The Nature of Politics Today

Biden wins a debate, but Palin is considered the winner by some because she didn't make any huge mistakes. Bush could barely complete a sentence, but the press felt bad for him, or liked him, or was trying to protect themselves from the absurd charge of a "liberal media" and thus helped him win two elections. McCain has been running one of the dirtiest, most dishonest campaigns in history, but while the media has certainly challenged him -- they continue to give him a pass on a lot of those lies.

Lowered expectations. That seems to be the general tenor of politics today. No grand expectations. No belief in the possibility of a politician that is honest and has the will to actually change government. Little coverage of the real issues in the country at a given time. Instead we get horse race coverage, discussion of the aesthetics and affective state of candidates and a fog of politics that ignores the popular will of the people and their stake in the political process.

Underlying all of this is a deep cynicism that seems to have followed Watergate and the Vietnam era, a distinct distrust of politicians, while celebrating the pageantry of the process. In the end, the people are left to consider who to vote for without really knowing what they stand for and what they will do in office. Even if Obama wins, I wonder if we can break through this media spectacle society and actually address the fundamental issue today: equitably distributing the benefits and risks of a market economy and finding ways to challenge the accumulation of wealth and privilege for a shrinking proportion of our population. This includes seriously improving education, regulating the market and the excesses of government the Bush Administration has accumulated and more fundamentally questioning how the richest economy in the world fails to provide a reasonable quality of life for so many of its citizens. The unspoken phrase in politics today that really should be debated is "livable wages."