“May Your Passing Illumination Become Your Abiding Light.” – Huston Smith
Is it possible to run a successful campaign that focuses on governance rather than victory? This is the question I will be tackling in the coming weeks as Senators McCain and Obama vie to be the next President of the United States.
Reframing the Purpose
The purpose of a traditional political campaign is to get a particular candidate elected. It is based on this idea that I’ve often heard both cyncal campaigners and ivory tower idealists – and everyone in between – state that if you don’t get elected you can’t govern. It is true, if your purpose is to serve the public interest through elected office then you cannot do that without being elected.
I believe that in order to truly serve the public interest that we need to change the purpose of campaigns. The purpose of a campaign must be to position and individual to govern and serve the public to the best of his or her ability.
How do the negative ads and vitriolic rhetoric of the two political parties position candidates to serve in government? What do we expect from our candidates?
In the next part of this thread I will talk about what, specifically, a campaign that has governance as its central focus looks like. I will end with this video, which depicts a campaign decision based upon winning not governing…
Barack Obama and John McCain approve of their respective ads and their campaigns have spent money to produce and air them in keys states. To me, these ads demonstrate what has become the motto of this campaign season “do whatever it takes.” In Obama’s ad he uses journalistic publications to refute unfair claims made by the McCain campaign. The paradox here is that Barack Obama is using a negative campaign ad to combat a flury of negative campaign ads from John McCain’s campaign. McCain’s negative ad misrepresents an Obama policy position. Both of these ads take this election cycle to a new low as Kven Karl Rove observes in the video below.
In sitting down to write this I feel like every other political observer who says “stop the negative attack ads” because they are eating away at the essential fibers of our democracy. The bottom-line is that, as someone who has worked a number of campaigns, negative campaigning is effective in doing two things 1) solidifying a base 2) suppressing voter turnout. Both of these candidates are coming out swinging hoping to get their base in line, keep the other party’s people at home, and convince a few key swing voters to vote for them.
At the end of the day the negative tone of the campaign undermines the core messages of both candidates. John McCain is running as a maverick who will reach across party-lines to “shake up Washington.” Barack Obama is running a a post-partisan figure who doesn’t see people in terms of Democrat and Republican he sees people as Americans (also note that John McCain has also used this line). What is alarming to me in all of this is that it seems that, particularly the John McCain campaign, neither candidate cares that much about running a campaign with a focus on governing.
When I set out to complete a project I take a look at the desired outcomes. I do that by imagining what it will be like to have fulfilled all of my commitments. From there I work backwards to the present, outlining along the way each step that must be completed. The way that I see it, presidential campaigns should also function this way. Candidate should in a”place of success” having fulfilled all of their commitments at eight years as President and work backwards from there. My belief is that if campaigns were planned this way that they would not take on the vitriolic tenor that is currently the norm in presidential elections. Again, to restate my assertion, if campaigns worked backwards from what the candidate wanted to accomplish while in offce then campaigns would look 100% different. I believe that the negative tone of campaigns further reinforces partisan ideologies and identifications, which in turn leads people to feel alienated from one another when they put on their political hat. This idea is similar to what happens when a happy, loving, family sits down for a large family dinner and starts talking about politics. I’ve heard countless stories from friends about family dinners that have gone awry because of disagreements about politics. My opinion is that the reason for this phenomenon is the way in which we run our campaigns. The Democratic and Republican parties air ads that demonize the other side both during election seasons and during off-years. Organizations like MoveOn and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have made people cynical about the process and have played off of emotions as opposed to policy. We use wedge issues like abortion, immigration, and gay marriage to play people against each other. Campaigns take on a “do whatever it takes” strategy and when they get elected they have to govern.
The problem with running campaigns this way is that it creates a more polarized electorate. Elected representatives are responsible to those who elect them and if the electorate is more polarized then it means that the representative will have to appeal to that base in order to get re-elected. This turns into a cycle of pandering and negativity that becomes difficult to break. This campaign season could have been the time where we asked people to put country over party. This could have been an election about issues, about qualifications, about who will do a better job governing, NOT a slug fest over who said what, when, and how. Because of the tone the two presidential campaigns we have lost an opportunity to create a stronger, more vibrant, collaborative democracy. We will all hear over the coming 49 days that we need to put country before party and we will also hear a lot of hateful and negative accusations being thrown across both sides of the aisle. One thing though is clear to me: slogans and promises of America first are hollow because you need to back up your words with actions. Neither candidate is doing what it takes to truly put country overy party.
Maybe if the two candidates had truly laid out a comprehensive strategy for governing both would have seen the impact that their campaigns can have on the political system. While we don’t know who will be sworn in on January, 20 2009 we do know that the political climate will not change much from the last eight years.
The next video is the full interview with Karl Rove. It really drives the point home.
*Note: These word clouds take all of the text from the candidate’s speeches and give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Please visit Wordle if you are interested in learning more or creating your own.
Barack Obama Convention Speech
John McCain Convention Speech
Joe Biden Convention Speech
Sarah Palin Convention Speech
What do these word clouds say to you? What do they say about the folks who gave these speeches? What do these word clouds say about our political process? What do these word clouds say about our political parties?
So, as many of you know I have been posting the more prominant convention speeches from the Dems and Repubs under the Convention Highlights . In addition to posting the speeches I’ve watched each of them just to see what is being said. I was particularly disheartened last night by the speeches. In my opinion the tone of the speeches were caustic including blatant insults that went beyond simply criticizing the actions of Senator Obama. Before I continue though, I do want to say that the Democrats are not innocent in this. While the tone of the Democratic convention felt less mean-spirited some of the speeches and Democratic organizations like the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC have certainly said their fair share of unfair things.
Getting back to last night, I cannot help but feel that the tone was both divisive and unbecoming of political discourse. I am not here to thrash Republicans or Democrats, I am writing about this because I want to encourage individuals, no matter what there party affiliation, to denounce the type of rhetoric that came out of last night’s convention. Send letters to your elected officials, political parties, etc to say that you’re not interested in hearing Democrat or Republican bashing. As I was watching the speeches last night I got angry at the fact that the crowd responded so readily and loudly to such negativity. The same happened at the Democratic convention. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and it finally came to a head last night as I was watching the speeches because I found them PARTICULARLY disrespectful and unbecoming of those who claim to wear the mantle of “leadership.” True leaders don’t need to resort to damaging rhetoric to get their point across.
Last night’s speeches also upset me because Democrats are not always right, Republicans are not always right, Green Party, Libertarians, etc. Everyone has a piece of the solution and we need the power of all those ideas at the same proverbial table if we really want to move our country forward! These conventions could have been a venue for bringing ideas together and really having a conversation about what direction our country should go in. Instead, the conventions were about bashing the other side of blatant political gain. Parents tell their children to “play nice” in the playground and encourage them to work out their differences without using force. Why cannot we, as adults, do the same?
This generation has the opportunity to be judged by the breadth of our accomplishments and the steps that we took to collectively solve the world’s problems. We have the ability to write our own history through our deeds, accomplishments, failures, and through the ability to bring imagination into reality. We will never get there if we don’t begin to expect and demand that our leaders act as such. I am including videos of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor Sarah Palin’s speeches from last night to use as examples of what we cannot continue to accept in our political discourse.
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