An American Presidential Election manages to display all that’s good and bad about the democratic process. The main problem is that it has fallen into the hands of an unelected majority of intermediaries, fixers and professional image- makers. There is hope, but only if some wit and more intrusive debunking can force its way in…
It seemed, as I talked to many American friends about their hopes and aspirations, that the political processes were becoming separate from their more basic yearnings – they asked me to help them articulate why it was important to try to bring their hopes and the political realities closer together. Without the vision, the political realities were somehow withering away ….
Almost inevitably as, I suppose, the inevitable voter imperative is to know what – if any -the realistic promises are between the contenderss , leads to progressive frustrations about what really lies behind the contentious re-interpretations of the protagonists’ promise.. What’s being said and meant, behind the hype and ad-spiel ? It’s a Looking Glass world with the wrong Alice …
As the fragilities of the campaign grow and the detailed scrutiny of the candidates’ utterances intensifies, even bigger phalanxes of protectors and interpreters stand between them and the potential voters. The desperate necessity is to avert the spontaneous comment or casual aside which might discolour the television news. So the presidential hopefuls recede further from significant view, and the voter learns progressively more about the spokesmen and image- smoothers than the-man-who-would-be-king.
” How original, interesting, relevant and appropriate your verses are! All of them are evidence of a fine gift for satire and a sensitiveness to the foibles of our society”‘How original, interesting, relevant and appropriate your verses are! All of them are evidence of a fine gift for satire and a sensitiveness to the foibles of our society ”
Senator William Fulbright
Washington D.C.
There was a good deal of religious revivalism around, and being Born Again was a widely – worn badge of respectability among politicians. For the Right, this often required some nuanced modification of the old-fashioned ‘Christian’ story. to rid it of its over-emphasis on notions of ‘liberality’, excessive concern for the poor, loving your enemy, and so on.
With the traumas of the Vietnam War still chillingly around I was appalled. like many others around me, at the sinister calls by the still-hungry political friends of a bloated military and ‘defence’ establishment for yet more weaponry, wrapped in the usual misappropriated claims to ‘patriotism and the flag’ . Sadly, we must now add Iraq, Afghanistan, and further innumerable dead, to the mad, sad tally of their cynicism and our folly.
As the volatility and apparent cussedness of the electorate grows, and the polls yo-yo about, pressure grows to call up the endorsement of well-known, and universally admired, public figures whose charisma
can possibly enhance by association the more lack-lustre appeal of the candidates themselves. Such was the high potential of the Teddy Kennedy name to the 1980 Democrat cause, sadly subverted by the fact of unrequited love ….
Americans, ever the world’s innovators, have now taught the Brits and others who claim democratic credentials, that exercising our right to vote without hourly external checks on what we think we are thinking is an offence to human rights. Consequently, pollsters and analysts heavily outnumber politicians and candidates, their reports dominating the headlines and relegating the candidates’ occasional comments to the back pages alongside the daily crossword.
Maybe sensing the Politics of Climate Change to come, and its dangers to his high ideals of unregulated market freedoms, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan had wrong-footed Democrats and Conservationists alike by a unique attack on the long-assumed Innocence of Nature . He had seen through the blandishments of generations of Romantic Poets to the real polluters of our once – fragrant Corporate World ….
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