Today's soundtrack is Tengger Cavalry: Sunesu Cavalry, an interesting fusion of melodic death metal, traditional Chinese folk music, and Mongolian throat singing.
This evening, I'm reading the first chapter of Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, "Republicans and Democrats."
Obama begins by describing a problem that he observed on the Senate floor: things were very streamlined; the large group of senators would discuss things in advance, come in, vote, and leave. Anyone who had anything else to propose would be speaking to the nearly-empty senate hall. "In the world's greatest deliberative body," says Obama, "no one is listening" (p. 15).
The problem wasn't a new one, though. America was divided in an almost incalculable number of ways: "on Iraq, taxes, abortion, the Ten Commandments, gay marriage, immigration, trade, education policy, environmental regulation, the size of the government, and the role of the courts. [... America] disagreed on the scope of our disagreements, the nature of our disagreements, and the reasons for our disagreements" (p. 16). When the Republicans were in power, the Democrats would find themselves angry and powerless; when the Democrats were elected, the same happened to the Republicans.
Obama saw that behind closed doors, away from the cameras and grandstanding, democrats and republicans would sometimes get together and "[hash] out a compromise over steaks and cigars [or] over a poker game or a beer" (p. 17), where they "might conclude that [they] had more in common than [they] publicly cared to admit" (p. 17). This led him to believe that a reformation of the political system was possible. If politicians could skip the sound bites and name-calling, and instead focus on using truth to reach their voters, "then the people's instincts for fair play and common sense would bring them around" (p. 18), leading American politics down a healthier, more productive path.
So in 2004, Obama and his Democratic colleagues tried something new. Rather than running negative ad campaigns, they stuck with positive ads: no name-calling, no slander, no "our opponent sucks." Instead, they only aired positive material: "You should vote for us based on our merits, and here they are." And it seemed to work: Obama got elected. However, he was in the minority. The rest of the seats were filled with people who had run slanderous ads: saying that their opponents "supported baby-killing and men in wedding gowns" (p. 19), even stooping so far as to dig up rumours about their opponents' previous relationships. It was a tough lesson for Obama. "Like most Americans, I find it hard to shake the feeling these days that our democracy has gone seriously awry" (p. 22), he says, noting that "what's troubling is [..] the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem" (p. 22). The public has recognized that "politics today is a business and not a mission" (p. 24), and they are tired of it. Reagan said that Americans have a "longing for order [and the] need to believe that we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal forces but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies, so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work, patriotism, personal responsibility, optimism, and faith" (p. 31).
It was after Reagan's era that the real divides began to manifest. "Activists in both parties began developing litmus tests" (p. 34), Obama says. "Compromise came to look like weakness, to be punished or purged. You were with us or against us. You had to choose sides" (p. 34). Even though politicians had by this point started regularly making their arguments from "the exaggerated sense of having been aggrieved" (p. 33), the reason Clinton's campaign got votes was because "[it] tapped into the pragmatic, nonideological attitude of the majority of Americans" (p. 35).
Democrats have been frustrated by the Republican hardball tactics that have put them into power. Some of them are wondering whether they need to stoop to the same level. Obama says that this is not the answer, because manipulating the public through negativity and insults, even if it results in a win, is still ultimately a loss from a moral perspective, and undermines the very thing that the Democrats are fighting for. It solidifies the "us and them" mentality prevalent in American politics. And the public is waiting for that to change. "They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting" (p. 42). They are just waiting for the political parties to realize it.