Tag Archives: David Brooks

Three Reasons Why the Election is Running on Empty

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It’s fitting that a freakish storm (or fears of a freakish storm) should interrupt a presidential campaign that has shied away from discussing climate change. As the New York Times noted after last week’s third and final debate, neither candidate broached the subject in the course of the debates; nor did the vice-presidential candidates or moderators or the model citizens in the made-for-TV town hall.

Those who fear some conspiracy of silence on this issue, or think our candidates are cowards only when it comes to climate change, should be reminded that on nearly every issue before the country, the 2012 campaign has been almost entirely devoid of substance. Both sides have offered nothing more than zingers, soundbyte-sized bromides and unprincipled pandering.

You know things have gotten really bad when the TV pundits – who trade in platitudes and talking points – start complaining about the lack of substance in the campaign. That’s starting to happen, at least in the pseudo-serious world of public television. Last Friday on Newshour, Judy Woodruff asked Mark Shields and David Brooks why they thought the campaigns had been so lacking in real substance and so unwilling to engage on the issues. Neither correspondent gave the most obvious response – which is that this hollowing out is inevitable when you conduct politics on TV.

Instead, David Brooks fixed the blame squarely on the “consultants,” who have “taken over,” he said. This wasn’t much of answer, but – since this was TV – it sufficed; the segment was soon over and the discussion closed. Brooks could have easily implicated people like himself, the press and the punditry. He also could have added that what most of these consultants do, in one way or another, is package the candidates for TV audiences and attention spans.

At the very least, Brooks failed to go far enough. Consultants aren’t the only ones to blame. Off the top of my head I can name at least three other reasons why this election is running on empty.

First and above all, Citizens United: this is the first election held after the Supreme Court ruled, in 2010, that unions and corporations could spend without restriction in political campaigns, because they were entitled to the same free speech considerations as human persons. The consultants are simply following the money. So far, the glut of ads – someone the other day estimated that it would take 80 days to watch all the ads currently airing on TV in Ohio – has made even the candidates wince. The ads are superficial and offensive to anyone with a modicum of intelligence because they are always a ruse: they make up a cover story so that big money can pursue its aims through the electoral process.

Second, we’ve had no meaningful participation by third party candidates in the political process or the presidential debates. The two-party show airs without interruption and without challenge. This partly has to do with the control exercised over the debates by the Presidential Debate Commission, which produces the debates for TV. Run by lobbyists and sponsored by major corporations, the Commission approves questions, debate topics and moderators, and disapproves of outsiders who want something other than Coke or Pepsi, Red or Blue, Obamney or Romama. As Jill Stein (who is suing the Commission for keeping her out in 2012) remarked when she was arrested outside the debates: “It was painful but symbolic to be handcuffed for all those hours, because that’s what the Commission on Presidential Debates has essentially done to American democracy.”

Third and finally I would point to the deliberate, regular and daily conflation of the election with the popular vote. This helps perpetuate the illusion of a tight race and distorts people’s choices. It also makes the election a choice between candidates rather than an opportunity to talk about issues on a local, state and national level. The emphasis ought to be on the issues people bring to the election – which is where democratic elections begin – and not exclusively on the candidates or even their platforms. Polling focuses on how people feel about the candidates from one day to the next instead of providing data and insight about changing attitudes toward the enduring and emerging questions we, as a people, face. Who’s going to win? is the last question we should be asking ourselves in an election year. Or in any year. And it only gets worse the closer we get to election day.

The list could go on. But when all is said and done, the consultants and the pundits and the pollsters aren’t really to blame: we are. That may not be something you can say on TV, but if there’s a real battleground this election year, or in any year, it’s American democracy itself. It’s something we have to fight for and claim for ourselves and for every citizen, against politicians, powerful forces and against all odds. That’s not just highfalutin talk. Ben Franklin was right: we will have a republic, if we can keep it. I wonder if we can. I know the consultants have taken over only to the extent that we have surrendered.

Assange’s Got Everybody Agitated About Anarchy

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Anarchists are back in the news again. I haven’t tracked down the first newspaper columnist to use the A-word with reference to Julian Assange, or liken him to “the anarchists of the early 20th century,” as Chas Freeman did in his New York Times editorial this past weekend. But the word has suddenly gained new currency. An old specter is once again haunting the world’s ruling powers.

One of the happier, unintended consequences of Cablegate may turn out to be a public history lesson about anarchists and the role they played in American (and European) political life before the First World War. But right now that outcome seems much less likely than another — that all the hysteria over the new anarchist threat may lead to severe restrictions on the flow of information: Palmer Raids for the twenty-first century, with the Security State raiding and policing its own Cyber-State.

This is the view L. Gordon Crovitz takes in a Wall Street Journal editorial today, labeling Assange an “Information Anarchist”:

The irony is that WikiLeaks’ use of technology to post confidential U.S. government documents will certainly result in a less free flow of information. … The Obama administration now plans to tighten information flows, which could limit leaks but would be a step back to the pre-9/11 period.
Mr. Assange is misunderstood in the media and among digirati as an advocate of transparency. Instead, this battening down of the information hatches by the U.S. is precisely his goal. The reason he launched WikiLeaks is not that he’s a whistleblower—there’s no wrongdoing inherent in diplomatic cables—but because he hopes to hobble the U.S., which according to his underreported philosophy can best be done if officials lose access to a free flow of information.

Crovitz goes on to liken Assange to “Ted Kaczynski, another math-obsessed anarchist,” and connects the “philosophy” of Assange’s writings on authoritarian conspiracy to the Unabomber Manifesto. He has to admit that Assange hasn’t mailed any bombs or killed anyone; but Kaczynski is “serving a life sentence for murder.” Ergo – nothing, really; but it sure sounds alarming, doesn’t it?

(The best Crovitz can do along these lines is to argue that Assange has put lives at risk. This is something everyone likes to say; it adds to the drama and stirs people. To his credit, Crovitz offers the example of Dr. Hossein Vahedi, an American citizen who now fears that his relatives in Iran will be targeted as a result of a leaked cable.)

In this view the state would seem justified in concealing its secrets in order to protect lives. The idea here seems to be that the American state is, mutatis mutandis, benevolent, and those who criticize the state or even seek to thwart the power of the state are likely sinister, violent or evil.

Over at the New York Times, David Brooks does not go that far, but he sees Assange as “an old-fashioned anarchist who believes that all ruling institutions are corrupt and public pronouncements are lies.” I doubt Brooks would really want to defend the counter-proposition, namely, that all ruling institutions are not corrupt and public pronouncements are true. But that’s really beside his point, and not what has him and all his fellow columnists so agitated about anarchists.

It’s really very simple. In Assange and in those who revel in the confusion and embarrassment of Cablegate, these self-appointed guardians of the public welfare see someone who wants to “disrupt the established order,” to quote Freeman. Here you may be forgiven for asking whether it is the job of the fourth estate to defend the established order. An “anarchist” like Assange forces them to declare allegiance; and their allegiance is to the power of the American super-state: these are the champions of the Pax Americana.

Still, that doesn’t keep them from reveling in the confusion and embarrassment of Cablegate. Maybe all the antidisestablishmentarianism is merely a hedge.

Be that as it may, there’s nothing terribly wrong with defending the Pax Americana: in many cases, our lies and corruption are certainly preferable to those of others. The trouble comes when those who have been entrusted with keeping the state honest by investigating its secrets and reporting on its activities turn out to be the State’s most ardent defenders, and present us only with a stark choice between raison d’etatand anarchy.