On the Impact of Political Rhetoric: From “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”

Words matter in politics. The side that can frame a question by definitively naming it in the public mind enjoys a subtle though often decisive advantage in the debate and thus in any resulting public policy as well. For example, “pro-choice”privileges the pregnant woman, while “pro-life” defines the abortion debate around the fetus. Similarly, “global warming” implies a human impact, whereas“climate change” defines the issue around nature. Even though the shift from“global warming” to “climate change” is more in keeping with the evolving science and won’t be bumped off by a cold winter, political players have been the driving force—language hardly being immune to ideological pressure.

Regarding the weather shifting popular perception on the issue, research published in Public Opinion Quarterly in 2011 claimed that a bad winter can indeed discredit the “global warming” label.[1] The Washington Policy Center claimed two years later that the heavy snowfall during the latest winter had led to “climate change” replacing “global warming.”[2] The cold refusing to relent in March of 2013 and hitting North America hard in January of 2019 seemed to undercut or repudiate the scientific “global warming” hypothesis even though meteorology, a empirical science,  always demands long-term data.

However, in looking back at the name-change, we must consider the influence of political actors, who are prone to manipulate the public's perception in part by using words to frame the debate. In 2002, for example, Frank Luntz wrote a confidential memo to the Republican Party suggesting that because the Bush administration was vulnerable on the climate issue. The White House should abandon the phrase “global warming,” he wrote, in favor of “climate change.”[3] As if by magic, although “global warming” appeared frequently in President Bush’s speeches in 2001, “climate change” populated the president’s speeches on the topic by 2002.[4] In other words, the president’s political vulnerability on the issue was answered by changing the label to reframe the debate. Not missing a beat, critics charged that the motive was political in downplaying the possibility that carbon emissions were a contributing factor.[5] Both Bush and Cheney had ties to the oil and gas industry. In fact, Cheney's through Halliburton may have played a role in the administration's advocacy in favor of invading Iraq under the subterfuge that it had been involved in the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001. 

The Obama administration likely went with “climate change” rather than "global warming" because the former was less controversial. The corporate Democrat tended to hold to the center politically; after all, Goldman Sachs had contributed a million dollars to his first presidential campaign in 2008. In September 2011, the White House decided to replace the term “global warming” with “global climate disruption.”[6] The administration subsequently annulled its own decision. 
So much attention on the matter of a mere label indicates that just how important what you call something is to its outcome. Labels are not always neutral. For instance, the term "African American," was making inroads whereas "Black American" was hardly ever heard. "African" slips in ethnicity whereas "Black," or negroid, refers to race. Changing the axis on which the controversy had hinged was in favor of the race-now-ethnicity. Meanwhile, the American public didn't notice the artful conflation of ethnicity (i.e., culture) and race. Obama used the ethnic term and applied it to himself even though his mother was Caucasian. He also claimed Illinois as his home state even though he moved to Chicago after college. He could benefit politically from the support of Black Americans and Illinoisans. 
Similarly, Obama could benefit politically from adopting "climage change." As the academic journal Public Opinion Quarterly reported in 2011, “Republicans are far more skeptical of ‘global warming’ than of ‘climate change.’” Whereas the vast majority of Democrats were indifferent to the label being used.[7] With “global warming” carrying “a stronger connotation of human causation, which has long been questioned by conservatives,” Obama stood to gain some republican support simply by changing how he refers to the issue.[8] That support was part of the president's ability to straddle the center in American politics. 
Given the effort that has gone into labels, it is amazing that more time in the Congress has not gone into debating labels. I am also curious why the American people did not realize that they were being manipulated by the choice of label. If "climate change" allows for the contention that human-sourced carbon emissions into that atmosphere have not been a cause of the warming of the oceans and air, then it is possible that the very survival of the species could be in jeopardy because of  the choice of a label for short-term economic and political reasons.

1. Tom Jacobs, “Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics,” Pacific Standard, March 2, 2011. 

2. Washington Policy Center, “Climate Change: Where the Rhetoric Defines the Science,” March 8, 2011.

3. Oliver Burkeman, “Memo Exposes Bush’s New Green Strategy,” The Guardian, March 3, 2003.

4. Ibid.

5. Washington Policy Center, “Climate Change: Where the Rhetoric Defines the Science,” March 8, 2011.

6. Erik Hayden, “Republicans Believe in ‘Climate Change,’ Not ‘Global Warming’,” The Atlantic Wire, March 3, 2011.

7. Tom Jacobs, “Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics,” Pacific Standard, March 2, 2011.

8. Ibid.

Weening the American Voters off Reliance on the Media in Selecting Candidates

How well do voters (i.e., an electorate) know and thus are able to assess people running for public office? As the proportion of people who know a candidate firsthand decreases, the importance of the campaign ads and debates increases. In other words, the candidate's marketing plays a greater role in who wins. At an empire-level, such as the U.S. Government, an overwhelming percentage of people in an electorate (e.g., voting in a U.S. Senate race, or that of the federal president) are significantly influenced by the candidates' respective media campaigns for lack of real knowledge. In a U.S. presidential campaign, financial contributions are vital in being able to orchestrate an empire-wide media campaign. Also, how a campaign manipulates the media coverage of the candidate is very important. The case of Sarah Palin, who ran as John McCain's running mate in 2008, illustrates the extent of distance that can separate what the public "knows" of the real person from the media-made candidate. When people learned of her shocking ignorance of government, the distance was suddenly transparent, and yet no electioneering reforms were subsequently put into effect. Americans still had to rely on presidential debates to get a glimpse of the "man behind the curtain." 

In the election of 2012, I had the sense in the second presidential debate that Barack Obama looked smug, even arrogant, as if he were running the debate in virtue of his office. His tone directed at the moderated seemed to say, "Ok Candy, you may proceed with that." Perhaps the two labels are unfair, though people who have had contact with the president in person tend to provide similar feedback. I suspect the average Joe (not necessarily "the plumber") voter is turned off by conceit. Watching the debate, I had a subtle sense that whispered in my ears, "American viewers might be reacting negatively to his personality, as if saying to themselves, 'now we see how he really is . . . hmmm.'" There is the brand and the man. In other words, apart from the speeches and the orchastrated ads, Barak Obame might not be someone we would necessarily want to get to know, after all. I wonder if this recognition or awareness was occurring for the American people only then, during the debates, as we observed Obama interact with a rival in real time. "So this is how he plays with others . . . hmmm."

