Gotta have more narrative
Last week we ran contributor JB Powell’s interview with Air America dj Thom Hartmann, who has a new book out about American political discourse called Cracking the Code. Turns out that, as part of our artful editing process, we stripped away a lot of the spiciest parts of the conversation. Why? Just because. Because of distraction and incompetence. Because “mistakes were made.” What spicy parts? you ask. Spicies like the ones in this fresh exchange:
JBP: You say that after 9-11, George W. Bush was able to get even liberals to buy into the conservative story. Do you believe it’s still a powerful enough narrative to bring another Republican into the White House?
TH: Yes I think it’s possible. Particularly if we don’t have Democrats stand up and say, “I’m not afraid anymore.” I’m still waiting for a Democrat to stand up like Franklin Roosevelt did and say, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself and we will not be frightened.”
Other countries have been through [terrorism]. England had the IRA blowing up London for thirty years. A bomb went off on Downing Street that almost killed Margaret Thatcher. The British government didn’t say, ‘We need to do away with civil rights and habeas corpus.’ No. The British said, ‘We are not afraid. We are not fearful wimps. We will deal with this, we will conquer this, and in the meantime, we’re going to go about our lives.’ The same thing with Spain and the Basque separatists. The same thing with Germany and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The same thing with Italy and the Red Brigades, who kidnapped Aldo Moro, the former prime minister, and killed him! And still the Italians didn’t say, ‘We need to throw [our] constitution into the waste basket.’ No, they said, ‘We’re not afraid, damn it!’
That’s just the top. The full version is posted after the jump.
In 2006, we saw Dick Cheney and the President get up and say, basically, ‘If you vote for Democrats, you’re risking a terrorist attack.’ I expect a lot worse in the upcoming 2008 election. Do you?
Absolutely. And probably in terms of world events. The Republicans are going to do everything they can, in my opinion, to increase our vulnerability to a terrorist attack. There’s considerable evidence that before the 2001 attack, whether it was intentional or not, nobody was paying attention and everybody was asleep at the switch. George Bush had over fifty different warnings that 9-11 was coming, including the famous memo [Presidential Daily Briefing] that was delivered in August.
He knew that planes could be hijacked because when he was in Italy in March of that year, he had to go sleep on an aircraft carrier, because they had specific, credible intelligence that Bin Laden himself was behind a plan to hijack an aircraft and crash it into a hotel where Bush was sleeping. So you’d think in March when that happened they would have put two and two together. But Bush had put Dick Cheney in charge of the counter-terrorism task force and that task force never even bothered to meet until September of 2001.
So 9-11 wasn’t a failure of intelligence. It was the most spectacular failure of the executive branch in our history arguably. And yet they use it to their benefit. And I suspect that they will do it again, in terms of using it to try to win elections.
It would work tremendously to the Republicans advantage if there was a terrorist attack between now and the election. And even if there’s not, I guarantee you, they’re going to be amping up the fear of terror, particularly just before the election. …It was very psychologically effective. And from a marketing point of view, it was perfect, and it was absolutely intentional.
This kind of fear mongering is so effective because in many ways, it’s self-fulfilling, isn’t it?
The conservative worldview is both a product of environment and it is also learned. The more people we have in the media and the more people in the media who benefit from the conservative worldview, the more you’re going to have the media being an instrument of teaching and training people in that worldview.
At the same time, the more conservative economics dominate the U.S., causing people to lose good union jobs and instead [forcing them] to work at Walmart for a third of the salary and none of the benefits, you find people are becoming increasingly economically insecure, which stresses out families and stresses them out, and causes them to be more vulnerable to the conservative message that the world is a terrible and dangerous place—because in fact the world has gotten more terrible and dangerous as a direct result of these conservative economic policies!
So the policies that [Ronald] Reagan put in place that have been in place for the last 30 years have by and large created a population that’s vulnerable to fear mongering. And now both the media, which benefits from the fear mongering—it’ s very profitable to have scary news, people pay attention to it—and the politicians who also benefit from fear mongering, are doing very well thank you very much.
