Friday, August 29, 2008
Revel Without A Cause
Your Curmudgeon is allergic to the conventions of political parties. He'd rather watch C-SPAN's live coverage of the House of Representatives. (All right, just barely, but you get the idea.) Therefore, he scrupulously avoided tuning in to any of the Democratic National Convention coverage our Old and Increasingly Creaky Media have provided these past four days. With the Yankees slipping ever further behind Tampa Bay and Boston, it was beyond dispute that there were more important matters to attend to.
The knockoff reportage on the Denver convention has depicted it as an orgy of self-congratulation, a love feast devoid of everything but hoopla and hype. What your Curmudgeon has heard about the concluding event, staged at Invesco Field and featuring a cardboard mockup of a Greek temple, is enough to make him wonder whether there are any truly serious minds left in the Democratic Party.
- Did any of the speeches convey anything of substance? Apparently not.
- Did the delegates do anything but consume free food and drink, wallow in the spectacles, and await the moment to cast their predetermined votes? Apparently not.
- Did the nominees for President and Vice-President of these United States do anything to recharacterize themselves, or to clarify their positions on the executive responsibilities and challenges they hoped to face? Apparently not.
- Given that the nominees were foreordained, was there any discernible point to this staggering Bacchanal, other than that it had already been scheduled and largely paid for? Apparently not.
The most significant political events of the week were:
- Two pointed, very effective new ads from the McCain for President campaign;
- An attempt by a large cadre of Obammunists -- your Curmudgeon does love a clever coinage -- to shut down a radio show by bombarding it with harassing phone calls;
- A request by the Obama for President campaign to the Department of Justice, urging DoJ to mount a criminal investigation of a non-party-affiliated group that has produced a video spot questioning Obama's relationship to admitted Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
Clearly, none of these were at all related to the Democrats' convention, nor would they have proceeded any differently had the convention not been held.
In these later years of the Republic, politics at the national level consists almost entirely of hoopla and hype. It became visible with the 1960 campaign between Nixon and Kennedy. Since then it's grown steadily, whipped along by our Old Media, until today there's virtually nothing of substance left. Nor are state-level, county-level, nor municipal-level politics any better. What substance remains in American politics is the province of barely audible minor parties and obnoxiously loud single-issue interest groups.
Duopoly in politics is hardly more tolerable than monopoly in the marketplace. The major parties pay little heed to the desires of the electorate or the truly serious issues before the nation. Their principal concern is with attaining and retaining power; accordingly, they and their allies in the Geriatric Media bend most of their efforts toward suppressing the discussion of alternatives to them and their plans. They collaborate in this with far greater sincerity than on the floor of any of our legislatures. When hoopla and hype are all you've got, you play 'em as loudly as you can, to occupy the groundlings' attention and prevent us from noticing that there are alternatives less insulting to our intelligence.
The upcoming Republican National Convention might yet improve on the Democrats' self-caricaturing performance. The GOP has held the White House for eight years, and therefore has a record to defend; we may infer that some effort will go to that end. Also, there are platform decisions to be made about national finance and expenditure, immigration control, energy exploration, environmental subjects, Iran's quest for the Bomb, the War on Terror, and the violence in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Georgia; some coverage might go to these matters. Finally, Republicans are historically less avid than the Democrats for meaningless demonstrations and easily dismissed spectacles; they'd prefer a convention that will get them back to their hotel rooms in decent shape and at a reasonable hour. Given that John McCain, the putative Republican presidential nominee, is an elderly gentleman who needs his rest, we can at least hope.