In divining what prompts the electorate's leaning one way or the other in a given election, we would be wise not to leave out "comfort level" with seeing and hearing the candidate at issue. Mentality or attitude is relevant because we know that whoever is elected president will be a regular fixture in our lives, albeit vicariously through electronic means. I am not referring only to whether we like the guy; the matter extends to our comfort with his attitude. This is a very subtle thing. Personality and attitude can thus be understood to play a role, albeit a subtle one, in how a candidate for president is "evaluated." An election is not simply about policy, which is a reason why the latter should be included on a ballot separately. 

Of course, Obama's attitude was not the only one on display during the debate. I have in mind Romney's duplicity, even lying, in his claim, "I care about all Americans" during the debate after he had said in private that it would not be his job to worry about 47 percent of us if elected no doubt turned many people off (at least those of us who follow politics). As he looked straight into the camera and made his statement as though sincere, I wondered whether the highest politicians have such an astonishing ability to act. That is to say, the true gift of a politician could be the ability to come off as incredibly sincere when he or she is simply acting the part. "Wow he's good" was what came to my mind. Of course, the excellence of a skill is of little value if the skill itself is a vice. Perhaps what we are left with is a fleeting glimpse of how little we know about either candidate, and yet we presume we know so much about both. "Obama cares" and "Romney is compassionate" may turn out to be marketing-driven rather than real, yet we cannot be wrong about what we believe to be the case, right?

To offer a less sensitive example illustrating the distance between a person and his character on television, Andy Taylor, the nice, common-sense sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show, was easy for millions of viewers to like. From this viewing experience of  the character, many Americans doubtlessly felt a loss when Andy Griffith died in the summer of 2012 even though the man was reportedly not "good with people." He even fought with the actress who played Aunt Bee, a kind, motherly character (how many viewers could say the actress playing her was so nice?). The actor who played the sheriff was not as kind in person as is his character, yet people with just the character in mind mourned as if they had lost the man himself. This, I submit, is a problem that also impairs political elections. For some reason, the human mind is susceptible to viewing acting as if the actor were the character (i.e., no distance between them). In mourning President Reagan as his funeral was broadcast, the vast majority of Americans had only the actor's presidential character in mind, for they could not get to the man himself. How many knew that he called his wife, Mommie? Where most of an electorate do not get to meet the candidates in person, as in the case of the election for an empire-scale office such as the U.S. Presidency, the susceptibility is particularly strong because the contact comes only through the media and the candidates' own respective media campaigns. As debates can become unscripted, they are perhaps the best means of catching of glimpse of the real persons who would use judgment in office on some very important matters. To the extent that an electorate relies on the real people in offices so far away, getting to the real persons who mask as candidates is important, and yet little if any progress has been made in at least the United States. The European Union is a better construct for this, as more power in the E.U. resides with state-level office-holders. In general, less distance between the voter and a candidate is within states than at the empire-level (i.e., the Congress and the federal president). The sizes of the electorates for federal offices are a leap greater than those within the states. Less distance is involved in the latter, for the electorates are so much smaller. Hence it is easier for proportionately more of such electorates to know the "man behind the candidate." Other things equal, better candidates should be more likely to beat the bad ones. 

I suspect that in 2012 after the second debate, many independents (and perhaps even some Republicans and Democrats) had the sense that better people could have been selected as candidates. This suspicion was confirmed for me when I learned after the third debate that the candidates  to discuss took liberties in discussing domestic policy even though the debate was to be on FOREIGN policy. Such a lapse can itself be a red flag respecting boundary issues or problems with "keeping within the lines" (i.e., as in coloring books). At the very least, it evinces self-centeredness. In short, the debate gave the electorate a glimpse into the man behind the candidate--for both candidates, but should a democracy founded on popular sovereignty--the voters as a group--be satisfied with just glimpses?  They can trigger unfounded inferences, which in turn can lead a voter to use bad judgement in voting. At the very least, then, the American electorates should have better access behind the candidate. For example, release of President Trump's tax returns should have been mandated so voters could get a better sense of how he ran his company, as such an executive role is arguably related to how he would be the chief executive of the U.S. Government. Mandated disclosures could also have pointed to the man himself--his judgments and character. Generally speaking, the People should demand that their government require more along this line. Put another way, the People have a right to be informed even if it means that political media campaigns must deviate from their respective scripts and even have to play defense, losing control of the narrative.

Larry Summers Bowed Out of the Race for Fed Chair: “Advise and Consent” Triumphant

On September 15, 2013, the White House announced that Larry Summers, Barak Obama’s prior chief economic advisor and a Secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton administration, no longer wanted to be considered to fill the upcoming vacancy as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In the announcement, Obama (or an advisor) wrote, “Larry was a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth and made the kind of progress we are seeing today.”[1] Unfortunately, this statement suffers from a sin of omission, which admittedly had been minimized by the media as well. Accordingly, the Democrats in the U.S. Senate who had just come out against a Summers nomination can be regarded as done the nation a vital service. Moreover, the “check” of the “check-and-balance” feature of the U.S. Senate’s confirmation power worked.
With all its open points of access, democracy can have a splintering effect on a point worthy of public debate. The media dutifully plays its “scattering” role before any reasoned train of thought can gain traction in the public domain. For example, at the time of Summers’ retraction, the New York Times reported that a “reputation for being brusque, his past comments about women’s natural aptitude in mathematics and science, and his decisions on financial regulatory matters in the Clinton and Obama administrations had made [Summers] a controversial choice.”[2] A reader could be forgiven for concluding that personal vendettas, public gossip, and single-issue (not even monetary policy!) political activists have points just as important as the matter of Summers’ past decisions on financial regulation.
Any political interest having succeeded in getting its point to a microphone is deemed just as relevant or decisive as any other. Democracy is the great relativiser. The great equalizer. Is rule by "members of the club" the only practical alterative, or is it American democracy merely its front, only superficially relativising and equalizing the relevant and the less-than-relevant?

       Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin. In the late 1990s, they pressed Congress to keep financial derivatives unregulated. A case of government doing Wall Street's bidding?   Image Source: pbs.org


Obviating the scattering effect, we can zero in on Obama’s attribution of “expertise, wisdom and leadership” and ask whether they apply to Summers when he joined Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin in the late 1990s to lobby Congress to remove the CFTC’s authority to regulate financial derivatives. At the time, Brooksley Born, chairwoman of the CFTC, was recommending to Congress that mortgage-backed derivatives be regulated. That the unholy triumvirate, blessed by Clinton and supported by Wall Street, succeeded with the help of Sen. Phil Gramm in discrediting Born kept the financial system vulnerable to being blind-sided by a collapse in any of the securitized derivatives markets.
It is difficult to fathom how financial regulatory expertise, wisdom, or leadership could possibly pertain to Summers in his lobbying capacity during the Clinton administration, even if he did go on to help Obama mop up the fiscal thaw after Lehman's bankruptcy. Yet, sadly, Summers’ down-right discraceful bullying of Born, and being wrong on top of that on whether financial derivatives should be regulated were barely mentioned in the public discourse leading up to Summers’ decision to withdraw his name from the president's consideration.
Fortunately, the public can rely on the informed advise and consent power of the U.S. Senate. Is it just a coincidence, however, that bullish financial markets answered Summers' decision? Or was it the other way around: Summers' decision being the answer to a message he had received from Wall Street?
To be sure, Summers was "generally considered to be in the pocket of Wall Street."[3] Citibank had been paying him for what the Federal Reserve refers to as "participation" in "Citi events."[4] Additionally, his efforts to keep financial derivatives, including CDOs, unregulated enabled Wall Street banks to make "kazillions of dollars."[5] However, bankers have short memories, given the inertia of the financial interest of the moment. Traders and bankers tended to favor Yellen, according to a poll conducted by CNBC; whereas Yellen got 50 percent, Summers came in at a mere 2.5 percent.[6] Besides sporting an abrasive (Harvard?) manner, Summers had given vocal hints that he might tighten monetary policy, even reduce the Fed's bond-purchase program sooner than Yellen would.
Particularly given Summers' nature, I have trouble believing that he woke up one nice fall morning and decided to cave in to anticipated "political obstacles" to his getting confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Put another way, more was likely behind his loss of support among Democrats on the Senate committee than even concerns the senators might have had about Summers' prior participation in turning Congress against Born's plea to regulate derivatives. Could it be that Wall Street CEOs were pulling the strings, reaching from Boston to Capitol Hill without even leaving finger-prints?    

---

1. Annie Lowrey and Michael D. Shear, “Summers Pulls Name from Consideration for Fed Chief,” The New York Times, September 15, 2013.
2. Ibid.
3. Mark Gongloff, "Larry Summers' Withdrawal from Fed Race Is Good News for Wall Street and the Economy," The Huffington Post, September 16, 2013.
4. Reuters, "Fed Contender Larry Summers Cancels Citigroup Events," CNBC, September 14, 2013.
5. Gongloff, "Larry Summers."
6. Mark Gongloff, "Wall Street Overwhelmingly Favors Yellen Over Summers for Fed Chair: CNBC Poll," The Huffington Post, July 26, 2013.

Picking a President by Polls

It is one thing to say that something is broken; it is quite another thing to fix it. In such a case, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it doesn’t cut it. Any pathological fear of change must give way or the brokenness must be endured. During the last half of 2011, over a year before the U.S. presidential election, the election season was already in full swing. Without any primaries or caucuses, the media and “debate” (i.e., talking points) organizers divided the Republican candidates into two tiers. Besides being an artificial dichotomy given the spectrum of support revealed in polls, that they were being used to prioritize among the candidates in the “debates” and more generally in terms of electability is problematic.
Most importantly, a poll is not an election. To relegate some candidates while privileging others (even crowning a “front runner”) ahead of any primary or caucus is without democratic legitimacy because polls have no decision-making authority. In other words, for the media (and “debate” organizers) to rely on polls to discriminate between candidates both in terms of electability and in allotting attention deprives the electorate at the polls or caucuses to break up the pack. Indeed, even aside from the fact that a poll does not constitute an election, relying on polls is problematic.
For one thing, relying on a poll can give the false impression of permanent preferences. Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who directed the WSJ/NBC poll with Peter Hart in October 2011, remarked, “How quickly candidates have risen and then, like a soufflé, how quickly they’ve fallen back down.” A poll is at best a snapshot, and is thus obsolete even on the next day. Furthermore, the proliferation of cell phones in lieu of LAN lines and of do-not-call lists makes the “science” of polling less exact than even it portends. Indeed, to rely on the telephone in conducting surveys introduces a certain bias. For example, how many homeless people have phones?  Less obviously, how many survey callers get through to corporate executives who have gate-keepers poised to divert such calls?
Even if polling were capable of giving an accurate snapshot, the polls would have to be interpreted correctly. That obvious error can be perpetuated even by a media heavy-weight like The Wall Street Journal should give us all pause in whether we should rely on the reporting of polls. For example, the October 13, 2011 headline reads, “Can Vaults to Lead in Poll.” The WSJ/NBC News telephone poll of Republican primary voters that month put Herman Cain at 27% and Mitt Romney at 23 percent. Unfortunately for the poll and for the headline, the margin of error of the poll is 5.35 percentage points. Now, math is not my strong suit by any means, but the last I checked, 4 (27-23) is less than 5.35. The poll itself does not justify the headline.

Given the margin of error, Romney could claim to be in the lead!  This conclusion too is within the poll’s result. In fact, Romney in the lead is just as valid a conclusion from the poll. So it is indeterminate as to which of the two candidates is in the lead. This why the newspaper's headline is dogmatic. Within a margin of error, no particular result is privileged over any other. To pick out one “result” within the margin of error is dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary, and yet it is done all the time. Given the graphic above, readers who do not understand statistics and surveying as a  social-scientific method are apt to fixate on the 27% and the 23% as if these figures were engraved in stone.

Moreover, typically people apply a false sense of exactitude when numbers are reported. It is like driving from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis and remarking while passing Youngstown, we will arrive in Indy at 5:45pm. Airline pilots in particular enjoy exercising the error of exaggerated exactitude by announcing the arrival time for the destination even from the departure airport before takeoff. At New York’s Kennedy, a pilot might announce, “we will touchdown in Paris at 6:47a.m. tomorrow morning.” Not 6:48a.m. Not 6:46a.m. Rather, 6:47a.m. on the dot. On your next flight, you might point this error of excessive exactitude out to your pilot (after you have landed—you wouldn’t want to provoke a nervous breakdown before you are back safely on the ground at the appointed time).

Besides the problems in interpreting and reporting particular polls, relying on them before the first primary or caucus is problematic from the standpoint of democracy itself. To the extent that Cain’s 27% “front-runner’s status,” anointed by the October poll more than a year before the presidential election, impacts or detracts from the electoral choices of the primary or caucus voters, the democratic process itself suffers. In other words, introducing error into an electoral process does not bode well for a democratic system or a specific electoral outcome. Moreover, willowing down a field of candidates by polls circumvents a democratic system wherein elections are the means by which decisions are made with respect to candidates for public office. In effect, pollsters, commentators and news editors (and executives) have supplanted, or at least jumped the gun on, the primaries and caucuses. The elongated electoral “season” (measured in years) even relative to the primaries and caucuses has provided the vacuum in which the “early decisions” can be made by (unelected) pollsters, commentators, and journalists. The U.S. presidential election process is broken. Whether anything will be done to fix the process remains to be seen. I’m not holding my breath, given the magnitude of the problem and the headlines. Indeed, saying that the process in the fall of 2011 is democratically illegitimate would be like saying that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Resisting the urge to make a joke at Gov. Christie’s expense (he has said the jokes have to be funny at least—he is indeed a class act), I will rest my case here—hoping that I have adequately reserved my readers’ respect.

