Politics politics….
Posted on | September 28, 2008 |
I followed US politics pretty closely whilst I was still back in the UK, but now that I’m actually living in the US I have surprised myself in becoming so greatly concerned with the run-up to the election . I’m not an American citizen and I don’t have a vote (though boy do I wish I did!), yet the forthcoming election matters to me more greatly than either of the last two English ones. This became particularly clear to me a few days ago, when a former student’s question of “would you stay in the US if McCain becomes president?” prompted me to have a bad dream in which exactly that happened. I have a great emotional attachment to the outcome of this election, in the sense that I fundamentally believe that on it depends the future of people across the world as well as within America.
There’s another aspect of electioneering here that has had a big impact on me, although in a very different way: the nature and extent of advertising carried out by the two sides. The sad and terrifying truth is that the majority of Americans gain their political knowledge and even views from the seldom unbiased accounts that appear before them on the TV. In the UK the amount of broadcasting time which each of the three main parties can claim before an election is strictly limited - and rightly so! But here TV advertising is such a crucial part of campaigning that each party had a new ad ready less than 12 hours after the first presidential debate on Friday - and perhaps even before it took place, as this quote from yesterday’s NY Times article, ‘The Next Day, a New Debate on Who Won’, suggests:
“Mr. McCain’s campaign actually declared victory as early as 10 a.m. Friday, hours before the debate took place and even before he had agreed to take part in it. In what aides said was a mix-up, The Wall Street Journal posted an advertisement on its Web site 12 hours early that showed Mr. McCain proudly looking into the distance. “McCain Wins Debate!” read the text.”
Maybe in such an enormous country strict control on types of politcal advertising is impossible, and some might argue that, in the true democracy that America claims to be, there shouldn’t be such control in the first place. But there’s a lot to be said for a monitoring body that attempts to keep published information reasonably accurate and each party’s advertising slots equal.
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3 Responses to “Politics politics….”
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October 2nd, 2008 @ 9:58 am
I agree that U.S. elections have gotten out of hand and that one must sift through an enormous amount of “spin” to understand the true issues and where each candidate stands on those issues but, interestingly, there’s a big part of me (and I’ll bet many Americans) that fears your idea of the “monitoring body.” Who makes up the body? Who decides? Are they truly impartial? I’d love to talk to you about this idea some time!
October 4th, 2008 @ 3:02 am
He, he, he…
“Naomi Weiss Dreams that McCain Will Be President”
I think the reason that many of us, on both sides of the political spectrum, are left dumbfounded and enraged (I don’t mean foam-at-the-mouth rage, but more the quiet stuff that comes from impotence; like watching a Palin interview and thinking “oh, my god!!!” and turning to the people next to you to find out that they really liked it ’cause she’s so “real” or so “like them”. I mean the gulf is so huge, that one feels impotent to get to any common island of understanding…) is fundamentally poor education combined with an abundance of the truthiness of which you speak. But there is one more factor that in the last 30 years has crept in with alarming speed: a stunning lack of accountability. For a country like the US, there is no doubt in my mind that such crucial challenges could easily and effectively be addressed, if there were some political will to do it. Somehow though, whatever the enormous issue that faces us, it’s always too expensive to fix: education, health insurance for children, social security, energy independence, regulating campaign financing, fighting an unnecessary war, bailing out the failed bets of wildly greedy speculators…well, ok, almost all are too expensive. The money’s close to the power in our highly stratified society and it’s increasingly hard to put a wedge between. But as the imbalance grows, it becomes only a matter of time, I think.
October 4th, 2008 @ 9:33 am
Zoomie, yes I thought of that come-back soon after I wrote the piece. You’re certainly right that the independent “monitoring body” is a potentially dangerous idea. Nevertheless, I think there’s a difference between keeping things fair - by e.g. ensuring the length and number of each campaign’s ad slots are roughly equal in each state - and having such tight controls that freedom of speech is actually restricted. I look forward to discussing this more in person!
Daniel, I completely agree that accountability on so many levels (political, military, financial etc. - and all of those combined) is lacking in the political arena. In the UK there’s an interesting and unsatisfying mix of both over-accountability and the complete opposite: the former is used by the opposing political parties against each other, particularly with regard to financial matters (salaries, benefits, campaign spending etc.); the latter tends to concern the really important issues that are easier to neglect than to deal with. Sigh!