As we near the frenzied end of another season of politics, I find myself interested in what is being said on both sides, but apathetic about the process in general.
The interest is driven by observing the various strategies that are employed (and not employed) by both sides and by the effects that those strategies have on the public. While I find the choices made by the campaigns interesting, I find the 'roads not taken' to be more interesting and wonder frequently why campaigns don't say this or that. A particular example was in the 2008 campaign where the McCain side failed to simply take what the people who had opposed Obama in the primaries had said about Obama and just run ads that repeated those attacks. It seemed a ready-made strategy and a particularly damning one to use the words of his own running-mate against him, or the words of his selection for Secretary-of-State against him, but the McCain campaign didn't. I don't know why.
Of equal interest is the reaction of the public-particularly individuals-to what campaigns and candidates are saying and doing. Clearly, the country is more partisan and more divided than ever with potential voters on both sides more bitter and angry than they were in the last election. So with all of that, why would I find myself subject to a sense of apathy about the electoral process?
My apathy isn't borne of fatigue and it isn't because I don't care, quite the contrary, I care quite a bit. My apathy comes from a sense that the electoral process is all just a front for what is a great 'game' of sorts. Please let me explain, for this is a conclusion that I did not reach hastily or lightly. Rather is it based on my own observation of the way political parties have operated in the past, supplemented with the published conclusions of other people and further validated by the way in which political parties continue to operate in the present.
First a quick look at the political past. After the 2000 election, a Republican occupied the White House. For the first Bush presidency, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency, the Supreme Court was sympathetic. The Republican party could have done a lot of the things that they are campaigning on now, but they didn't. Perhaps they couldn't have done anything that wanted, but they could have done a lot. The same thing happened with Democrats in 2008, they had majorities in both houses and the presidency, and they did do some things (such as pass the health care legislation they wanted). But the Senate didn't pass a budget (they still haven't) and they haven't done all the things they are campaigning on now (Obama says he wants to lower our taxes, then why didn't he?). My point is that when one side has a greater portion of the power they don't use it the way that they say they want to. Why?
This leads to the notion that the Republican and Democratic parties actually work together to keep a monopoly on political power in this country and that they have done this for some time. During the elections and debates, they pretend to be at odds, but at the end of the day they are really on the same side-that being the side which controls the politics of this country. A particularly good example is of the 2006 election of Joe Lieberman to congress after a wealthy candidate Ned Lamont financed his own campaign and won the Democratic primary. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party worked together to re-install Lieberman and keep out Lamont-who had not proven his primary loyalty lay with the established political parties. This is detailed in the book 'You can't be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America' by John R. Macarthur, among other things. A look at the meteoric rise of Obama will confirm that he was vetted and approved, not because of who his is, but because he showed the established parties that he will 'play the game' they way they dictate it must be played. Lastly I will tack on Ron Paul as an example of what happens to candidates who are not primarily loyal to the two-party monopoly, but have an independent will of their own. Despite finishing 2nd in many of the primary contests this year, he was virtually ignored by the media and both political parties. Time and again, results would focus on the candidates who came in 1st, 3rd and 4th, and completely skip over Ron Paul finishing second. Why? Because, as someone who expresses a degree of independence, he must be ignored-and he was-and it worked.
Finally, even if the preceding items were to be dismissed as speculative, I come to the present day to drive the point home and ask if my apathy is right, or wrong. Consider that only a year ago, the Republican field of candidates had Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Jon Huntsman Jr,, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney among still others vying for the Republican nomination. All of them were saying how critical it was that Barak Obama be defeated in the upcoming general election. One-by-one they were eliminated from the field until only Romney remained. But what about all the talk of the 'need to defeat Obama'? What happened to all of those other voices? Gingrich is a powerful speaker, as are many of the other Republicans. How come his isn't out there right now attacking Obama, how come they all aren't out there? If the election is as important as they said it was, then they should be out there campaigning-if not for Romney, then at least against Obama. But they aren't. And the same thing should have happened in 2004 with all of the other Democratic candidates who didn't get the nomination. But it didn't.
So that leads me to the inescapable conclusion that things are not as they are presented to us. It leads me to the conclusion that Newt isn't campaigning against Obama because doing so won't make him president, and beyond that narrow goal, he really doesn't care. Nor do any of the others. Nor, even for that matter, does Mitt Romney. In 2008, when he didn't get the nomination, did he go out and campaign for McCain? Nope. So, when you couple the very real actions that are going on this very day, with the other evidence of what the two-party monopoly has done in the past, it leads to the very real conclusion that-while we are expected to get riled up and treat things as vitally important-the people who are actually in office treat it as a game. They want to win, sure, but most of all, they want to keep playing the game.