 

Source:

Neil King, Jr. and Jonathan Weisman, “Cain Vaults to Lead in Poll,” The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2011. 

How a Chairman of the Federal Reserve Made Strategic Use of the Media

Just as the US Senate was to take up the matter of Ben Bernanke’s re-appointment as Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2010, Time magazine came out with its announcement that he is to be its person of the year.  According to the magazine, “when turbulence in U.S. housing markets metastasized into the worst global financial crisis in more than 75 years, he conjured up trillions of new dollars and blasted them into the economy; engineered massive public rescues of failing private companies; ratcheted down interest rates to zero; lent to mutual funds, hedge funds, foreign banks, investment banks, manufacturers, insurers and other borrowers who had never dreamed of receiving Fed cash; jump-started stalled credit markets in everything from car loans to corporate paper; revolutionized housing finance with a breathtaking shopping spree for mortgage bonds; blew up the Fed’s balance sheet to three times its previous size; and generally transformed the staid arena of central banking into a stage for desperate improvisation. He didn’t just reshape U.S. monetary policy; he led an effort to save the world economy.”  Not to be outdone in service to the Chairman, CNN furnished its own reporters, who gave credit to Bernanke for these measures.  Interestingly, however, even though one reporter admitted that Bernanke had said in 2007 that the subprime market and its derivatives would not threaten the financial market and the banks, she attributed the fault there to the imperfections in the market rather than to Bernanke himself in being wrong.   So, he gets credit for cleaning up the mess (ignoring the foreclosed homeowners) but not the blame for being wrong about the contagion (and not urging regulation of the derivatives).  He could have urged the regulation of derivatives (he is a smart person), and once the crisis occurred, he could have tailored his response to the homeowners facing foreclosures that could have been stopped. For example, the Fed could have created dollars to subsidize the inordinate rates on the variable rate subprime mortgages (i.e. those bank assets would not have been toxic and the banks’ balance sheets would have been fine…two birds with one stone…rather than doing the bidding of one of the parties).  To be sure, if the Fed is inordinately friendly to banks because of the power they have in selecting their regulators (the NY Fed Chair’s appointing committee consists of bankers), then Bernanke might have simply been playing the good politics for staying in office.   “Our ships must all sail in the same direction; otherwise who can tell how long you will…last…with us.” (The Godfather, part III)  Bernanke is a player from the perspective of the real power behind the throne: America’s financial elite.  That elite literally owns the media companies. So what I want to point out here is that the timing of Time’s announcement and the asymetry in CNN’s laudatory coverage of the Chairman just as the Senate was about to consider his re-appointment led me almost instinctually to  be convinced that coincidence was not the driver here.  The Chairman undoubtedly had some powerful friends in the media who were giving him a publicity offensive, or campaign, just in time for the Senate debate on whether to appoint him.

Through all the admiration of this person of 2009, it should be remembered that he did not urge the regulation of sub-prime derivatives issued or held by the banks regulated by the Fed.  He was wrong about the subprime housing bubble being contained.  And he failed to protect homeowners sufficiently.  If the media was being used by the Fed Chair in his re-appointment campaign, it could be that what we are fed by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the main network newscasts is not really as neutral or beyond their control as we think.   News as a campaign.  News because it is in some powerful actor’s vested interests.  While there is certainly coincidence in life, an alignment such as I have outlined here is far too transparent—or at least it ought to be.

The subtext here is that we, the American people, have become too much the pawns even as we think we are not.  The illusion of popular sovereignty is that we are in control.   I don’t think we have any idea of the extent to which we are manipulated by the powers that transcend our elected representatives and their appointees.  It is no wonder that real change does not get beyond the interests of the real power in America, whose interest is in the status quo or at best in an incremental change.   Essentially, we have allowed the anti-democratic power to concentrate to a degree that is dangerous to a functioning republic (i.e., a representative democracy).  We should not be surprised to find that powerful actors are operating at a subterranean level where transparency is intentionally lacking.    How do we get it back, you ask?  Hah!   We would have to see it first—realize its extent and depth—and I’m not holding my breath that enough people will wake up to see the light.

Too many of us are ensconced in Plato’s cave, taking what the puppets say for reality.  As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, “You want answers? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”    Even if we could stomach the emetic manipulation behind the scenes that is directed to us (and even our representatives—when they aren’t doing it themselves), we would have to be able to see it—and it is so well hidden.  We can only grasp at straws…confluences that seem like more than coincidences.  As a member of the black caucus of the US House (surprisingly) said to a reporter of Frontline on the TARP program passing the House just days after it had been voted down by that same body, “You have no idea how powerful the anti-democratic forces are here.”    You and I get only glimpses.  The puppets seem more real so we believe in them.   Please don’t take my thesis to be that there is one huge orchastrated conspiracy; rather, I’m simply suggesting that our system of representative democracy does not seem to be able to sufficiently constrain the invisible powers that are pulling strings without being accountable to the public power.  It is my ardent hope that the people will look beyond the status quo in voting for candidates—perhaps getting back to citizen representatives who do their duty then return to their preferred occupations—that we would elect people sufficiently principled and not desirous of a life in power to be willing to take on the financial power.   Do I think it will happen?  Sadly, no.  I’m sorry, but I just don’t think we have it in us…or we don’t have enough of what it would take to confront that which is in us that favors comfort and sleep.   In the story of the rise and fall of empires, the United States is not exempt.  The culprit, as with most things, lies within.   It is ultimately about what kind of people too many of us are.  Such a thing is very, very difficult to change, let alone see.  Decadence tends to be invisible to itself.

Note: A day after CNN covered the announcement, the Senate finance committee debated and voted on Bernanke’s re-appointment. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34463144/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

 Source: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html#ixzz0Zs8WgpV1

Political Black Holes: On the Power Behind the Throne

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a black hole. If this is news to you, there is no need to go hide under a rock. It turns out our black hole is not the biggest by far, and it doesn't spew out a lot of excess energy that falls into it. Even so, it is ours, and we can be glad that we have one of our very own even if it isn't the biggest one on the block. In case you are interested in seeing it’s baleful look in a picture, I’ve got bad news for you; it is invisible. No light can bounce off it.  You are probably wondering how the scientists found it.  Well, they knew that black holes are in the center of galaxies, so the crafty lab coats used light to find our center because there is too much gas there for much there to be visible to us.  The scientists noticed that the speed of stars speeds up around a certain point and posited the existence of a highly-dense black hole.

