Would you like to know how presidential politics got this stupid?
OK, here goes.
First, some history, which can be brief because the current nominating system only goes back to 1976, the year Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford and a whole bunch of Democrats chased Jimmy Carter.
Ford and Reagan argued over the Panama Canal and over Reagan`s simplistic tax plan. (Is this a requirement for former California governors?) Carter and the other Democrats argued about how big the government should be and about George Wallace, which was their way of arguing about race. In neither party was the discussion always brilliant. But it was usually real.
The sea change came in 1980 thanks to Edward Kennedy and Nashua. Not the horse, the New Hampshire city. Kennedy, who challenged Carter`s renomination, had what may politely be called an interesting past, about which he was fumble-mouthed in the present. Thus, ”the character issue.”
Then, on the Saturday night before the New Hampshire primary, George Bush, having been flim-flammed by the Reagan campaign, acted like a pompous twit during a debate in a high school gym in Nashua. Already falling behind Reagan, Bush plummeted in the last days.
From these two unrelated developments flowed two lessons. One was that a politician`s personal life counted for at least as much as his policies. The other was that errors on the campaign trail, no matter how trivial, could lose an election.
None of this was entirely new. People have always demanded integrity of their leaders, and style has always been important in campaigns. John Kennedy ”won” his debates with Richard Nixon in 1960 because he looked better. Ford may have lost the close 1976 election because he misspoke in a debate with Carter. But the events of 1980 underscored both lessons to a ”political community” that was rapidly expanding.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Like the rest of society, politics was being overwhelmed by technology and specialization. People who understood imagery, but not necessarily government, started making money as campaign consultants. More reporters were assigned to cover politics as a specialty. This was necessary, but inevitably it led to a situation in which campaigns became viewed as processes in themselves, unrelated to government or society. Many
(though not all) of the political reporters had a great deal of energy and ambition, but not much knowledge of history. Fatuousness is not confined to the English departments of elite universities.
As time passed, the intertwining only expanded. Reporters interviewed consultants instead of county chairmen. The technique involved in the candidate`s commercials was often a bigger story than his views on arms control or air pollution. Reporters began writing about how other reporters covered the campaign.
Enter, in 1987, Gary Hart, whose interesting past continued into the present, and who became the first major candidate eliminated by the press before a vote had been cast. A few months later, the same thing happened to Joseph Biden for less interesting indiscretions. This was power, however unsought. Power corrupts political reporters as well as politicians. It`s heady stuff, knocking presidential front-runners out of the race.
Meanwhile, technology advanced, outpacing wisdom. Modems and faxes linked the increasingly incestuous political community so that every new nugget of gossip became known everywhere at once. Twenty-four-hour-a-day live television coverage brought those nuggets directly to the public. Instant news.
No, not news. Information. Just as, in the words of Emile Zola, ”art is nature seen through a temperament,” news is information filtered by judgment. Without judgment, all information seems equally important. Now that the personal outstrips the political, now that the campaign has becomes a process unrelated to the world, any little bit of information that seems to raise questions about a candidate`s ”character” becomes a hot story.
So last week, after an enterprising CNN reporter got an employee of the private firm doing Jerry Brown`s fundraising to say, correctly, that Brown`s $100 contribution limit really meant $200 for a man and his wife, there were stories about whether this undermined Brown`s credibility. Why should it?
Then a political enemy leaked yet another factoid about Bill Clinton`s 25-year-old draft process. Page 1, before anyone had the chance to ponder: Is this at all relevant?
It isn`t. But here is what the dominance of technology, the cult of anti- personality and the absence of historical memory have done to relevance. They have rendered it irrelevant.
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