The 2012 U.S. presidential election was the first
in which neither of the major-party candidates participated in the campaign-matching
system that imposes campaign spending limits in return for federal financing.
It was also the first presidential election since the Citizens United case
in 2010. That U.S. Supreme Court ruling was a significant factor in the
election because corporations and unions could dip into their respective
treasuries directly, rather than only through employee or member contributions,
spend an unlimited amount on political ads by making donations to “social
welfare” organizations. Without disclosing their donor lists, these non-profit
organizations could create political ads that in turn could favor or criticize
a particular candidate, albeit with no formal approval
from the favored candidate. Faced with formidable super PACs pumping some $800
million or more in favor of Mitt Romney, Obama’s money-machine went into
high-gear in a sort of “rich man’s” arms-race. Some rich donors had spent
millions of dollars to push the massive ship of state a discernible distance in
their direction. Hardly anyone expected that the contending high monies would
virtually cancel each other out. Hardly anyone thought the Obama campaign’s scientifically-based
“ground game” oriented to getting new voters registered would trump Romney’s financial
advantage. To be sure, Wall Street was also behind Obama; Goldman Sachs had
donated $1 million in 2008, and Obama in turn gave the big banks federal money
(TARP) without strings, including on bonuses (which the bankers abused).
Subtly missing in the 2012 presidential election
season among all the financial fire-power and Obama’s grass-roots operation and
even all the presidential “debates” were ideas and a sustained societal
discussion of a few basic principles
of political economy and governance. The result, in spite of all the money,
time and effort, was a continuance of the political status-quo because few
minds were changed in the process. If ideas and rational
argument are not absolutely required for a basic shift in a body
politic worth the name vision, at
least they provide for a basis for leadership and real change.
Unfortunately, The New York
Times reported afterwards that “the overall cost of the campaign rose
accordingly, with all candidates for federal office, their parties and their
supportive ‘super PACs’ spending more than $6 billion combined.” The grand
result for all that money was that the U.S. House remained in Republican hands,
the U.S. Senate continued with a slim Democratic majority, and the Democrats
held the White House. Even the deal-makers—the major players—notably John
Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and Barak Obama—remained in
place. The difficulty they had had as a group in coming to agreement on major
policy items before the election was essentially unchanged.
On Thursday, November 8tth The New York Times summed up
the previous year and a half as follows: “After $6 billion, two dozen
presidential primary election days, a pair of national conventions, four
general election debates, hundreds of Congressional contests and more
television advertisements than anyone would ever want to watch, the two major
political parties in America essentially fought to a standstill. When all the
shouting was done, the American people on Tuesday more or less ratified the
status quo that existed at the start of the day: they returned President Obama
to the White House for another four years, reaffirmed Republican control of the
House and kept the Senate in Democratic hands. As of Wednesday, the margins in
the House and the Senate had each changed by just two or three seats.” For all
the money, time and effort spent kicking up dirt and picking fights, when the
dust settled it was clear that the American electorate had not moved much at
all.
It is not that the American electorate
intentionally voted for continued divided government or gridlock. Rather, the
American body politic contained voters of diametrically-opposed political,
economic and social ideologies. In spite of the length of the campaign
“season,” neither camp had budged by election-day. The resulting continuance of
the status quo meant the continuance of the political constellation in
Washington that had led to gridlock. Besides gridlock being more generally etched
into the very design of the federal lawmaking apparatus in part to check power
as well as unwelcome encroachments of the General Government on to the turf of
the state governments, the various stalemates on the Hill in 2011 and 2012 were
a manifestation, or symptom, of where the People as an aggregate stood then
politically—that is, divided and even polarized ideologically. As a result of
the stark ideological differences between citizens and the multiple points of
access available in the U.S. Government, both major parties had sufficient
electoral support and accessibility
to the federal law-making machinery to grind policy-making and legislative
activity to a halt on major problems desperately in need of solutions.