Using the phenomenon of black holes as an analogy, political "scientists" might investigate whether power, whethere in business, government or society, tends by its very nature to consolidate. In the Micheal Moore documentary on capitalism, two members of congress point to the immense power of an anti-democratic corporate banking elite that was able to turn around the House vote on the bank bailout (TARP) using the democratic leadership as runners. If so, such power was invisible to the public. Likewise a black hole is of course invisible. In the case of the banking elite, we couldn't point our fingers at who exactly gave the marching orders that turned around the no-questions-asked government loans to the banks too big to fail.  Nor do we, or will we, know who told the U.S. Senators: hands off meddling in foreclosures.  Indeed, we shall have no idea whether a power behind the throne told Congress not to even debate the alternative of giving the TARP money directly to home borrowers in trouble.  That this was not seriously debated for foreclosures involving mortgages that banks and mortgage companies should not have given in the first place hints of the existence of a massive albeit hidden political black hole. Finally, such a black hole may have been behind the administration's decision not to push for banks too big to fail to be carved up while extant rather than simply "orderly liquidated" once they have fallen under their own weight.

Neither the American people nor the American media companies go far enough in investigating even the existence of invisible black holes in the American political universe, let alone what damage they do from the standpoint of the public or common good.  Micheal Moore suggests that Citibank and Goldman don’t fear popular election much because they expect the 1 person, 1 vote thing won’t turn on them because most people think they could be in the elite too. The financial elite is 1% of the vote; 1% of the population holds 90% of the wealth, so if the other 99% happen to wake up and notice, they might take back the reins. The big business would be worried, but, alas, Wall Street is not shaking in its golden boots. As to why, I would add to Moore’s explanation by pointing to the extent to which Americans are manipulated without even knowing it.  Lest it be missed, the giant media companies are corporate too.

Is it an accident, for example, that so many stories on Afganistan pop up when it is in the interest of the defence contractors? Are they simply using the people to urge Congress to support a surge?  I would call this “direct manipulation” because we are being summoned to debate what has been put on the table for us.   The other kind is “indirect,” which involves a political black hole keeping an issue or policy-option off our radar screens.  President Obama’s suggestion, for example, that the banks too big to fail be reduced in size (and money) so they would not be so dangerous in failing, quietly went away. In looking for indirect manipulation, the important thing to notice is the absence of  any visible event or change that could explain the removal of a proposal by some new issue being covered by the media. We ought to be examining what political black holes do not want us to talk about because of private interests. For instance, we now know that health insurance companies gave their surrogates "death panel scare stories" to fan out discussion of a public alternative in health insurance.  Scaring a proposal off the radar screen is among the silent weapons used by political black holes.  Again, the source of such weapons is invisible.

So like sheep, the American people is led to debate or focus on something or to forget something else, In the process, we are unwittingly giving up, or failing to grasp, our democratic power, which can be used for the public good. To be sure, there are excesses and drawbacks in democracy and these too should be discussed, but there are hidden dangers to political black holes, and we miss these if we do not even know that such things exist.  That is to say, the democracy we do have may be rather wan in comparison to the gravity of the political black hole at the center of our political society.

Perhaps the question on your mind is:  So how do we get it back?   It might involve nothing short of waking up out of the Matrix.  So many of us don’t realize how much we are being manipulated.  Realizing it, and not tailoring our thoughts and discussions along its lines will wake others.   Once people start waking, we can start to look for candidates who do not, like Obama, take a $1 million from Goldman after promising real change.  We need candidates willing to forego being bought out by the elites who sense that democracy might possibly get the upper hand in an election.  Pay particular attention to the matter of teeth in such candidates’ proposals with respect to big business…and ask at their speeches whether they are taking money from the establish that has a vested interest in the status quo.  Don’t buy the “I’m not influenced by money.”  …which should be treated as a laugh line.   If you find genuine candidates willing to effect systemic change even where it is at the expense of the big corporate players, know that the elite will offer such candidates so much if the elite view the candidates as viable and  not under their control.  Control, by the way, can be more subtle than using a leash.  This is perhaps my major point here…political black holes are invisible and yet their anti-democratic gravity is HUGE…even as it is in a tiny space, or office.

In the Roman Empire, the games in the arena (which means “sand” in Latin) were a devise to distract as well as mollify and entertain the masses.  Today, we have American Idol and the Super Bowl, as well as the World Series.  Besides their entertainment value made possible by the talent involved, these idols are effective in gravitating popular attention…and this can be useful to the extent that the US is a plutocracy (i.e. ruled in the interest of the top 1% of the wealth) and vested powers fear the 1 person, 1 vote power of democracy.  But as Micheal Moore points out, Citibank and Goldman Sachs can rest easier knowing that many of us don’t use the power of the vote to take from the banks because many of us believe we might be among the plutacracy one day. 

I would add that we tend to be easily manipulated into following the media’s current (which, kein Zufall, tends to move around the interests of the major houses so as not to disturb the islands of capital).   We stop wondering about the distant promises to do something about the banks too big to fail because the media has conveniently stopped reminding us.  We forget that an option is to break up the banks too big to fail (which, by the way, have gotten bigger since September, 2008 and are still active at the casino).  We unthinkingly join the media in debating Obama’s banking consumer protection proposal, as though that were primary.  In other words, Goldman Sachs, which was Obama’s largest campaign contributor according to Micheal Moore (over $1 million), is content to have us debate a potentially pain so we will be appeased by Obama’s pledge of “real change” and not ask, demand, or VOTE to apply anti-trust law to financial houses.   In short, we allow ourselves to be dupped and we don’t even know it.  We don’t even realize we are taking our eyes off the eight ball.  Goldman lets Obama have four more years and 1 person, 1 vote is once again not a threat to either Goldman or the change agent that the bank bought.  Don’t expect Obama to rock the boat in bringing any real change that is not in the interests of the most powerful of the corporations.  Obama’s challenge is to show us just enough that looks like real change while not acting outside the interests of his corporate backers.  However, aren’t real change and status quo vested intersts mutually exclusive?  If so, how does Barak Obama get around this?  He gives us just enough to appear…   Meanwhile, the systemic change that is needed on the players at fault in September, 2008, goes by the wayside and we remain vulnerable even though We the People are convinced that a new consumer protection agency will do the trick.  The trick, ladies and gentlemen, is on us–and we don’t even know it.  We don’t know what we don’t know…while we presume we know it.

