10.31.06 6:00 AM CST
• Politics
• Leopold Froehlich
It’s a cliché to complain about idiotic political campaigns. But, in the 2006 midterms we’ve really outdone ourselves. We’ve made political campaigns so stupid that they now beggar belief. Can we really be this dumb as a nation? One thing is certain: We’ve come a long way. In Neil Postman’s 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he wrote the following about the Lincoln-Douglas debates:
“The first of the seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottowa, Illinois. Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln's reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those to which the two men were accustomed. In fact, they had tangled several times before, and all of their encounters had been much lengthier and more exhausting. For example, on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, Douglas delivered a thee-hour address to which Lincoln, by agreement, was to respond. When Lincoln’s turn came, he reminded the audience that it was already 5 p.m., that he would probably require as much time as Douglas and Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for four more hours of talk. The audience amiably agreed, and matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined. What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours or oratory? It should be noted, by the way, that Lincoln and Douglas were not presidential candidates; at the time of their encounter in Peoria they were not even candidates for the United States Senate. But their audiences were no especially concerned with their official status. These were people who regarded such events as essential to their political education, who took them to be an integral part of their social lives, and who were quite accustomed to extend oratorical performances. Typically at county or state fairs, programs included many speakers, most of whom were allotted three hours for the arguments. And since it was preferred that speakers not go unanswered, their opponents were allotted an equal length of time….Is there any audience of Americans today who could endure seven hours of talk?”
If you have the misfortune to live in a state where the races are too close to call, you are deluged with political discourse that would be appropriate for Jerry Springer. We have hyperbolic assertions in the Missouri referendum to permit stem cell research. We have amazing allegations in Ohio between gubernatorial candidates Ted Strickland and Ken Blackwell and senatorial candidates Mike DeWine and Sherrod Brown. And the well-publicized ads run by Republican Bob Corker against his opponent in the Tennessee senatorial race, Harold Ford, are so imbecilic that you can’t imagine anyone falling for them.
Now we are confronted with an even more looney-tune act of mud-slinging in the Virginia senatorial election, with Republican candidate George Allen issuing the following press release about the literary endeavors of Democratic candidate Jim Webb:
“Most Virginians and Americans would find passages such as those below shocking, especially coming from the pen of someone who seeks the privilege of serving in the United States Senate, one of the highest offices in the land: [From Webb’s 2002 novel] Lost Soldiers: ‘A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s penis in his mouth.’”
We aren’t naïve enough to expect courtesies or the discourse of Solons from our elected officials. As Roscoe Conkling used to say, “Politics ain’t beanbag.” At least in Richard J. Daley’s Chicago or Boss Cox’s Cincinnati political underhandedness went forth under the cloak of darkness. Anyone caught uttering this sort of stuff in public would be horse-laughed off the stage. What’s clear is that our degraded political process now attracts only a low quality of human being to seek what is euphemistically referred to as public service.
We’d like to think people tune out ridiculous claims and ads, just as they tune out TV advertisements. Maybe not. Maybe you can’t get too stupid for political gain. Let us remember H.L. Mencken’s assertion: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
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