October 14, 2008

I <3 Bob Herbert

This is a great, if somewhat unspecific, op-ed regarding the lack of common sense in the campaign and country right now. A quick, refreshing read.


Amusing, but Not Funny

By BOB HERBERT
Posted by at
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5 comments:

  1. BartOctober 14, 2008 4:54 PM

    I agree that these issues need to be discussed a lot more by many more people, but I am not entirely on board with his argument that this election could be more about substance.

    The general public needs to develop a conversational understanding of many more issues before a USA election can be anything other than: 1. a popularity contest; 2. a one- or two-issue race; or, 3. some combination of the first two.

    To have an election that is completely issue-based and intelligent requires a certain intellectual infrastructure on the part of the public that will take a lot longer to develop than the physical infrastructure will--a failure of or lack of physical infrastructure screws people in very visible ways (e.g. bridge collapses), while a failure of or lack of intellectual infrastructure screws people over in more subtle ways (e.g. erosion of civil liberties under the Bush administration). Until civil liberties command the same audience as a bridge collapse (or Cops for that matter), we are screwed (assuming an intelligent national debate of many issues is our measure of success).

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  2. Katie MOctober 15, 2008 2:37 PM

    I agree, but what better way to get the ball rolling on these issues than to have celebrity-candidates talk about them? More people pay attention to politics during a Presidential campaign than any other time, it might be the best shot at starting to get those details out there...

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  3. BartOctober 15, 2008 3:07 PM

    That is a good idea, but unfortunately I think the only celebrity-politicians who would be willing to risk their shot at the White House by discussing real issues are exactly the people who are written off as lunatics who never had a real shot in the first place. I am thinking of Nader, Perot, and Kucinich, all of whom had some good ideas (and fairly impressive backgrounds), took the risk of raising real issues in their campaigns (more often than many other candidates), and were not able to change the landscape of ignorance in the end, even when Perot took 18% and 8% of the popular vote in consecutive presidential elections. I guess I am simply playing the role of the pessimist for this debate.

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  4. Katie MOctober 15, 2008 3:12 PM

    No, you're absolutely right, which leads to another discussion. I won't go into the absurdity of the two-party system here and now - we could discuss and debate it for a while, I'm sure - but I wonder what it would take for the Naders and Kuciniches, the ones raising these issues, to have a real shot at the White House (and thus have their ideas taken seriously)? Just shitloads of money, a la Bloomberg?

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  5. ChrisOctober 15, 2008 3:18 PM

    I don't know if that would do it. Neither Romney nor Bloomberg went particularly far in this election.

    I don't think you'll see an end to this without a very sophisticated electorate. The thing is you can come up with any policy as long as no one is hurt by it. So we can't "fool around with" social security because no one is willing to have their benefits cut.

    The one thing that gives me hope is that Obama was able to come out in opposition to the gas tax holiday, and the media actually gave him credit for that.

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