In 2009, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya gave a speech  at the annual opening of the General Assembly at the UN in New York City.  Substantively, he pointed to the drawbacks in having the UN remain in New York.  He also advocated a permanent seat for the African Union in the Security Council.   Fifty-three states are represented in that Union.  In an interesting twist, he remarked that the US contains fifty countries, so Africa too deserved a permanent seat.  I was utterly surprised that the man who was disorganized and sporatic in his delivery (and whose government would kill hundreds of unarmed protesters in 2011) could grasp the nature of the US in terms commensurate to the AU. He added that the EU should have a seat.   This makes a lot of sense because it is not fair for three of the EU’s states to have seats while all of the 50 United States have one. It occurred to me in listening to his speech that he understood the nature of the US as an empire-scale polity better, actually, than most contemporary Americans do. This is a bad commentary on the condition of civics classes in American high schools.  So I was surprised to find the mainstream media report the speech simply as “disorganized" without reporting any of the substance, as though there had been no serious content whatsoever.   Someone must have wanted to discredit Qaddafi for political or economic reasons.   The summary verdict was so immedate and total that none of Qaddafi’s content was covered.   The media’s treatment had all the footprints of a hidden strategy--that is, of a black hole's pull.  If I am correct, I’m left surprised that the subterfuge itself could be so blatant.  For a journalistic standpoint, the reporting was really bad.   Alternatively, the journalists could have reported what the man had said (as well as on his style and approach) and have left it to the readers to decide whether the content should be dismissed due to the style.   Something else was going on.  I’m just not sure what. I contend that something else typically goes on in terms of what is debated in the public discourse via the media. The invisible source steering and pruning what travels across our public radar screen is none other than a political black hole: a very dense concentration of private power functioning akin to an invisible elephant in a small living room. One person senses a trunk--another a leg--but we as a people miss the very existence of the elephant.  We are too distracted, and this is no accident, as it manifests by the very black hole that we do not suspect exists.

In short, both the content and frequency of topics reported by the media bear traces of the black whole that they are orbiting. As long as the source of the gravity is invisible, the black hole will continue to be quite useful.  Put another way, as long as Americans take the press reports as simply journalism, we will miss what is going on behind the scenes and therefore continue to be subject to being manipulated.  Micheal Moore asks: when will democracy ascend over the power of big business?  It is possible, but not probable.   This, by the way, is the expression that Kant uses in discussing his Kingdom of Ends (treating rational beings as ends and not just as means). Beyond the latent or actual subterranean power of corporate America over our public airwaves and legislative chambers, we ought to reflect on the threat to a republic in there simply being political black holes.

  

See: Nova on Black Holes
 (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/)

The American News Media: A Case of Egoistic Over-Reaching

During the summer of 2010, as commentators at Fox, CNN, and MSNBC were arguing, they referred to their own arguments as “trench warfare” and “hand-to-hand fighting.”  Real soldiers would doubtless dismiss such descriptors as attempts by children to count as adults—as something more.  The soldiers would be correct, of course. Insulting or criticizing another person does not constitute fighting in the sense of warfare. Someone at MSNBC calling someone at Fox a racist does not come close to shooting someone with a rifle or even slugging someone with one’s fist.  The protesters in Libya who were being shot at by their own government in February, 2011, would shake their heads in disbelief in hearing of the "war" among media personalities.

Lest it be objected that this matter is insignificant, the propensity of the media “personalities” to over-reach has, I submit, dominated their depiction of news for years.  For example, they use “crisis” far too often.  To be sure, a crisis really did exist in September, 2008 on the Thursday evening in which Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson told congressional leaders that unless they showed some intent to act, there would not be a financial system by the following Monday. This is what it means to be in a crisis mode. To call the BP oil in the gulf a crisis more than two months after the explosion (and weeks after the well had been capped) a "crisis" pales in comparision; hence, it is thus a case of the media over-reaching. 

By its very nature, a crisis is short-term.  The protest in Egypt, for example, during the Arab Spring quickly reached a do or die point. Such is crisis mode.  So too, when the planes shot at the protesters in Libya; the resulting turmoil, which can only be sustained as such for a brief period before a decision has to be made one way or the other, instantiated a crisis mode.  For republicans or democrats in Congress to refer to budget talks as though they were at a crisis utterly pales by comparison, even if non-essentials in government might be temporarily shut down. Yet journalists have nonetheless perpetuated the verbal inflation in order to get increased attention, which has its own life besides the obvious bump in ratings that benefit their respective networks. It is the journalist's own ego that is being served just as much as profits. Is there any room for news, especially international beyond Iran, Iraq, Russia, and Israel?

Every presidential address is self-righteously vaunted as critical. The President needs to say X or the sky will fall. No mention is subsequently made of the sky still up there even though the President omitted X.  Silently omitted is the accountability on journalists and pundits when they over-reach. 

Contagion Beyond the Headlines in the E.U.

The E.U. states of Greece and Italy were grabbing headlines during the first two weeks of November 2011, given the dramatic resignations of Papandreou and Berlusconi. The only other state to get some attention was France. The Wall Street Journal noted on November 12^th that concerns had been quietly building about France. According to the paper,“French bond yields rose to four-month highs, one day after Standard & Poor's Ratings Services erroneously issued a message saying it had cut France's triple-A credit rating. The yield on France's benchmark 10-year bond climbed 0.02 percentage point to 3.46%. That was 1.66 percentage points over yields on comparable German government bonds. France now has the highest government bond yields among its triple-A-rated peers in the region.” However, it seems overly dramatic to say that a .02 percent increase evinces a climb. Moreover, 3.46% is well under 7 percent, which is the level that was presumed at the time to signify the need for a bailout. Relative to the changes in the Italian yield, those of the French bonds could be viewed as relatively moderate, The French yield was still closer to that of Germany. Although not a red herring, the concern over France masked some real sleepers that were poised to take a hit in 2012. 

Eclipsed by the headlines, Portugal’s expected GDP for 2012 was revised downward by the E.U.’s executive branch in November from the May estimates of around -1.8% to -3% with an expected unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent. The 2011 numbers were also revised downward, from about -1.9% to around -2.1 percent. Meanwhile, Portugal’s semi-sovereign 10-year bond yield was at just over 12 percent, well over Italy’s “point of no return” rate of 7.5 percent, which was hit for a day during the second week of November. With an expected contraction of 3% in 2012 and a 12% yield in November of 2011, Portugal could be expected to face stronger head-winds in being able to make its interest payments in 2012. I suspect that the press had become so captivated with the circus of personalities in Greece and Italy that the iceberg lying in front of Portugal was simply not seen.