You say that when it comes to communication, especially political communication, “feeling comes first” and that the “meaning” of anything you say comes from the response it gets, not what you intend it to mean. The Republicans and the Right seem to get this. The Democrats, not so much.
First off, the Democrats have had really stupid advisers for at least two decades. And the Republicans have some very slick professionals who understand both psychology and marketing and have been in those worlds for a long, long time.
The other problem, both at the level of party and of congress, is the fundamental psychology of conservative versus liberal. Chris Matthews likes to make the joke that about how Republicans want a leader, Democrats want to have a meeting. It’s actually true. Republicans, [who assume] that people are intrinsically evil, want to have a wise, good person take control. Democrats, believing [in] a collective wisdom, want us all to have a voice in how things are done.
What this means is that the Republican Party runs like a well-oiled machine, it really runs like a corporation. Top down, hierarchical, power driving from the top down. And when Bush talked about he was going to be the first CEO president, it made a lot of sense to Republicans. The Democratic Party on the other hand is a coalition of coalitions. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are herding cats. That’s the weakness of the Democratic Party, but it’s also its strength. Because it means that the institution itself is democratic, that it is reflecting the values that it seeks to uphold.
So my goal with the book is not to encourage the Democratic Party to become more like the Republican Party and become a monolithic, top down driven institution, but rather to educate and empower the many different individuals within all those different factions to be more competent with messaging.
You speak in the book about effective communication inducing a kind of trance.
If you want to teach somebody something, they have to be in a kind of trance state. And I refer to the techniques for bringing that on as “inducing the learning trance.” Mostly these [techniques] have to do with pacing and using different modalities as you speak.
The big mistake that John Kerry made against George Bush in 2004 was that he induced a boredom trance while Bush induced a feeling trance. Bush communicated feelings. They were clumsy, yes, but that [clumsiness] made it more intense, frankly. Kerry communicated ideas and concepts. But people don’t vote on ideas and concepts. They vote based on their feelings.
Ronald Reagan was pretty much the master at that [appealing to emotion] wasn’t he?
Ronald Reagan, FDR, and Jack Kennedy were three of the greatest communicators that we’ve had in the White House …What made them great was, first of all, their ability to be multimodal in their communication. They talked about their vision for America, they talked about their story of America, and they gave America a sense of what they thought it could be.
Number two, they all principally used “moving towards pleasure” strategies instead of “moving away from fear” or “pain avoidance” strategies. In other words, they held up an ideal of what we wanted to move towards as a country and made us proud of ourselves.
Number three, they communicated emotion and always used story and emotion to pass along information.
You point out how Reagan actually picked up one of Kennedy’s themes, which Kennedy himself picked up from John Winthrop – The “America as a city on a hill” theme, except Reagan inserted a key word into its phrasing, didn’t he?
Yes, “shining.” He dramatically improved the “America as a city on the hill” metaphor by making us a “shining” city on a hill. He put that word in and it gave the image even more power.
What’s interesting is …Reagan’s notion of America as the city on the hill was very different than Kennedy’s. John Kennedy’s idea of the city on a hill was that the entire world is looking at [America] and every single one of us in the country is the city. From the highest and best to the poorest economically, we are all part of that city on the hill and we welcome people in to participate in it. Reagan on the other hand, his version of the city on the hill was, we’re the castle, we’re the fortress, we’re the place where Cinderella the lowly commoner hopes one day to get in and dance with the prince.
In the current crop of Presidential aspirants right now, who stands out in terms of communication skills?
John Edwards is a brilliant communicator. Barrack Obama is a brilliant communicator. I think Edwards has the potential to be the next FDR and I think Barrack has the chance to be the next John Kennedy.