A story in The New York Times on the day after the election had as
a headline, “Electorate Reverts to a Familiar Divide as Obama’s Support
Narrows.” He “garnered just 50 percent of the popular vote, three percentage
points lower than in 2008, in a sign of just how divided” the electorate was
“over his leadership.” In spite of Obama having lost some of his base, the mere
two-percentage-point difference in the popular vote between the two major
candidates meant that among the electorate neither “side” had budged much. To
find a “verdict” on the president’s first term beyond the vested opinions of
the two bases, one must look to how the independents. Even there, the “verdict”
was muted.
Referring to the independents, the New York Times reported
that the vote was “very close.” In some swing states, including Ohio and
Virginia, Romney received a slight majority of such voters (53 and 54 percent,
respectively), while Obama received similar majorities in a few others (Iowa
and New Hampshire). However, Obama received 45 percent of the independents over
all (Romney got 50 percent), and in 2008 Obama had received 52 percent. This
means that Obama lost some of the independents he had had in 2008. As a
“verdict” of the relatively neutral “jury” segment within the electorate, the
loss of 8 percent suggests something less than a vindication for the president.
Moreover, that Obama received 50% of the popular
vote over all while Romney got 48% suggests that the contest ended unchanged as
a virtual draw. Put another way, only about 3 million Americans out of 310
million residents in the U.S. separated the two candidates in the popular vote.
About 1% of the entire population hardly constitutes a mandate, as if “the
American people” has swung around en mass to
support the incumbent after a long and hard-fought campaign.
To be sure, some general movement can be
discerned, as most counties had shifted in the Democratic direction in 2008 to
vote for Obama only to shift back in a Republican direction in 2012. It could
be said that the country had returned to its native center-right position. That
Obama’s narrower base came out in sufficient force to counter the general shift
in a Republican direction in most counties and a slight shift away by some
independents accounts for his slight majority in the popular vote (and his wins
in almost all of the swing states). Even so, such wan movement does not
constitute the sort that is associated with an idea or
mandate. Put another way, even the shift toward “Obamania” of 2008 was
short-lived—the ideational shortfall
rendering the “movement” as akin to a short-lived energy spirt from
cotton-candy rather than new muscle from rich protein.
Accordingly, “(t)he bottom-line scorecard [from
the 2012 federal election] left Washington as divided as ever,” according to
the Times, “with
no resolution of most of the fundamental issues at stake. The profound debate
that has raged over the size and role of government, the balance between
stimulus spending and austerity and the proper level of taxation has not been
settled in the least.” The ideas had not changed because the hyperactive
campaigns had been relatively bereft of new ones or even serious discussion of
the central principles.
For all of the money, ads, and “debates,” one
might say that talking points rather than novel arguments or ideas took
center-stage during the long campaign “season.” In an interview on CBS’s Sixty Minutes broadcast
shortly before the election, David McCullough, who had written several books on
American political history (and who spoke at my doctoral graduation ceremony!),
said he doubted that any words from the two major presidential candidates would
stand the test of time. In fact, nothing said or written during even the
“debates” was worthy of being retained past the news cycle of the day. The
historian went on to contrast the contemporary talking-points with the
authenticity in Truman’s “Give ‘em hell Harry!” campaign of 1942. In 2012,
talking points backed up by fund-raising and the application of empirical
political science to getting elected punctuated the candidates’ trajectories
along paths of political-least resistance.
Considering the sheer duration of the primaries
and general campaign, the opportunity-cost of shallow campaigning is in terms
of foregone governance not only during the duration, but afterward as well.
Moreover, the empty-form of a superficial campaign-mode exacerbates the
fundamental flaw in having extended the campaign “season” further and
further: Taking a means—that of selecting office-holders to
govern—as more important than its end, governance. The
eclipse of governance at the federal level in the U.S. is from not only
gridlock, but also the enabling ideational emptiness of the modern campaign
elongated into a sustained void of sorts that the electorate allowed to take on
a life of its own.
For the body politic to shift as a body having a
will from the status quo such that political
leadership evincing a direction could
replace gridlock and stasis, some ideational-ideological
change would have to have occurred in enough voters that the contours
of the body itself will have changed. Sadly, the experience of having gone
through the financial crisis of 2008—rather than any new idea or exchange of
ideas—led an unusually high 51% of the presidential voters in 2008 to favor
more government intervention in the economy while only 43% wanted more things
to be left to business. The unusually high percentage was a result of economic
fear and perhaps even greater hardship due to the crisis, rather than from a
national debate centered on a reconsideration of old ideas.