Besides Portugal, some of the states in Eastern Europe faced icebergs of their own—though not necessarily of their own making. These too were receiving too little press coverage in November of 2011. Specifically, the state leaders of the “euro zone” had decided in October to give the “zone’s” major banks until the following summer to raise their capital reserves. With that amount of time, the banks could avoid issuing new stock (which would dilute the holdings of their existing stockholders) and get the added reserves together by cutting back on lending to Eastern E.U. state governments instead. Morgan Stanley figures that Poland, Romania, and Hungary are most vulnerable to a loss of “euro zone” bank lending. Roughly 1 trillion euros of “euro zone” bank assets were in Eastern Europe at the time of the change in governments in Greece and Italy. Hungary’s exposure was the largest, with loans held by the banks amounting to about 37% of GDP. According to the Wall Street Journal, any hit to the E.U.’s eastern states, whose economic growth had been powered the global recovery, would only worsen the E.U.’s economic outlook and its ability to service its debts. That is to say, enabling the “euro zone” banks to raise additional reserve capital by reducing lending rather than raising equity may have been in the banks’ interest, but choking the eastern states could already in November be expected to make it more difficult for Greece, Italy, and Portugal to service their respective debts from reduced economic output in 2012. 

It would have been wiser on the journalists’ part to put France in perspective and take a look at Portugal and Eastern Europe than to have fixated so much on the plights of Papandreou and Berlusconi as they struggled to maintain power only to ultimately lose it.

For more on this topic, see Essays on the E.U. Political Economy

Sources:

Matthew Dalton, “Europe Slashes Its Growth Forecast,” The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2011. 

Kelly Evans, “Eastern Europe Vulnerable in Debt Crisis,” The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2011. 

Neelabh Chaturvedi, Stelios Bouras, and Liam Moloney, “Europe Pulls Back From Brink,” The Wall Street Journal, November 12-13, 2011. 

A Dysfunctional Trajectory of U.S. Presidential Debates: The Case of 2012

Just weeks before the 2012 elections in the U.S., the New York Times observed, “In 1960, John F. Kennedy was trailing Richard Nixon as they stepped into the crucible of the first nationally televised debate. While Kennedy soared, Nixon stumbled and never recovered. Network television played a definitive role, but those were very different times. There were three networks, not 500 channels, and the consumer Internet was still very much on the drawing board of the future. Half a century later, televised debates remain relevant, but the ritual is up against an always-on informational stream that surges with political messages.”

Indeed, $2.5 billion was being spent on the U.S. presidential election alone. It could even be said that the political conventions and the debates themselves had become pre-arranged “political messages” and thus part of the advertising.
In the second presidential debate of 2012, for example,  the candidates were primarily oriented to covering all their memorized talking points rather than answering questions posed by the voters invited for that very purpose as part of the "town hall" format. As it happened, the candidates talked so much that very few of the people's questions were asked. All that talk might have been justified had there been a focused and sustained back-and-forth limited to contending counter-arguments to specific points.
I was stunned at how rarely "debating" was even attempted. The candidates even dismissed the moderator when she tried to focus the "debate" by returning the particular candidate to the question that had been asked by the audience. The candidates' lack of respect for the moderator and the people asking the questions was displayed by the ease and quickness with which the candidates deviated in favor of their own talking points. It was as though the "debate" was a series of control battles between a candidate and the moderator. This indicates that insufficient direction was enforced by the moderator.
I was also stunned at the extent to which both candidates presumed that their role in the debate  included being able to overrule the moderate and run it as if they were not subject to the rules. Making matters worse, at a few points the moderator actually moved on to a new question and topic when the candidates had begun to focus on specific points and counter-points in a real back and forth. Even the moderator did not understand fundamentally what a debate is.
To take one example of the dysfunction in the debate, a voter asked Obama what he had accomplished in office that impacts the voter's ability to afford ordinary things needed in life, like food. Obama mentioned killing Bin Laden even though no economic link is salient between that killing and the price of bread. It was instead an opportunity for Obama to get out all of his talking points on a more general topic. Romney replied to particular points made by Obama on his accomplishments in office, but here too the focus on the economic aspect of the voter's question was insufficient. Then Obama deviated even from discussing his own record to criticize Romney's, which was not within the scope of the question. I believe the moderator went to a new question rather than enforce compliance with the original question and direct Obama to reply to one of Romney's specific counter-points on Obama's economic accomplishments in office. From my vantage-point, it was like looking at an arrangement severely out of balance and yet seemingly incapable of self-correction.
Particularly troubling to me was the lack of respect shown by the candidates for the invited voters with respect to their questions, and for the moderator with respect to her authority. When a voter asked who in the State Department had decided to reduce security in the U.S. embassy in Libya prior to the attack that killed the ambassador, neither Obama nor Romney came close to providing an answer. Instead, the candidates sparred over Obama's statements after the attack. This example also illustrates another way in which the moderator fell short.
Questions about why Obama thought at first that the attack was due to protests over a video produced in California are not as important as questions concerning Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, for example. Looking back at the presidential debates in the 2000 race would probably show too much attention on controversies that are only of the time; had there been more substantive debate in foreign policy, voters might have been better able to anticipate Bush's eventual invasion of Iraq. That is to say, a cost of the moderator selecting rather limited controversies because they are hot at the time of the debate is that the voters are deprived of being able to anticipate future policies of the candidates.
My thesis is that the presidential "debate" format and operation are deeply flawed from the standpoint of what it is to debate. Even to deem one candidate as "the winner" is an absurdity if the "debate" does not pass muster in terms of what a debate is. That the media runs with this absurdity anyway indicates just how out of touch we are on what constitutes debate. Just because insiders do not fix the problem does not mean that it cannot be fixed.  
As a possible reform bearing on the operation, the moderator could receive training from debate experts on how to run a debate (with some allowances for the fact that the candidates do not bring in folders of supporting evidence, though maybe doing so would help them to focus). At the very least, the moderator should be able to turn off the microphone of a candidate once he has swerved off  the question on the table or from the last "on point" contention made by the other candidate. The moderator should certainly have that ability when as in the second debate a candidate talks over the moderator in order to ignore the moderator's decision. "But I just need to respond to . . ." should trigger the moderator into "mic-cut" mode.
In short, a debate is characterized by a true back and forth that is focused and sustained (i.e., contained) on particular points oriented to a question. A debate is not “all over the map," where the candidates bounce around even within a given topic, like two hyperactive boys unable to concentrate (and with a moderator as though heavily sedated or impotent). It is therefore worth asking whether the presidential (and VP) debates at least as of 2012 were debates at all, as distinct from two people simply getting their respective messages out in pre-established talking points. Under the circumstances, it is astonishing that the media self-servingly promotes the "debates" as crucial to the outcome of the election.

