Harry Targ
We live in a country in which wealth and power is grotesquely unequal and getting more so. In such an historical context, the political system functions in two ways. First, and foremost, the political system is designed to create myths, rituals, ideologies, and routinized forms of behavior to reinforce and protect the inequalities that are deeply embedded in the society. This function is manifested in patriotic rituals, appeals to American exceptionalism, prioritizing attention to elections as the one expression of political choice, and the replication of a mythological history of the country’s past and current institutions. Most of us were educated to believe that the American experience has been a two hundred fifty year struggle to achieve perfection. And perfection is the trajectory of America.
We live in a country in which wealth and power is grotesquely unequal and getting more so. In such an historical context, the political system functions in two ways. First, and foremost, the political system is designed to create myths, rituals, ideologies, and routinized forms of behavior to reinforce and protect the inequalities that are deeply embedded in the society. This function is manifested in patriotic rituals, appeals to American exceptionalism, prioritizing attention to elections as the one expression of political choice, and the replication of a mythological history of the country’s past and current institutions. Most of us were educated to believe that the American experience has been a two hundred fifty year struggle to achieve perfection. And perfection is the trajectory of America.
But in a democracy, even a flawed one, the
institutions of governance offer those who are victims of an unequal
distribution of wealth and power an opportunity to change, if not transform, politics
and economics. It is critical to realize that the electoral arena and the
institutions of government constitute contested terrain. While the tools in the
struggle for justice are as unequally distributed as the wealth and power,
masses of people--workers, women, minorities, and others historically marginalized--have
won victories through political struggle. The historical drive for social and
economic justice, American history suggests, has involved mobilizations within
the routinized political processes, particularly elections, and in communities,
at workplaces, and in the streets. From this point of view all forms of
struggle matter. The forms vary in times and places but they all matter
nevertheless.
Looking at the electoral arena particularly in a
country where the inequalities are so stark and the disenchantment growing, the
morality of the discourse of candidates for public office--what
they say about themselves and their adversaries--has declined dramatically. The
2012 election campaign began just after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential
election. Republican spokespersons declared that their priority project was to
make Obama a one-term president. That was followed with four years of
hate-filled, racist attacks on the President, peaking first in the Tea Party
campaigns and victories in 2010. After 2010, the Republican presidential
candidates shifted into high gear with lies, distortions, and clearly racist,
sexist, and anti-worker sentiments as standard fare.
The presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney may be
evidencing a new low in the history of electoral campaigns. What is a central
feature of his 2012 strategy is the regular pattern of proclaiming positions
that are tailored for the audiences the candidate is speaking before. Candidate
Romney has been pro- and anti-choice, for peace in the Middle East and the
Persian Gulf and for war against Syria and Iran, for the maintenance of medical
insurance coverage for persons with preexisting conditions and against it, for
bailing out the auto industry and against it, cutting the federal budget and
increasing military spending, cutting taxes for the rich and not cutting taxes
for the rich, and defunding FEMA and maintaining it.
This past week as Obama was acting “presidential”
dealing with the tragedies of Hurricane Sandy, the Romney campaign was
distributing television ads in Ohio declaring that a Jeep manufacturing plant
in Toledo was shutting down with jobs shipped to China. This claim was so
contrary to Chrysler (the parent company) policy that its CEO issued a
rejoinder. Jeep was not shutting down its Ohio operations; if anything there
would be increases in jobs at the manufacturing facility. It is unimaginable
for those not in the local auto industry to fully grasp the sense of fear and
despair that workers in the potentially affected plant might feel when hearing that
they would lose their jobs. The lie in these ads was targeted at a particular
audience to engender shifts in the intention of Ohio auto workers from voting
for the President, whose actions saved the auto industry, to Romney who was
denying the efficacy of the President’s policy.
Candidate Romney has been making claims on a whole
range of subjects since he began running for president years ago. While the
American style of democracy encourages lying as a tool of campaigning for
public office, the Romney campaign has taken this tool to a new level. The
candidate, and the Tea Party constituency who constitute his base,
has embraced a tactic of “shifting lies.” Say one thing before audience A,
another before audience B. When the usually docile media calls him on A or B
claim, he moves on to claim C.
The level of discourse in the end has therefore sunk
to a new low. American politics has become a verbal jousting match between
candidates who now are rewarded for saying anything to anybody. Along with a
radical transformation of the distribution of wealth and power, the American
people need to develop a whole new way of talking about politics. Lying,
particularly shifting lies, must be eliminated. Honesty, integrity, basic
decency and respect for all remain values worth fighting for.
