Re: The great commentaries continue
- From: trijcomm <trijcomm@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 04 Aug 2007 23:30:07 -0700
On Aug 4, 7:53 pm, Hog Huckster <hoghucke...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 4, 4:16 pm, trijcomm <trijc...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 4, 11:06 am, Hog Huckster <hoghucke...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
June 25, 2007
Cheney: Beyond Good and Evil
by publius
Like everyone else, I've been reading the Post series on Cheney with
half disgust, half morbid fascination. As difficult as it may be, when
assessing Cheney's actions (as Hilzoy is doing masterfully), it's
important to resist the temptation to blame it on Cheney's individual
"evilness." While immensely fun, explaining Cheney's behavior as
"evil" is too simple. More to the point, it reduces complex social
phenomena to fairy-tale morality narratives. In the terrorism context
for instance, words like "evil" are often lazy shortcuts that people
use to avoid grappling with the complexities and structural causes of
the problem.
Similarly, dismissing Cheney as "evil" is too easy. Cheney is not some
one-time moral aberration, he is the product of deeper, more
structural flaws in the American political system. For that reason, we
can expect future Cheneys if these fundamental flaws aren't recognized
and addressed.
We can complain all we want about Cheney, but the real story in the
Post series is what a non-entity Bush has been during the course of
his presidency. Bush outsourced the big, historical decisions of our
age to an ad hoc, invisible institution known loosely as Cheney's
Office and stood by and did nothing while they wrecked everything they
touched. So if you want to blame someone for Cheney's excesses, you
have to start with Bush.
But the blame doesn't stop there. The reason Cheney's Office got to
dominate the executive branch is because we -- America -- elected a
neophyte who lacked the experience, knowledge, and judgment to be
president. In an ideal world, the presidential campaign should root
someone like that out of the process -- not because he's a
conservative, but because he's completely unqualified. But it didn't.
Our nation's political machinery elevated a grossly inexperienced and
ignorant man to the Oval Office. The entirely predictable result is
that he would be forced to rely on someone else to make the decisions
he wasn't able or willing to make.
It's pretty simple. When you elect someone who doesn't know what he's
doing, you're essentially electing someone else to be president. Kerry
and Gore had their flaws, but they would have been the Deciders. They
certainly would not have tolerated a lawless, out-of-control operation
such as Cheney's Office. At the very least, they would have, you know,
been aware of the debates and had some pre-existing knowledge to
inform their judgment. Bush, by contrast, was simply no match for
Cheney and Rumsfeld's decades of experience.
Thus, the failure that is Cheney is not merely an individual failure
on the part of Bush. Cheney is an institutional failure -- a failure
of our political system. That's the key to understand. The rise of
Cheney is itself an indictment of our political institutions and
culture.
And so what are these structural flaws? Perhaps this is vague, but I
think people should expand their views of the "electoral process."
Think of it as a larger entity -- "The Process" -- that has many
distinct parts. Like any corporate org chart, you can isolate
different parts of the overall entity and assess them. For instance,
The Process includes an economic wing -- i.e., the economic
infrastructure that makes it go (fundraising, organization, etc.).
There's also a procedural wing -- the procedural rules (or by-laws)
that govern the actual electoral process (Electoral College; winner-
take-all rules, etc.). There are also ideological aspects of The
Process -- the public conceptions of the candidates; the idea of what
candidates should do; the themes. This is the world of media
narratives and their infusion into the public consciousness.
All of these different forces aligned to elect Bush in 2000 -- the
money combined with the anachronistic election system combined with a
juvenile media narrative. And each part has its own flaws that we
could discuss.
But today, it's the ideological dimensions that I want to discuss.
That's because Cheney -- i.e., the emergence of a shadow presidency --
was the direct product of the ideology of the 2000 election. Money and
outdated election systems create their own problems, but they don't
necessarily lead to electing inexperienced, unqualified presidents.
What does lead to electing inexperienced, unqualified presidents is a
media narrative and public debate focused on juvenile, high-school
popularity-type criteria.
To be blunt, we have Cheney because our media failed us. The 2000
election -- and to a lesser extent, the 2004 election -- focused
obsessively on the perceived-personality characteristics of the
Democratic and Republican candidates. The 2000 election was
particularly egregious. Rather than focusing on policy, candidate
experience, and adult-level discourse, the surface-worshipping media
(patron saint of this postmodern sinkhole - Maureen Dowd) focused on
sighing, and Love Story, and all the other things that Bob Somerby
will be documenting to his death bed. The fact that one of the major
candidates knew nothing about anything wasn't discussed. More to the
point, it wasn't demonstrated through rigorous questioning and
explanation of the consequences of his positions (e.g., his tax
policy). If anything, Bush's ignorance was celebrated in contrast to
the insufferable, sighing, smarty-pants Gore.
Backed by a media narrative focused on the trivial, the leader of the
free world was selected on the basis of who seemed more personally
affable. These personal traits were created, reflected, and reinforced
by media narratives just one intellectual notch above Lindsay Lohan's
latest club-hopping adventures. As a result, the media did not make
Bush earn the presidency by demonstrating the knowledge and experience
that the presidency should require. Instead, Bush got a free ride from
guilty liberals because they liked him better than Gore.
To be sure, we can't blame it all on the media. We ourselves must
share blame too. In a sense, the media is giving us what we want. And
this in turn has its own structural underpinnings. For instance, why
is it that American elections turn on such juvenile narratives --
maybe it's the reliance on TV for news; maybe it's the failure of the
canons of objectivity; maybe it's the lack of economics training and
history in American primary schools. Who knows?
But the broader problem is that the institutions that we rely on in
this democracy to keep ourselves informed -- the media - simply don't
work. Election narratives turn on stupid things like haircuts and
sighs, and not on policy, expertise, judgment, or consequences. The
result is that unqualified, inexperienced people get elected. When
they do, it's inevitable that they will turn to someone else. Maybe
this shadow official will be competent, maybe he won't. But as long as
the public debate turns on juvenile matters, it's entirely predictable
that these types of shadow leaders will continue to emerge to guide
the untested and inexperienced.
Turning to 2008, the question is whether the media will actually be
different. Will it subject someone like Giuliani or even Obama to the
scrutiny they deserve. And what about Fred Thompson? Do we really know
anything about what he would do? He was at least a Senator so
presumably he brings some knowledge with him. But it's the media's job
to figure out what exactly he stands for, what exactly he would do,
and what the implications of those positions are. He shouldn't be
allowed to get a free ride because he was on Law & Order.
To sum up, my question was simply how we got to the point of being led
by a president who seems to have excused himself from many of the most
important policy decisions of his term. One explanation is that our
media -- and more broadly the process by which our democracy informs
itself prior to an election -- isn't working. Until it does, we can
expect more of the same.
Posted by publius at 11:57 PM in Politics | Permalink
I would vote for Cheney over any Democrat. Case closed.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
LOL! Then you're admitting to be just as evil or worse than "Lon"
Cheney. Therefore I can't take anything you say from hereonin
seriously.
Case closed.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
For you to lay absolute claim to the definition of "evil," you'll have
to go to Bill Clinton first. He lay claim to that in 1996.
.
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