That even powerful people can reflect on the level
of fundamental ideas and come to different
conclusions genuinely rather than in a political calculation (e.g.,
Obama’s “change” on gay marriage during his re-election campaign) suggests that
citizens too can allow themselves to be more open ideologically and thus shift.
An empirical crisis, for instance, can jar loose even fundamental paradigms.
For example, Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, admitted
in Congressional testimony after the financial crisis of 2008 that the
freezing-up of the commercial paper market in September 2008 had shown him that
his free-market, or laissez-faire economic
paradigm had a fundamental flaw. He marveled before a panel of lawmakers that
forty years of observing markets had done nothing to point to the flaw.
Specifically, the market mechanism itself can freeze-up rather than make
pricing adjustments under conditions of high volatility involving high
uncertainty and risk. In September 2008 as banks lost trust in each other, they
stopped lending rather than adjust their rates of interest upward to compensate
for the additional risk. High risk, especially if occurring all of a sudden,
can paralyze a market’s mechanism. Hence, the former central banker could
suddenly discern a rationale for regulation by the government because of the
“fatal flaw” in the “market-alone” paradigm.
Had the ideas behind Greenspan’s paradigmatic
shift percolated through the electorate during the presidential election of
2008 or even 2010 in place of “Obama as the flavor of the month,” the
percentages on the question would not have subsequently flipped back in 2012
back to “center-right” on the question of the role of government in regulating
business. Rather, a fundamental shift similar to that which ushered in the New
Deal in the 1930s would have been realized. That Greenspan’s “ideational
moment” had not registered in the campaigns or the electorate itself at least
by 2012 can be seen from the fact that Romney called for financial deregulation even
though the lack of regulation of mortgage-based securities had played a
significant role in the financial crisis. Absent a sustained paradigmatic
reflection from a shared experience of the financial crisis, the electorate was
vulnerable to the financial-political power of Wall Street as it continued as
though legitimately along its familiar trajectory of profit and self-interest.
It is significant that even though Obama came out slightly ahead in 2012, the
electorate as
a body evinced a shift back to its pre-2008 center-right position on
government intervention in business.
Absent new ideas and a sustained reflection on the
continued viability of extant paradigms, an electorate succumbs to the status
quo. More money—much more money—and
more time—much
more time—does not necessarily mean that an election-cycle makes a dent in
the judgment of the popular sovereign—the We the People—come election day. An
election-campaign season should be a rather brief yet poignant opportunity for
a genuine societal reflection that
results in the body politic being in a new place—that is, changed in some way
that will reflect on the ensuing governance. I contend that the way Americans
elect the president of the Union was by 2012 not only flawed, but also rather
ineffectual and even impotent. It is as though a runner were running in circles
only to end up panting where he had begun. To use another analogy, it is as
though the voters woke up the day after election day still hungry in spite of
having eaten so much cotton-candy. The sacrifice of governance alone, not to
mention the value in the popular sovereign (the We the People) making its
judgment on general policy and candidates, suggests that elections should
include new ideas and substantive arguments rather than each side hammering in
more of the same through an eternally-repeated stump-speech and “debate”
talking-points.
If
there is one thing we can discern concerning the voters almost without
exception on the morning after voting, according to the Times, “they
were glad that the strident and polarizing contest between President Obama and
Mitt Romney was ending.” Beyond the proliferation of negative ads, especially
in the “swing states,” and the sheer length of the primary and general
campaigns, the voter-frustration may reflect a still-unsatisfied hunger for
ideas and authentic, substantive discussion of them and the paradigms we
construct out of them and what can be termed, ideational values.
I suspect that the want of ideas and genuine discourse had existed for so long
that few if any Americans realized what was at the core of their discontent
regarding the election cycle. The root may go far deeper than Citizens United and
even the serial elongation of campaigning at the expense of governance. It may
be asked whether a starving man will eat if he does not realize he is starving.
Sources:
Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg, “Focus Is On
Economy As Voters Choose,” The New York Times, November
7, 2012.