I read that you campaigned for Barry Goldwater in your youth…
When I was 13 years old, my dad was active in the local Republican Party and I went door to door with him. I read [Goldwater’s] autobiography Conscience of a Conservative …I even went to a John Birch Society meeting. I was convinced that the communists had infiltrated the State Department and they were coming to get us. But within two years, I had completely shaken myself out of that trance. There’s nothing like growing up, going off to college and discovering that you’re of draft age and your government wants to kill you. Not to mention being exposed to ideas beyond what I had learned up to that point [like] the core concepts of the enlightenment.
So you heard a different “story.”
Exactly, and I lived a different story. I really saw America differently the first time one of my friends came back in a box from Vietnam.
My mother is a big fan of your radio show. But she lives in San Diego and the Air America affiliate there is either going off the air or has already gone off the air.
It went off the air last week, actually.
Can you talk about the future of progressive media in light of those kinds of setbacks?
The first two or three years that conservative talk radio was on the air, it struggled terribly. And then it reached the point where advertisers realized they were getting results and program directors realized that they had a core listenership and it started to take off. And it’s been about 20 years that conservative talk radio has been around, so no matter how outrageous Michael Savage might get, people just shrug and go, ‘Well that’s just normal stuff.’
I think we’re now into three or four years of progressive talk radio being visible to America. I’ve been doing my show for six years now, but we’re at about three years of it being obvious. And many markets are doing well. Here in Portland, for example, where I’m live, the local Clear Channel station that puts us on is a 25 thousand watt station and they’ve got professional management and a good sales team. And it’s been profitable since day one. They’re making money because they treat it like a real format and they give it a good signal. Those stations around the country that are doing that are having tremendous success. The stations where they put it on the weakest signal they’ve got, the ones who have the same guys selling ads for liberal talk radio who also sell for conservative talk radio, who’ve spent 20 years getting to know the local conservative committee and who show up at the local Republican Party meetings to meet advertisers, those guys aren’t going to market progressive talk radio very well.
So in the next year or few years, there’s going to be a broad perception across radio-dom, that beyond the ongoing feast and famine of Air America, liberal talk radio is here to stay. That the format works. That the talent works, that shows are able to capture a large audience and hold it over a long period of time. When that mentality shift happens in the world of the average program director, we’ll be there. Right now, you know the conventional wisdom is, ‘nobody ever got fired for putting Rush Limbaugh on the air.’ When the conventional wisdom becomes, ‘nobody ever got fired for putting Thom Hartmann on the air,’ then everything will change and I think we’re very close to that.
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Thom is usually so scrupulous with facts and fluent in history, his errors in recounting the English reaction to the IRA are worth noting even if common and oft repeated. They are repeated often enough that they “become truth”, much as the line about Saddam kicking out the inspectors, when it was in fact the US (and UN) who pulled them. The quote I refer to in Powells interview is:
“Other countries have been through [terrorism]. England had the IRA blowing up London for thirty years. A bomb went off on Downing Street that almost killed Margaret Thatcher. The British government didn’t say, ‘We need to do away with civil rights and habeas corpus.’ No. The British said, ‘We are not afraid. We are not fearful wimps. We will deal with this, we will conquer this, and in the meantime, we’re going to go about our lives.”‘
As a matter of fact Thatcher put into place legislation that allowed alleged IRA suspects to be jailed indefinitely without charges. Irish in the UK were treated with as much suspicion as Muslims are now and the abuses were frequent and monumental. Global ripples weren’t as big because Britains “war on terrorism” didn’t have to be worldwide. It was channelled to Englands last exploited colony, only 26 miles across the Irish Sea. And no invading army needed to be sent because it was already there. (and arguably still is) The book and film “In the Name of the Father” or the film “Every Mothers Son” scratch the surface a bit into this shameful British behavior. Unfortunately, the British narrative of Irelands struggle against 700 years of brutal oppression (perhaps counterbalancing “the IRA blowing up London for 30 years”?) predominates in the US. I don’t mean to be nitpicking, but I see this erroneous example of British “moderation” held up a lot by progressives, and I finally need to speak up. Thanks for your consideration of this.
