Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

You'll only see change when Congress changes the way it works . .

And as long as The American People are only concerned about the "Charisma" of a Presidential Candidate, we're doomed to repeat the past . .

(Long time reader, first time caller poster - I've always wanted to say that!)

I'm with you 100% on dynasties - and on the discouraging roster of candidates. In a nation of 300 million people, the best we can come up with is Mitt Romney? (Another dynastic successor, btw).

Here's my 2 cents on why politics is not as attractive a profession as it should be...

In part, politics is such a low profession because of the antics of politicians over the years (think of Murtha scamming millions of taxpayer dollars in earmarks). In another part, it's because it's rapidly becoming such an expensive hobby to pursue - when even a local campaign can cost in the millions of dollars, any putative candidate must either be independently wealthy or willing to whore him/herself out to donors.

But I'm willing to place most of the blame square on the media, which has barely covered any substantial policy differences (or similarities). The New York Times has been running an admittedly interesting series of profiles on the candidates all year long. Yet all of it has been about personal background and personal motivation - all of it has been about personality. I don't believe they've spilled more than 3 drops of ink discussing policy. And they're among the best!

When the media is content to dissect a candidates persona all day long, then the candidates are going to stress that. Why even go all wonky if no one will examine the rightness/wrongness of your thinking?

And as long as it's about personality and persona, then dynasties are a pretty inevitable consequence, especially for someone like Hillary whose personality isn't as appealing as Bill's. It's far easier to tie one's own persona to a predecessor than to create one ex nihilo.

We need campaign finance laws that actually encourage more people to run, we need politicians who don't start to grab as much cash as possible the moment they're sworn into office, and most of all we need a media that actually discusses POLICY.

One of the huge problems with this is that for the most part, no one really gives a hoot about what goes on in Washington. It's seen as an irrelevant part of their lives, so no one really cares who winds up in the White House or in Congress. Since most people don't care about Washington, that leaves a very small minority of wonks (for lack of a better word) voting on President.

Add to that the fact that the roster of candidates has been awful as of late (Bush v Kerry, for example) and normal people just give up. I haven't voted in a Presidential election the past 3 elections because I refuse to give any of the jokers running my sanction and will probably do so again.

Jack: most of all, it's the electorate who puts up with it, the same people who pay money for that kind of media. blaming the media is futile as long as there's a market for it.

andy: like Tom says: 90% of freedom is economic. leave me alone to do what i want and let those yahoo in DC go nuts.

This summer will see the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention that was so much fun in Chicago. My old uniform shirt is hanging in the garage. If the moths don't consume it completely by August maybe I'll wear it around the house for a few days. Let's see, Democrats at each other's throats, an unpopular war, we sure have come a long way since then.

Tom, you use a lot of memorable phrases but the "dog returning to its vomit" truly beats them all.

That's all I'll be thinking about for the rest of this campaign...

I think a bit of historical perspective is in order - this didn't start with the baby boom generation. The Bushes are the third dynastic Presidents we have had (Adams and Harrison). FDR became a national figure almost entirely because of name recognition. How many generations of Tafts have we had? Or Stevensons? And of course there are the Kennedys.
America has always had a schizophrenic attitude towards politicians. People who make a career out of politics are generally viewed as scummy, although we have had a couple of clubhouse politicians who made decent Presidents - Truman and Arthur - and career politicians like Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton certainly were forceful and important figures, albeit highly flawed.
I think a big problem is that our party system is weaker than, say, England. England has produced a long track record of highly-competent career politicians who came up through the party system, and not all of them were aristocrats (Disraeli, Lloyd George, Thacher, Blair). The Parliamentary system is much more compatible with that than our system. The tendency here is to view candidates as "Presidential" only if they have "charisma", something that is generally not acquired through a career in politics, but rather, comes from being a war hero, a celebrity, or a member of a dynasty.

Maybe Clinton did not really win

http://counterpunch.org/lindorff01112008.html

The scary thing about our focus on personalities is, we have reason to be worried about that sort of thing. To borrow from the famous quote about FDR, we just spent 15 years dealing with Presidents with 2nd or 3rd rate characters; that's got to change. But can we change it without taking it on faith that they have at least FDR's 2nd rate mind?

Sean: I wonder how much is the complacency of the electorate and how much is the media assuming that they know what their audiences actually want.

Lou Dobbs of all people ran an online poll on Jan 8 asking if people were tired of the media covering the election in terms of charisma, dynasty and the like instead of in terms of positions on issues. 94% of his respondents seem to be annoyed at the coverage. Granted it's a horribly unscientific poll, but perhaps indicates that the media's decision to cover the election this way is less a response to what the public actually wants than to what the media thinks that the public wants.

Or possibly the public is getting the election coverage they deserve. Even so, I can still wish that the media would do their jobs and cover this properly, can't I?

Stuart: nice contrast with England. Perhaps its ability to groom successful career politicians is one reason why the Parliamentary system is so widely used by democracies worldwide, while our tripartite system is not.

Jack: yes, there certainly could be a disconnect. in that case, the public needs to find different sources (like this weblog ;-)

i'll make you a deal: you wish the media would do their jobs and i'll wish the consumers would do theirs ;-)

As a baby boomer myself, I resent the broad brush with which I am painted. We fogeys have fucked the end game long enough, and it's time for some new blood. I give my nod to Obama, although I still think Richardson would have been a pretty good choice for trying to extricate us from the mess left by the Texan (not). Obama's lack of "experience?" I don't see that "experience" has done us all that much good. Hillary seems a lot like GB41, in that she seems to have a problem with "that vision thing," or at least she doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of communicating it if she has it. As for the Rs, all we get is more moralizing and telling us how to run our lives in the way they think we should. Enough already.

Let's not confuse dynasties with names. The Bhuttos, Bushes and Kennedys have a dynasty, grooming their offspring to be politicians. Hillary Clinton has been a politico since day one. And yes, she uses her name for effect. But she's a wife, not a scion.

If your point is that the US is currently a backward country - then we might want to revert to more porsperous times, that is, before we were backward.

Here's the dynasty buster: make an amendment to the Constitution requiring any relative of a sitting president, vice-president, congressman or senator to wait 20 years after the end of said officials' terms before being able to run for any of those offices themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u6lCBnRoHQ

'Nuff said.

i see that politics in US is as same as in india, through reditt i get different view of all the current situation in US. the normal ppl in US hav the same feeling about politics as in india....it is heartening to same that we are all the same.........One world, one religion....i.e humanity.

Glenn: obviously, based on my comments above, i find some of what Carlin says in the clip you linked compelling.

however, it's not that simple, of course. Tom says that the best and brightest often become entrepreneurs and business people. other things, too. we know, for example, that we have many fine officers in the military services (though many leave, as discussed in length at another post). in addition, some of our best commenters on this site are public school teachers, lawyers, grad students, and scientists. there are many fine Americans, of course, while there are far too many who are only concerned about their little lives and absorbed with shopping and 'celebrities'.