The problem with politicians
Being part the First of an informal (x)-part blog suggesting movies to watch if you are sick to death of the current race for President of the United States. Derived from conversation on a very good blog.I watched a fascinating movie last night. It gave me, I think, an new insight into the whole problem with politics in America (I believe this is a problem inherent in any two-party political system).
Essentially, it fosters uninteresting candidates and forces them--if they want any chance of winning--to sell out their ideals and pander to people who are opposed to them ideologically.
People make a big deal of Kerry's waffles--the entire world has. Bush has waffled more than a few times himself (of course these sites are partisan, but at least they cite their sources). Waffling is a matter of course in American politics.
But is this a weakness in candidates, or a weakness in system? Its probably a little of the former, but I think the idea that this is a systemic problem is far more to the point, and much more worrisome.
The fantastic movie I watched last night was called The Candidate. It features Robert Redford looking hotter than ever, with mutton chops you just want to smother in applesauce and eat right off his face. It was made in the seventies, but it speaks clearly to what is happening this election cycle. It touches so perfectly on the questions Ive been asking about these presidential candidates that watching it felt fateful--I'd totally forgotten it was in my Netflix queue.
It's about an idealistic young lawyer, Bill McKay, who gets roped into fighting an absurdly popular incumbent for senator of California. McKay has name recognition thanks to a father hes ideologically opposed to, and thats about it. He wins the primary going away because all the Democrats with clout are afraid to face their Republican opponent. As a candidate, McKay is a train wreck, unclear on certain issues, completely lacking views on others. However, there is strength in him. He possesses a fierce idealism and is under the assumption that this campaign is his to lose. Think of Al Sharpton's quadrennial primary failures. McKay sees himself as that kind of candidate: There to force dialogue on uncomfortable issues.
Long story short, after the primaries he's a forty-point underdog to Crocker Jarmon (best. . . antagonist name . . . ever), but begins making up ground fast, not because his social-democrat platform is reaching disenfranchised people, but because his campaign handlers are fantastic at splicing his views into digestible sound bytes that are palatable to moderates and even Republicans. The less clear his stances on issues, the more he resonates with people.
McKay doesnt like this at first, but as the gap between he and Jarmon closes, he tolerates it and eventually gets caught up. Theres a wonderful moment where hes given the support of a union leader who is guilty of caving to business and breaking a small strike of farmers. McKay's hate for this man is palpable
Union guy: I think youll find we have more in commonHere, Redford looks like a feral dog. The room, full of various advisors to McKay, is silent for about 15 seconds. Then the men erupt in laughter, even the union boss. Finally McKay smiles too, because he doesnt seem to know what else to do.
McKay: I dont think we have shit in common.
The next scene shows the boss introducing McKay as the next Senator from the great state of California.
The campaign is no longer McKays, it's no longer anyone's really.
The movie was strangely anticlimactic and more powerful for it. Redford's last lines lingered with me for hours. With the campaign over, the once confident and self-assured candidate turns to his manager and says, "Marvin? Marvin, what do we do now?"
The statement is simple, but profound.
When there are only two choices, the inevitable winner is not the person who electrifies the most people to his/her cause; it's not the candidate who convinces people he/she will push for change. The winner is the person who convinces the most people he/shes just like them. You do that by saying as little as possible.
I found the movie fantastic at chronicling the swift movement toward center that all candidates (those that want to really win anyway) have to make in order to succeed in a two party system.
I'm sure someone is going to disagree with me on this. Bring it.
Mad plays the bass like the race card.
posted by Luke @ 3:41 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Much more symbolic and comedic in it's method was the film Being There, with Peter Sellers. And of course the novel of the same title by Jerzy Kosinski.
As you touched upon, a candidate, by saying very little, is allowing his audience to IMAGINE a commonality with him. The less he actually says, the less he proves them all wrong.
In Being There, this dynamic was taken to an extreme in the creation of a blank slate candidate, about whom nobody knows a thing. He was claimed both emotionally and logically by everyone. Brilliant book, brilliant flick.
I don't remember ever seeing The Candidate, but what struck me was your description of the union boss and the entire room bursting into laughter when Redford honestly reveals his difference with this "ally". In Being There, Sellers always speaks as simply as the mentally diminished aging gardner that he is, yet his ever-widening audience continually chuckles knowingly and nods approvingly at the deep symbolic truths he seems to be offering them.
In a two-party system, if each side automatically owns 40% of the electorate, and each has another 5-10% tentatively leaning it's way, well then, an onslaught of symbolic position-vague sloganeering from each side is inevitable. Each candidate needs more of the undecideds to merely CONVINCE THEMSELVES that they feel more in tune with him. It's not about the details. It's all about keeping a straight face at that point and waving the American flag.
-- Don Sheffler
Synchronicity strikes again: my husband made the EXACT same observation about how candidates have to appear as "center-ish" as possible to win 2-party elections mere minutes before I read this post.
He made another interesting comment as well; that candidates for president have to seem like the furthest to the right or left to get their parties to nominate them, and then have to do a total about-face to seen "center-ish" enough to get the undecided voters. This leads to much perceived flip-flopping, and makes it hard to know what the candidates actually think... not that it matters much, once we know what party they're in.
I'm intrigued by your enthusiasm about Robert Redford; I hope it's indicative of a move in the right direction for the young men of today to be able to show this sort of appreciation. If you want to see him VERY young and at his cutest, start watching Twlight Zone; he did an episode when he was, I think, 19.
