Politics and Democracy ~ Movies and Elections

We’re all agog now about the Academy Awards. Movies about life in which answers are solved and heroes abound. And of course the political debates go on. The question I have is, is there much difference?

Actors play roles. Politicians play roles. Some play heroic roles where truth wins over evil and the guy in the white hat rides off into the sunset with the beautiful girl. Promises and made and kept or broken and forgotten, battles are won lost. It is just like politics.

The difference is that after the movie you go home and life returns to normal. But in politics someone wins and the other loses, or in our case one wins the election and the other loses their credibility as they cannot fulfill the promises they are forced to make during a campaign. Only in movies to presidents move on to success and approval. Only in movies to presidents remain heroes.

When President Obama was elected it was heroic. The first black president, his book on The Audacity of Hope was filled with visionary ideas that those who read it could not help but admire. But he inherited the worst economy since the depression and had to deal with a congress that did not want to do anything except beat him in the next election. Even if he had a slight majority in his party in congress when elected, it was not enough to get anything done. He was doomed. He could not fix in 2 or 3 years what 35 years of poor government has done to the country. I’m amazed that he remains optimistic and wants to have another go at it.

The only thing worse in politics than being elected president is the opposition this time by the Republican Party. The whole party has moved so far to the right that the moderates have to cater so much to the lunacy they loose all integrity. Most of the candidates espouse just plain crazy ideas that appeal to folk who are just against government and only for their own vested interests. I want Romney to win the Republican nomination, not because I’m a great fan of his, but it is possible he could be president and he’s the only one that makes any sense. His problem is that he is unappealing for some reason and has to make bizarre concessions to the extreme right, to things he really doesn’t believe in and people sense this.

If you remember the movie The Candidate, Robert Redford plays a character like Robert Redford running for president. Bright, quick on his feet, popular and very electable. Even in debates he openly admits that in presidential debates they don’t deal with any real issues, the real problems that face the country. And then he gets elected and then turns to his campaign manager and say, “Now what?”

Like the movies we elect the most popular and the most glamorous of the candidates and then are disappointed when we all don’t gallop off into the sunset with our guy or gal and everybody lives happily ever after. We were lucky about electing Obama, the best statesman I’ve seen for some time, but we were totally unrealistic about what he could get done in a short period of time. He had great ideas for the country; visionary ideas as some of the past had that moved the country. But he inherited too much debt, too much deregulations, too much do nothing congresses to get what he wanted done, though he has done quite a lot, it gets lost in the basic issue which is, the shrinking wages of the middle class. Supply side economics created this mess, 35 years of it, and it cannot be turned around on a dime.

The worst of it seems to me is the loss of a congress and true conservatives that used to embrace Demand Side Economics and worked with their opponents to make the country better, not just win elections and defeat opponents, but did the work needed to benefit those they served.

The 19^th century the country was a mess because we lacked a strong enough government to place proper reins of runaway free market systems. The 20^th century put these programs into place and safety nets for the poor were put in place and the middle class grew and prospered as did the nation. And business made money. Now we have a bunch of people who want to run back to the 19^th century with all possible speed and we have the results, growing poor, a crumbling infrastructure, a middle class that is going backwards economically, and a populace that does not know basic civics or economics.

All this is accompanied by a world that has followed our example and now faces economic problems of huge proportions itself. And the world is looking for other models and leadership for the future, while we seem tied to the past.

Attend the Academy Awards, cheer the actors for portraying their roles with expertise. Take joy in happy endings. But also remember after that hoopla dies down and when it dies down after the election the line of the Robert Redford’s character in The Candidate, “Now what?”

At some point candidates and voters have to look a real issues and work together to solve real problems. You can’t just look at the color of the hat of the western hero anymore and tell whether they are good or bad. It is not even a real question. We are all good and bad. We also need to be reasonable and learn to listen, and solve problems.

We know the current political election process does not work. But it does us no good just to be cynics. We have to fix it. That means controlling the election monies and where they come from and make them more equitable. It means holding candidates accountable for telling true statements and punishing slander and libel the way we do with others. It means finding a process where we really can easily find where candidates stand on issues and seeing political spin for what it is. It means holding the media responsible for reporting news rather than making it. It means educating ourselves about what it means to be a responsible citizen in a republic.

It is all fixable. Do we have the will, and can we become smart enough and cooperative enough to find the way? Can we begin to work synergistically rather than competitively?

We can but will we?