less fortunate would stymie a lot of future dreams and opportunities.  But more to the point, this idea that everyone can be in the middle class or rich is just as delusional as the idea that everyone can have a perfectly equal slice of the pie.

I see the double standard when the Right and Left make their cases.  Communism, or the idea of an equal share of resources, has been debunked.  Even the most liberal of people does not go around proclaiming that we need to pool all of the money and redistribute it evenly across society.  On the other side, however, especially in Tea Party or Libertarian circles, the near complete eradication of government is championed as an almost acceptable and rational solution.  The idea that everyone can be a millionaire is part of the common dialogue in conservative lingo—not even challenged.  But that statement is open to the same analysis and falls just as flat.  Wouldn’t that be ideal?  Having a country where the unemployment rate is zero and everybody is rich.  If you just reduce taxes and get rid of government, high-paying jobs will magically start appearing and people will move straight from the streets into the office.  How does this relate to the Communist utopia?  It’s just as unrealistic.

Having no social programs and an infinitesimal tax rate on top earners would be great for a small minority of lucky and highly skilled people—great for plutocrats.  It would also obliterate the middle class and quadruple the poverty rate.  It would be the incarnation of the have and have-not society.  Of course, this can be defended by stating that there will be winners and losers in this laissez-faire style capitalistic system, but that’s a different conversation about fairness and the government’s role in society.  Nonetheless, the Right promotes this far-fetched fantasy.  And what’s baffling is that their large Deep South constituency—much of whom is dirt poor—also supports this ideological fantasy.  That’s like a rich person, who’s worked hard for what she’s achieved, supporting the pooling of all her resources into a communal bank.  The real answer is in the middle.  You cannot have a prosperous society by pooling resources and dividing them equally among everyone.  You also cannot have a prosperous society by eliminating the entire social safety net and having everyone fend for themselves.  If you disagree, you live in a fantasy world, my friend.

Mitt Romney recently selected Paul Ryan as his running mate in the 2012 Presidential election—and I’m so glad.  Both sides of the political spectrum are applauding the move.  Conservatives love it because Ryan is a true conservative, takes a stand on tough issues, and communicates them clearly and forcefully.  Liberals are delighted because they see Ryan as a radical right-winger who will scare off independents and moderates with his infamous budget proposal.  But the reason I love the pick is because it shifts the paradigm of the election.  Where it was going to be a referendum on Obama’s first year in office—he’s terrible so choose me—it’s now going to be a choice between two fundamentally different visions of how the country should be governed.

The intellectual atmosphere of the election could potentially be elevated.  Don’t get me wrong, the mudslinging will continue and it will get nasty, but with that will come honest policy debate.  People who haven’t closed their minds and dug in their heels can stand to learn a lot.  The role of government in society is ultimately what politics is at its core.  We will get to see this play out live on the stage.  Each side is putting in all their chips and believes they are right.  Each side believes they can convince the American people that their vision is the path to prosperity.  Neither side is backing down.  I’m excited to learn a lot.  I don’t act like I have it all figured out like your standard ideologue.  I’m ready to hear the arguments, follow the logic, listen to the anecdotes, and continue forming my political opinions.  This election has the potential to be a great educational tool, one that provides a stark contrast and really makes you question why you believe what you believe.