It is of course in the economic interest of the media and its paid “commentators” or “experts” to populate the airwaves with “the next debate is crucial!” before the next debate. The media could get away with the manipulation were it not for the lack of any self-restraint in the claims. For example, the media claimed in the run-up to the VP debate that that debate would be crucial—perhaps even a game-changer—because Obama had lost the first presidential debate of the general campaign (i.e., after the primary season, or year). That political scientists had reported time and again that voters do not vote for president on the basis of the vice-presidential candidates was apparently missed by the media in its unquenchable thirst for still more viewers.

Americans in "The Federal City" watching a debate in 2012. Civic togetherness?  NYT

Indeed, as the New York Times suggests, even the electoral significance of the presidential debates was being overplayed. The Huffington Post reported that even after his “loss” in the first debate, President Obama continued to show an edge in battleground states. That is to say, the media’s claim in the wake of that debate that once again Romney was in play (vindicating the media’s view that the debates matter!) had been a momentary over-reaction. At the very least, the media was missing the forest for the trees (or branches).

Two contending forces could be pointed to as decisive. The "debates" are not salient in either account. On the one hand, pro-Obama supporters could point to the following as game changers: 1.) Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic Convention answering the Republican criticisms of Obama from the Republican Convention, and 2.) Romney’s leaded closed-door comment that it would not be his job as president to worry about the 47% of Americans who did not owe income taxes in 2011 and thus refuse to take responsibility for their lives (preferring to be dependent on the government) were the game-changing events in the election of 2012. On the other hand, a Romney supporter could point to the following forces: 1.) a general sense among Americans that Obama had caved into Wall Street or been generally weak as president, and 2.) the "pocket-book" (i.e., lack of an economic recovery). Neither of these possible scenerios has the debates playing a prominent role in the the voters' decisions of who to vote for.
The media’s hype on the debates was just that—self-interested manipulation akin to “pay attention to me!” With most of the American electorate having made up their minds before the debates, the post-debate polls showing significant shifts should have been read very skeptically, especially given the limitations of polling (e.g., by state vs. aggregated, “likely voters,” cell phones, no call lists, etc.) and the margins of error, which the media constantly ignore because definitive headlines sell.  

Indeed, the report a week after the vice presidential debate that Obama still held an edge in battleground states was itself an invalid claim, given the margin of error. The Huffington Post used the headline even while stating in the article itself that the finding is within the margin of error and thus spurious! The electorate is nearly blind to the errors and uncertainty in polling, especially in relation to the financial-interest of the media in misusing poll “data.”

Unfortunately, the presumption of truth tends to go with having a microphone and television camera. Reason takes a back seat behind the lights on the stage of a “debate.” The media keeps the electorate on the edge of their chairs for months on end, as if each bend in the road were on a political cliff. You better watch! There might be a crash! It is American Gladiator on steroids, and the masses are content to be spectators to a spectacle. I suspect that the subtle shifts throughout an electorate that constitute the will of the people on election day do not hinge on a series of orchestrated talking-points whether in a convention or “debate.”

Furthermore, the historical trajectory of the presidential debates over fifty years was toward “talking points” even without regard to the moderator’s question, in lieu of a sustained back and forth on a specific point to be debated and only then to be followed after some time by another point of contention in a debate that is moderated. In other words, after fifty years of presidential debates the viewers had no idea how far the spectacle had drifted out to sea. That something is called a debate does not mean that it is a debate. Moreover, just because the media characterizes a given social reality as true or actual does not necessarily mean that it is, particularly when the media’s interest is in play. Truth itself manifested as social reality should be viewed as a problem rather than as a given.

Stepping back finally, my thesis can be read as an indictment of the shift away from the emphasis on electing independent electors to the Electoral College by state, which was intended to serve as a check on excessive democracy. Election campaigns in extended republics (i.e., empire-scale) have so much distance between the candidates and the electorate, given the size of the latter and the extended geography of multiple republics, that democracy can be subject to media manipulation and demagoguery (enabled by the lack of sustained back and forth on specific points of contention in the debates). This is why the delegates in the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787 opted for smaller electorates (i.e., in the states) to elect their own electors, who in turn could meet with the candidates and cast more informed ballots without being beholden by their respective electorates to vote for a certain candidate.

Put another way, hundreds of millions of people are necessarily reliant on the media for information on the candidates for empire-wide office. The candidates in turn can essentially market themselves as a brand that can be quite contrived or artificial (e.g., the McCain campaign’s efforts to give us a certain view of Sarah Palin even as the campaign knew she was not qualified to be president).

My analysis in this essay is essentially geared to pointing to the expected decadence in electing an empire-level office directly. Jose Barroso, president of the E.U. Commission, was at the time proposing that his office be popularly elected by citizens of the E.U., and thus he was unwittingly subjecting the E.U. to the same sort of flaw. At root, Barroso was misconstruing the nature of the E.U. as a federal empire-level/scale union in applying that which is well-suited to the level of the E.U.'s republics.

As an alternative to the media spectacle that is the U.S. presidential election, Americans might consider reforms that would emphasize and protect the electors in the Electoral College, or replacing it with a combination of state officials and members of Congress (who are themselves elected and thus based in democracy!) to meet in order to choose the president. Both means are consistent with historical federal theory, whereas the direct election route is not. In other words, the reductionism to polls and talking points is to be expected; it confirms the judgment of the majority of the delegates who were at the federal convention in 1787. In short, they understood what the United States were much better than the modern electorate and officials do today. This is the basic problem facing the American polity, in my view.

If I am correct, we as a people have lost touch with what a federal, empire-level/scale union is, and so we do not even realize when we have gone far off course. For instance, we do not understand the particular risk that goes with consolidation at the federal level. We do not understand that what works electorally at the state level may not work in the context of a combination of such republics; a step-wise leap is involved, with qualitative as well as  quantitative differences. It is as though we were on a ship without a rudder, and yet we presume we must be on course so we keep going ahead. We continue with the status quo, happily going through the electoral-season rituals as though we were a dead beetle still moving along—the legs still twitching. It is indeed a horrible spectacle in the light of day, even if everything seems just dandy to the vast majority of the electorate that is to select the next president. Sadly yet tellingly, none of this is subject to debate.

Sources:

David Carr, “TV Debates That Sell More Than Just Drama,” The New York Times, October 15, 2012.

Mark Blumenthal, “2012 Polls Continue to Show Close Race Nationwide, Obama Edge in Battleground States,” The Huffington Post, October 15, 2012.