Oh, and, just FYI, I'm getting some weird thing in your posts now where every apostrophe is being replaced by a big black rectangle. :-O
Omni RE: the apostrophies
It's frustrating the hell out of me, it's because lately I've been typing in word and copy/pasting into the blogger thing because I had a few critical blogger meltdowns that almost made me give up blogging. I try to go through and replace all the apostrophies and quotes, but it's boring work, and I miss a lot.
DON: These two comments couldn't be spookier, especially re Omni's mention of syncronicity.
I watched Being There the night before I watched the Candidate, and almost wrote a blog about both.
It's the first Sellers movie I've ever seen, he's a genius. It's a shame there aren't more actors in the Sellers school of comedy. Jim Carrey, though a good actor in his own right, has left far too indellible a mark on contemporary comedic acting.
Anyway yeah, Being There was better than the Candidate in a lot of ways (Shirley McClain was great, the last little scene was brilliant, the outtakes during the credits was about what 20 years ahead of anything Jackie Chan did), but in the context of the conversation that preceded the blog, the Candidate just fit better.
Maybe I should do a series on movies that expose the absurdity of politics . . .
Anyway Don, our similarity in taste and opinion in just about everything is staggering.
Omni RE: the apostrophies
It's frustrating the hell out of me, it's because lately I've been typing in word and copy/pasting into the blogger thing because I had a few critical blogger meltdowns that almost made me give up blogging. I try to go through and replace all the apostrophies and quotes, but it's boring work, and I miss a lot.
DON: These two comments couldn't be spookier, especially re Omni's mention of syncronicity.
I watched Being There the night before I watched the Candidate, and almost wrote a blog about both.
It's the first Sellers movie I've ever seen, he's a genius. It's a shame there aren't more actors in the Sellers school of comedy. Jim Carrey, though a good actor in his own right, has left far too indellible a mark on contemporary comedic acting.
Anyway yeah, Being There was better than the Candidate in a lot of ways (Shirley McClain was great, the last little scene was brilliant, the outtakes during the credits was about what 20 years ahead of anything Jackie Chan did), but in the context of the conversation that preceded the blog, the Candidate just fit better.
Maybe I should do a series on movies that expose the absurdity of politics . . .
Anyway Don, our similarity in taste and opinion in just about everything is staggering.
Are you starting to get a little flicker of interest in synchronicity now? ;-)
Do PC's have something like a notepad or scrapbook that you can copy your blog entries into periodically so you don't lose them if Blogger takes a dump while you're posting? That might save you some work.
You talk as if I pshaw all of your ideas Omni. I'm shocked.
Link me to your posts about syncronicity, but if it's what I think it is, I was a believer way before I met you. :)
And about the blogger problem, it's partially my fault, I think it's an issue of bringing a cannon to a knife fight.
I should have used some simple text editor like notpad rather than a full-fledged word processor like Word.
This only creates problems, esp since we know how much M$ dislikes conforming to other people's standards. . . they probably don't "do" ascii.
Tools > Autocorrect > Autoformat As You Type
Uncheck "'straight quotes' with 'smart quotes'" and "symbol characters (--) with symbols (-)"
and while you're at it, go to the Autocorrect tab and remove/disable the one that does the ellipses, because that can also render oddly in some encoding.
Thank you for the link :)
Thanks Heather. Stupid Microsoft, "smart" my ass.
Luke, nothing I said was intended to suggest that you "pshaw" all, or any, of my ideas... it's simply a reference to your lack of previous comments on synchronicity, a term coined by Jung for the concept that everything that happens at the same time is connected. I have literally DOZENS of references to it on my blog... do a search and see how many times it comes up.
DO you believe it exists?
I think I do yeah (though as you notice, on my next blog chronologically, I have much Jung laying fallow on my bookshelf).
If the web of causation (according to Hawking) stretches forward into the future and also BACKWARD into the past, I really can't imagine simple, two dimensional, parrallel strings of causation. That seems silly.
But then, I know essentially nothing about physics and even less about Jung, so who knows :)
My cent and a half:
By what I see, Luke travels quite comfortably in both the valleys of the existential, and the mountains of "magical thinking".
It's not my blog but I would be the one to "pshaw". Nothing personal, Omni, in fact I really appreciate your search for the truth of our existence. Glad to see the astute discourse. However I'm at great odds with some of your most basic assumptions and the resultant paths of your reasoning. I guess I'm something of a secular humanist pragmatic natural law science realist ... DREAMER. Makes sense, right?
I guess the term "pshaw" is too dimissive and conveys a disrespect that I don't harbor. I'm just on the other side of the fence.
-- Don Sheffler
I think suggesting I "travel quite comfortably" is giving me way too much credit. There was certainly nothing comfortable about voicing my opinions in Senior seminars. "How can you believe in the determinism of evolution and the radical freedom of existentialism" //shrug
Whatever, I just took as much philosophical variety as I could at a regional Catholic university and found aspects of truth in [almost] all of it. Even Descartes said things of import--even though I consider him the man that destroyed philosophy for 200+ years.
I dunno, depending on whom you talk to I'm open-minded or wishywashy.
Either is fine with me.
Luke, if you believe in synchronicity, we're closer in worldview than we thought, because synchronicity is a BIG part of my theory of karma. Incidentally, Jung also saw the connection between "the unknown" and quantum physics that I independently saw... that doesn't make it so, but it's food for thought.
I'd be interested to read something about this web of causation that Hawking saw... do you have any URL's?
Don, my assumptions are largely based in experiences that I have had that you have NOT had, so naturally you don't see things my way... YET. ;-)
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