You’re absolutely right, Ed, and there’s a whole lot more that’s just absurdly ridiculous about what Thom wrote. I guess there’s nothing as comforting as smugly wallowing in your own misguided self-righteousness. There’s too much to go over here, but here a few tidbits:
“…the more conservative economics dominate the U.S., causing people to lose good union jobs and instead [forcing them] to work at Walmart for a third of the salary and none of the benefits.”
I wonder what good union jobs he means. Perhaps from the US automakers who can’t stay competitive globally because of massive retirement and health-care costs? Perhaps from jobs lost to Mexico from NAFTA (pushed by that arch conservative Bill Clinton). Of course the socialist nations of Europe are much kinder with benefits, even if it means twice the (kind) unemployment as in the US. Uh,… kinder until they realize they’re going broke and must change course.
“…and the politicians who also benefit from fear mongering, are doing very well thank you very much.”
Oh, he must mean all the politicians who scare seniors into believing that anybody who wants to fix social security and medicare to avoid bankruptcy is an evil person intent on stealing their benefits to line the pockets of their friends.
“…First off, the Democrats have had really stupid advisers for at least two decades”
Duh! And they’re continuing to get really bad advice from this guy! More importantly Democrats themselves have been really stupid these past decades. They have no clue what makes a politician electable in a national race. Let’s see: Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry. See any pattern, besides losing? (Hint: boring and uncharismatic) You can throw in Carter too, since he won only because of Watergate. Watch carefully because they’re about to do it again with Hillary. The sad thing is they have a candidate with real charisma in Obama.
“Republicans, [who assume] that people are intrinsically evil, want to have a wise, good person take control. Democrats, believing [in] a collective wisdom, want us all to have a voice in how things are done.”
I wonder from what scientific study he picked this gem! If anything I would say it’s quite the opposite. Reagan (whatever you might think of him) undeniably thought mankind was basically good, and this seems to hold true for most on the right. The basic philosophy of the right is to let individuals decide most matters for themselves without government intervention. This assumes that the vast majority of individuals are good. This might or might not be a good philosophy, but to twist it around as Thom did to fit his own world view is quite disturbing.
Enough! This is too long already.
CV, you let loose!
Thom seems to have been free-riffing, jazz style, and soaring a little off into the ether! Interesting to me is CV’s take on the “basic philosophy of the right” which from my perspective is barely recognizable anymore as “rightist” in anything but a hazy nostalgic yesteryear. There’s two types of government intervention called for today. On what we think of as the left it’s mostly targeted at business— eg, consumer safety, environmental protections, benefits— and attempting to provide equity— eg, desegregation, affirmative action. On the other side, ie, the Republican side, it’s all about encouraging “trickle down”— by boosting profits through special tax breaks and subsidies and government contracts etc— and regulating private morality— guaranteeing prayer in schools, proscribing sexuality, preventing abortions as well as the the use of birth control. The fact that informed people still draw on these tired cliches of the right’s nonintervention demonstrates the vampire-like undead power of these otherwise laughable framing techniques. The idea that the “right” compared to the “left” today sees people as basically good is comic. The so-called left imagines power unchecked in the form of corporations and entrenched political classes as an evil to be monitored and changed, tamed, whatever. The so-called right, though, imagines all kinds of specific people— nonbelievers, fornicators, flag burners, women who want abortions, et al— as needing to be sanctioned and schooled, basically, on how to be good people. That’s how it is today. Let go of the nostalgia that sees the right as almost libertarian, as pro- “small government.” That’s a joke. There may be a whole lot of Republicans voting for small government. But that’s not what they’re getting. What they’re getting is a bill of goods!
JT, note that I referred to the philosophy of the right, not the Republican Party – or more specifically, today’s Republican Party which has been hijacked by social conservatives. The US has a large minority or perhaps still a majority that is on the right (as defined in the nostalgic sense, as you put it) but the Republican Party no longer represents them. There is little enthusiasm by rightist voters for any the Republican nominees except one, Ron Paul, who really is a rightist.
