Here’s an interesting neologism from Paul Krugman, yesterday’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics:
I also wonder how much the Femafication of government under President Bush contributed to Mr. Paulson’s fumble. All across the executive branch, knowledgeable professionals have been driven out; there may not have been anyone left at Treasury with the stature and background to tell Mr. Paulson that he wasn’t making sense.
That’s been the problem with the Bush Administration all along: bluster and ego masquerading as strong leadership. It really, really matters, and it seems it matters more than a folksy, “man I can relate to” charm.
Incredibly, I’ve been chastised for writing too much about the USA and nothing about the UK. Given the financial crisis, this is indeed an oversight. I guess the cultural implications of the US Presidential election campaign are easier to engage with than the technicalities of the financial crisis that Brown and Darling are currently wrestling with. You wouldn’t think it from the quote I’ve picked above, but Krugman’s article is principally in praise of the British handling of the crisis. Could this be the start of an unprecedented political comeback for Gordon Brown?
Its depressing that much of the US Presidential campaign has descended into ad hominem. Not just between opposing candidates, but of the media too. It is through this that Sarah Palin justifies her refusal to hold a press conference – because the press are apparrently biased and will do nothing more than attempt “gotcha” questions. Its difficult for the media to repudiate such claims, without seeming, well, a bit biased.
Jay Rosen articulates the problem:
Now what happens if one of the two campaigns for president consistently ignores or simply runs over the fact checkers in the press, choosing culture war on the checkers as a better option, and making direct attempts to de-legitimate not unfair or crappy stories but whole river systems of quality news, like, say, the New York Times… while the other campaign… doesn’t do any of those things, consistently, even though it is hardly innocent when it comes to distortion and selective memory. Such a scenario could happen: a wild imbalance in liberty-taking with verified fact, as an index of different paths to victory and different coalitions under assembly. How is that situation to be reported, especially if it becomes a pattern and reporting the pattern is likely to fuel it?
Clearly if the media are delegitimized, then that’s a real problem for democracy.
One would have thought that the Internet, which gives us all near Funes-like memory, would help here. Surely the availability of counter-examples and refutations of any given smear would ensure that the truth – whatever it may be – will eventually prevail. This is clearly the idea behind Obama’s Fight the Smears sub-site.
But in the specific case of the McCain-Palin campaign, I wonder whether the blogs and the written word have actually reached the limits of their power. Andrew Sullivan persists with his Odd Lies of Sarah Palin series, and is branded a shrill partisan for Obama for his troubles. Does Sullivan have enough readers to persuade swing voters against the Repbublicans? Does his blog impact on the wider public consciousness? Although the Daily Dish has hundreds of thousands of regular readers, I would suggest they are mostly from a very particular blog-reading, politically aware demographic. The message – particularly one presented over a number of weeks in blog form – might not get through to other types of undecided voter. Since Sullivan posts so regularly, it might even get lost in the noise of his other blog posts! Wading through several pages of argument, and following links to obsure sites that apparently prove one thing or another, can be a wearying task, even for those who have the time.
Since blogs are not always the best medium to convey this message, perhaps video blogging might be. Just as TV documentaries are a useful way to convey political arguments to time-poor citizens, so a YouTube video can prove, with images and sound, the essential truth in a given argument. For example, this video discredits many of the anti-Obama smears in a quicker and more effective manner than the Fight the Smears website:
People trust their eyes and ears more than they do the words of an unknown website or a hostile blogger. When the media are under-attack, video may be the means by which the truth can find its way to the voters. In a world where print journalism condescends to TV journalism, this is an important point to remember.
Just think of the layers – of sponge, and of meaning – in this stunner. Its a cake of a video game of a lego parody of a film of a comic book.
Stuff like this never fails to delight. It shows just how niche human interests can be, and just how skillful people can become at those niche interests. As Cake Wrecks author Jen points out, the attention to detail is phenomenal.
As Obama consolidates his lead in the polls, there a plenty of analyses as to why he is seems to have got the better of Senator McCain. The meme that the Right would have us believe is that McCain has been hamstrung by the economy, and that under normal circumstances he would have been in with a chance.
I tend to a different view, which is that Americans have seen through the obfuscation of the Repbulican Party of George Bush and Dick Cheney, and they recognise McCain as being a continuation of that. Throughout, Obama has chosen calmer tactics than his opponents. When they attack, his “shrug it off” attitude has succeeded with the voters.
As I have said before, his ground game, that is, the growing network of supporters campaigning for him on a local level, provide a sort of chainmail. The tight network, connected via new technologies, can rebutt, or at least soften the impact, of any given attack. I predict that the coming smears – Add the Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko to William Ayers – will fail to penetrate in the way that Republican attackers hope. It is too late for an old scandal or impropriety to change people’s minds.
Looking at the polls, and crucially, looking at how they move in the Democrats favour after an apparently negative news cycle, I think even the dreaded endorsement of Osama Bin Laden, half-expected in the next couple of weeks, will fail to provide the swing McCain needs. If the grainy tape of the old bearded psychopath makes a comeback, watch as the media repeat the clichés that it is a “game changer”. Then watch as the polls prove the pundits wrong.
I’m sure there will be some who stick to the prevalent “don’t over-estimate the stupidity of Americans” view, but I honestly think we’re past the point where that is a credible dismissal. The USA never enthusiatically endorsed the madness of King George Bush. Now the polls show them enthusiatically rejecting him and his shadows, McCain and Palin.
Update
Over at the excellent FiveThirtyEight, Rany Jazayerli predicts Bin Laden’s October surprise. His chilling prediction:
With McCain lagging in the polls, bin Laden might even try a Hail Mary – with Sarah Palin on the ballot, I’d imagine that he’ll throw in some misogynistic comments about how a woman’s place is inside the home and that a nation led by a woman is sure to be cursed by God.
A couple of weeks ago at the Labour Party Conference, Gordon Brown pledged to “enshrine in law Labour’s pledge to end child poverty” although the specifics were hazy. The Campaign to End Child Poverty staged a march in central London yesterday, urging the government to spend more on eradicating child poverty.
The campaigners said that next year’s budget is the last opportunity for the Government to invest to ensure it hit its target of halving child poverty by 2010 – A crucial waypoint en route to complete eradication by 2020. However, the campaigners (and likely Gordon Brown too) may be suffering from short-term thinking, a target mentality that makes the longer fight against poverty harder to win. In an article published on Comment is Free earlier this year, my colleague Ian Mulheirn makes the case for scrapping the 2010 target, in favour of a renewed focus on the 2020 goal. While the 2010 goal can be solved by another £3bn in tax credits (the policy the campaigners are marching for), the 2020 goal will be solved by more long-term measures, such as increased, targeted spending on education:
Further spending in pursuit of the 2010 target would divert precious resources into tackling the symptoms of child poverty while neglecting its underlying causes. …
…the 2010 and 2020 poverty targets now represent distinct visions of how to tackle child poverty. As money becomes scarcer, they are increasingly becoming opposing visions. It is clear that the provision of real equality of opportunity, represented by the 2020 target, rather than the palliative of tax credits, should now be the priority.
