Be warned: this is quite long and it is basically me thinking out loud about political stuff.
I just watched a Channel 4 documentary, “The Dirty Race For The White House”. Peter Oborne concluded that democracy in the US has gone horribly awry.
His structure was drawn from the Gettysburg address, where Lincoln spoke of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Instead of government of the people, the US Presidency is determined by small voting blocs that live in the right swing state. Appeasing these small groups is of crucial importance, so government serves their interests disproportionately.
Instead of government by the people, the election is corrupted by nominally independent organizations that do the dirty campaigning so the candidates don’t have to.
Instead of government for the people, the election has little connection to the plight of the poor, particularly minority groups.
It wasn’t a well-made argument, but it was compelling nonetheless for many individual moments of insight. I was uncomfortable, however, with the angle Oborne took on the 527 groups – independent organisations with a political message. The Republican example was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group attacking Kerry’s military credentials. I never looked too hard into the Swift Boat Vets or their claims, because sources I find reliable have exposed the group as a dishonest political tool spreading misinformation. Like Oborne, I see this group as a sign of how far democracy has gone astray in the US.
Then, however, Oborne turned his attention to MoveOn. MoveOn is a large network promoting grassroots activism for the general left-wing cause. It was founded during the Clinton Presidency to provide a response to the incessant, desperate hounding of President Clinton over allegations of sexual transgression. (Hence the name: “can we please move on to more important things now?”) In 2004, they operate transparently with millions of online members working together to support the Democratic party.
Oborne’s case against MoveOn was: they receive a lot of funding from the Democrat elite; and they produce sophisticated, manipulative attack ads so Kerry and Edwards can stay aloof from the dirty work of politics.
I think it’s somewhat disingenuous of Oborne to paint MoveOn and Swift Boat vets for truth as equivalent examples. To my eyes, the groups are very different.
Thinking further, though, I started wondering whether the differences are really so large after all. Which led in turn to a bigger question: how can we evaluate the different voices in an electoral campaign?
Clearly, context is important. When the political parties speak, we hear their message with full context. They are electioneering; they are trying to say their guy is great, the other guy is terrible, and they have a certain amount of leeway to do it. Neither side will ever do justice to their opponent; when we listen to these messages, we keep this in mind.
(Not that we are as good as evaluating this stuff as we think we are, by and large; but I’ll leave that aside for now and assume we’re all good rational logical folk.)
Other groups that add their messages to the noise of an election come without that clear context. How much will they be bending the truth? What will they be omitting in their message? If they’re outright lying, who will challenge them, and how do we judge the challenger?
I approve of the principle of anyone with something to say being able to stand up and say it. Obvious imbalances will result, of course. If access to media is governed by wealth (and it is), and those who have wealth tend to support conservative political strands (and they do), then the independent voices in any election will be biased towards the conservative side.
(Kiwi readers will happily call to mind all the occasions the Business Roundtable has pushed media campaigns against left-wing initiatives such as proportional representation and promoting such shibboleths as the ‘brain drain’ as a way of undermining the left-wing government.)
These imbalances are inevitable given the way access to media is channelled, but they are worth putting up with for the greater principle.
The real problem in the US is that any ‘independent’ voice will be seized on for its utility to partisan politics. True independence isn’t really possible for any group with a political stance – if an organisation supports a political position, the party of that position will find a way to deliver support back to them.
Republicans recognise the value the Swift Vets and support them; Democrats recognise the value of MoveOn and support it. Does this hurt democracy? Where is the line? And are the SwiftVets and MoveOn two points on the same continuum, or are they different entities entirely?
I feel they are different categories, as much as categorisation is ever possible in the real world: one is legitimate and the other is illegitimate.
But I can’t come up with the basis of the categorisation. I’ve been sitting here for half an hour trying. It just isn’t coming. Everything I try, I can quickly falsify. Even the notion of “truth” as a barometer is tricky – is the outright dishonesty of the Swift Boat Vets really so different from the lies-of-omission used by both Democrats and Republicans? Is it really so far from the emotions-not-facts school of political campaigning? Is there such a difference between old men saying Kerry’s a liar and sinister music playing over judiciously-edited clips of Dick Cheney being scary?
Perhaps the true test of legitimacy for any independent group with a political message is simply this: the extent to which citizens can inform themselves about the group. If this is the case – and I’m starting to think it is – then that lays yet another burden on the voting citizen. The urgency of educating people in comprehending the media seems more and more essential every moment.
Consider it. The test of legitimacy for an independent group is its transparency.
And the test of legitimacy for a political party is the extent to which it empowers its citizens to serve as its watchmen.