Thom’s comments about Republicans viewing people as intrinsically evil, while more true now for the Republican Party than before, is an utter delusion if by “Republicans” he means not the Party, but those who would historically vote for Republicans (i.e., the right). I assume that’s what he means because it is the voters who he is talking about, not the Party. This is important because the Democrats have a chance now to win votes from many rightist who have been abandoned by the Bible-pandering Republican Party. Thom is so blinded by ideology that he completely misinterprets the motivations of those on the right, and those misinterpretations will cost votes. I’m sure this makes him feel all good inside rationalizing why the Democrats keep losing by making the other side seem evil, and if that’s enough for you than by all means keep your head in the sand. If you want to win, then open your eyes and your mind!
About the only thing Thom got right was that the Democrats have terrible advisors – and he’s carrying on the tradition in grand style! I thought it almost inconceivable that W could win reelection in 2004 – until I saw that the Democrats nominated Kerry. It seems equally as improbably that the Republicans could win in 2008, but the Democrats seem to have a special gift for nominating nationally unelectable candidates. The party machinery is backing Hilary, who, besides Kucinich and Gravel, is probably the only Democrat running who could not walk away with an easy presidential victory. I’m mad as hell because ideological idiots like Thom gave us four unnecessary years of W and they still haven’t learned a damned thing!
Carlos
Please take a look at the original interview posting - believe it’s still in the In Depth column (with the picture of Reagan on it). In that original posting, Hartmann explains his reasoning behind saying Repubs / the Right consider humans intrinsically evil. He traces the modern conservative and liberal ideologies to the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke respectively.
Sorry for the split between the two postings. I was trying to keep the original draft as short as possible and left out these more provocative passages.
Glad to see this is causing some debate in any event.
Yes, it’s an interesting debate! Thank you for allowing it to be aired here.
First, let me admit that I have not read Hartmann’s book so my comments reflect only what I’ve read here. I’m sure there are many who will disagree with me but I take issue with Hartmann’s claim that the conservative world view is founded in Hobbes while the liberal (in the sense of modern American politics, not the classical sense) is founded in Locke. Classical liberalism (of which both the left and right in America are descendants) is founded on both men, as well as many others, including Jefferson and Franklin. It seems rather silly to me to say that one was conservative and the other was liberal. They were products of their times and quite honestly all of them would fit more closely with today’s rightists than leftists. (Note the distinction between leftists vs. Democrats, and rightist vs. Republicans. They are not the same.)
What’s telling to me is how Hartmann uses the word “evil” several times in describing the conservative view of mankind. Hartmann is trying hard to subtly demonize the right rather than trying to understand it. He is a typical ideologue, appealing to the dark side of human emotions rather than to the intellect. You can see the conspiracy theorist in him as well with his talk of 911. His reasoning and conclusions are twisted to justify his own world view. He is as blind as a religious zealot and should be shunned as such.
Let’s examine his case for Hobbes being the foundation of the right. Rather than “evil” I think it would be more accurate (albeit less dramatic) to say that Hobbes thought men were selfish, acting primarily in their own best interest, and to that extent government is needed to protect the weak. Now let me quote JT, who characterizes the left as concerned primarily with “consumer safety, environmental protections, benefits— and attempting to provide equity— eg, desegregation, affirmative action.” Is this not the protection of the weak from the self interest of the powerful? Is this not Hobbes? I don’t know what the hell Hartmann is talking about.
Hatmann goes on to glorify his Party, saying that “Democrats, believing [in] a collective wisdom, want us all to have a voice in how things are done.” With all due respect, that’s a crock of BS. Democrats have been almost fanatical in the repression of diverse views through their obsession with political correctness. They have been the most vocal in advocating that the courts enforce decisions that go against the wishes of the majority (which is not to say that’s a bad thing). Democrats, at their core, believe in social planning and for social planning to work there must be an enlightened minority (themselves) to make the plans. Personally, I believe Democrats fail to nominate “leaders” because it’s the very nature of Democrats to deep down believe that they each know what is best for all. You don’t need a leader if you believe that.
