Election 2012 - The Campaign - Remembered

These days, there is not much of anything in which you can find agreement among more than 50% of Americans, with perhaps two exceptions:  1) disgust at what has become the partisan paralytic ineffectiveness of our national government; 2) a deep longing for this 2012 political campaign to end soon.

This billion-dollar campaign for the presidency has been two years in the making.  Dozens of debates; poll-after-poll providing no definitive information.  Each day brings yet another slick flyer that says nothing of substance yet serves up much misinformation; most often they make me more convinced than ever to vote against the sender due to the alien positions they espouse.  Requests for political donations show up continually in my mailbox, my email account, on web pages I am reading.  Our fears of corporate and individual big-money players attempting to buy the election are proving distressingly true – especially if you have the misfortune to live in one of the “battleground states.”

Most importantly, our collective knowledge of what is truly happening in this country, and what the real causes of our problems are, remain woefully uninformed in spite of all this time and money spent.  There has been no meaningful discussion about the real opportunities and solutions we need to govern from the middle ground – the place where most Americans live and think.  Any fool can cut spending by “slashing and burning,” but only an experienced and wise leader/CEO knows how to cut strategically while preserving the core mission of the organization.  Bumper sticker slogans are not solutions.

Some of the blame for this state of affairs must go to candidates who avoid integrity and honesty in favor of rhetorical opportunism.  Some blame must go to political parties for whom winning elections and holding power trumps serving the needs of the people.  And some blame must go to the American people.  We get what we accept, and we have failed to call to account the irresponsibility of all candidates and parties when they are deceitful.  If all we do is “blame the other guy” instead of calling out our own candidate/party when needed, then we cannot complain about a broken governance system built upon partisan pandering.

Sometimes, the perspectives of our ancestors can be helpful in getting us through tough times such as these.  In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt ran for a second term against Republican Alf Landon of Kansas after four years of responding to America’s worst economic collapse.  Foreign wars were breaking out across the globe, threatening to draw America into violence it did not seek.  Millions were out of work (@25% unemployment); many people were losing their homes, farms and businesses; our agricultural breadbasket in middle America was devastated by extreme weather conditions.  All remarkably similar but worse than our country is today.  In a kickoff speech to the New York Democratic State Convention, Roosevelt offered several political observations.

First he talked about Wall Street and the bankers who brought about the Depression:  “A few people … seem to have forgotten those [early] days.  In the summer of 1933, a nice old gentleman wearing a silk hat fell off the end of a pier.  He was unable to swim.  A friend ran down the pier, dived overboard and pulled him out; but the silk hat floated off with the tide.  After the old gentleman had been revived, he was effusive in this thanks.  He praised his friend for saving his life.  Today, three years later, the old gentleman is berating his friend because the silk hat was lost.”

Then he talked about his opponents’ claims regarding taxes, job creation, and Social Security:  “Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, ‘Of course we believe [in] all these things.  We believe in Social Security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes.  Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things.  But we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them.  Just turn them over to us.  We will do all of them.  We will do more of them and we will do them better.  And, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.’

But, my friends, these evaders are banking too heavily on the shortness of our memories.  No one will forget that they had their golden opportunity – twelve long years of it ...  make no mistake about this: the Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job.  The Republican leadership is against the job’s being done.”

Then he talked about the dishonesty of mixed messaged based upon what different audiences want to hear:  “You cannot be an Old Guard Republican in the East, and a New Deal Republican in the West.  You cannot promise to repeal taxes before one audience and promise to spend more of the taxpayers’ money before another audience.  You cannot promise tax relief for those who can afford to pay, and, at the same time, promise more of the taxpayers’ money for those who are in need.  You simply cannot make good on both promises at the same time.”

And lastly, he clarified what it means to be a true “conservative”:  “Who is there in America who believes that we can run the risk of turning back our Government to the old leadership which brought it to the brink of 1933? … The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it.  The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change.”

In 1936, Franklin Roosevelt won the most lopsided number of electoral votes to date, losing only Maine and Vermont.  His speech sounds all too relevant to us today, because we have been in this place before.  In spite of charges of “anti-capitalism” 100 years ago against Theodore Roosevelt when he broke up the mega-rich corporate monopolies; “welfare state” in the 1930s against Social Security; “socialized medicine” in the 1960s against Medicare; we have managed to move steadily forward on health, civil rights, equal employment opportunities, education, and growth in the standard of living  for average families.  Over time we have managed to progress in spite of the negative social, political and religious rhetoric of each decade.  And once again, we will somehow manage to struggle through this current campaign environment towards the better place that calls to each of us.