When JT writes that “the so-called right, though, imagines all kinds of specific people— nonbelievers, fornicators, flag burners, women who want abortions, et al— as needing to be sanctioned and schooled, basically, on how to be good people,” he is lumping in the traditional right (the majority of the rightists in the US) with the social conservatives. In fact, I would argue that social conservatives are not rightists at all; they are simply the group that has dominated the Republican Party of late. It’s a big mistake to think that the “nostalgic right” is a fable of the past. They are there, and in a big way. It’s just that the Republican Party has neglected them in favor of the religious zealots, who admittedly are a more dependable voting block. I think it’s critical to understand this distinction in order to win elections. Personally, I despise both major political parties. It just so happens that religious zealots are more detestable to me than the Democrats so I feel compelled to say something rather than watching another train wreck (Hillary) in slow motion.
Hey all… I would like to weigh in again, on three points. First, I don’t think that traditional small-gov rightists of conviction have vanished. Whether they’re a majority of anything, I don’t know. But de facto, their ideology as a living vote-getting philosophy has been largely gobbled up, chewed and muddled beyond recognition in the mouth of the Republican party. George Bush is running the largest most expensive most intrusive government in U.S. history. And he got the small-govt vote. He’s still operating under the banner of small-govt fiscal conservativism. That’s what has happened to the popular notion of the philosophy. In the mind it may yet live, but in American political life, it is a defiled ghost.
Second, is this in fact the case because, as i meant to imply above, there is no government in the world anymore but “big” government, because our realities require the existence of large governments. The only differences that matter anymore come in deciding what you want your big government to be doing. That’s why I think traditional rightists have become marginalized and, let’s face it, pimped. It’s like the official noble philosophy and tradition of the US military, which in the War on Terror is constantly referenced but only as a cover for undermining that very tradition by sanctioning torture and flouting Geneva conventions and preemptively striking and so on. In sum, as for communism, I think the days for small government are over. If someone in government is talking about small govt then you can be sure they’re trying to expand government.
Last, I understand CV’s point about the traditional ties between left/Dems and social engineering. But again, at this point in time, in America, I really feel that using the legal system and the government, such as they are, to prevent corporate abuse, the record of which grows more hideous every day, can not be categorized as anything like socialism or social engineering but only rather as a necessary fact of any society where people matter, and further that the minimal attempts through government in the US to guarantee equity under the law, to minimize incidence again of incredibly well-documented things such as being fired or not hired or denied loans or housing or made to live in a toxic dump based on your race is nothing like the demonized social engineering of historical memory and political rhetoric. In its present stripped back form, I don’t think it has much of the social “planning” aspect left to it. To me, naively perhaps, it’s the kind of stuff that is about enforcing the laws that are on the books, or the spirit of the laws, such as those concerning copyright, before they were lobbied into becoming their opposites .
Anyway, leftist rightist whatever. It’s a circle not a line. Where are all the realist-humanist American voters and politicians? Enough with the distractions of faux-ideology. That’s how we have gotten to the point where we’re spending billions and billions on a war in a region we pretend to understand and giving our legal protections away and holding sham trials and putting the deathbed squeeze on cancerous attorneys general and asking Enron to make the nation’s energy policy and lying about everything we can under oath… and still people everywhere are talking about gay marriage. Amazing.
JT, I think you hit the nail on the head! If I came off sounding as if I’m advocating a leftist vs. rightist view of the world I apologize for my clumsiness. My intent was to mock (more or less) this very left-right world view, which Hartmann seems to be preaching to the faithful. (If you interviewed more crackpots from the far right I would mock them too! Well, I guess I already said my peace about Coulter a while back.)
To answer your question, I think the realist-humanist voters occupy the meaty part of the bell curve, which is a good thing. Most people, I sense, don’t view the world in terms of left or right, at least not in extremes. The debate is really where to draw the lines in the gray areas. Most “rightists” in America are slightly on one side and most “leftists” slightly on the other. There is far more agreement between most Americans than the fringes would have us believe.
You are absolutely correct that it is this contrived ideological war that has gotten us into thr mess we are in today. I hate ideologues for this, but unlike many on the left, I blame ideologues on the left as well the right. The Democrats have more guilt on the heads than they like to own up to. The cowardice shown by the abdication of their congressional responsibility by giving W a blank check in Iraq is unforgivable. (Go back to the 2000 election campaign and read or watch how the Democrats mocked the cowboy Bush. They knew exactly with whom they were dealing.) Furthermore, the Democratic Party is owned by corporate America nearly as much as the Republicans. They are no knights in shining armor.
Now this guru Hartmann comes along and tries to explain why the Democrats lose, and he boils it down mainly to ideology again, splitting the country into separate camps, ignoring the great center. It makes my blood boil! The answer is much simpler and does not require tearing the country apart. The prior Democratic nominees did not lose because of ideology; they lost because they were boring and had no charisma. It’s really that simple. I’m not implying that those are the only important qualities for the presidency, but those were the most important ones that were missing. If I’ve failed to make the point I’ve been trying to make twice before I’ll state it again: The Democrats are about to make this mistake yet again. The Democratic machine wants the “safe bet” in Hillary, just as they wanted it with Kerry. Their world view of America as divided into left-right drives this blindness, I think, and they overlook the obvious. If the first impulse of the average American is to change the channel when the candidate appears on TV, you better get a new candidate. If they change the channel while cursing, dump her even faster!
JT and CV - I am enjoying your virtual tete a tete. May it continue. I don’t want to get into any direct commentary on Hartmann’s interview, having conducted it. I think I’ll just sit on the sidelines. I will point out to you, Carlos, that when you say, “The prior Democratic nominees did not lose because of ideology; they lost because they were boring and had no charisma. It’s really that simple.” I believe Hartmann would whole-heartedly agree. I think you might enjoy his book, or at least get a rise out of it. And I dare say I don’t necessarily agree that ideology, or even ideologues, are to blame here. As Hartmann says in his book, ideologies are narratives, ways in which we make sense of the world. Your main problem, Carlos, seems to be with hypocrisy - something I think we can all agree has always existed in politics. And yes! far too many Democratic politicians are bought and paid for by corporate America. But does that mean the basic tenets and traditions of the Left vis a vis the Right are invalid? I do not necessarily think so. But I think they are becoming as hollow, and as scarcely evident, as the core values of the Right which JT so eloquently eulogizes above. In other words, I think Franklin D. Roosevelt would have almost as hard a time recognizing the modern Democratic establishment as Barry Goldwater would when it comes to Repubs.
JB, I’ll try to check out Hartmann’s book when I get a little more free time. Thanks! About ideology being to blame for our current mess, of course it’s hard to really know but since the ideologues on the left and right have such a big influence in the primaries it seems that we’re usually stuck with two choices that would not be the top picks by the general public. I often wonder how different things would be today if all primaries in the past two elections would have been open (to non-party members).
It’s funny to me how Karl Rove is seen as something of a genius by both sides (perhaps a mad genius by the left) for getting Bush in office twice. Political pundits marvel at his skill, and the whole thing sounds like some sort of marketing game, as if that’s the most important thing needed to win. What ever happened to the product? On the one hand, you have the Republicans trying to sell cassette tapes in the digital age (CDs being the work of the devil). You wouldn’t think that would fly, except that the Democrats, not to be outdone in the experience department, counter with an eight-track cartridge! The public is left unenthused, to say the least, and the whole process is pushed by the grand marketeers, with the ideologues in their element. Can you imagine how irrelevant Rove would be if someone where selling an iPod?