Bodies Alongside The Campaign Highway

Election 2016 has come and gone. Decisions have been made. Winners and losers in each race have been anointed. Over the course of this too-long and nightmarish election season, many casualties were left behind long before November 8^th arrived. Casualties of people, institutions, and concepts. It is important to not forget those who the campaign defamed, and the meaning of their dispatch, for therein lies much for reflection and learning in the coming times.

In the presidential campaign, many people had their reputations and character unduly damaged by the campaign rhetoric and tactics employed, rather than by debates of issues. The field started with 17 Republicans and five Democrats. The Democratic field was quickly winnowed to three, and then two, by the lack of qualifications and substance of three wanna-be’s. What proceeded as genuine debates of ideas went to assaults of personality when the race became competitive. The wounds were lasting when it came time for the general election.

On the Republican side, the large field included several wanna-be’s, several stale old faces trying to reclaim relevance, leaving around half the field with substantive candidacies but of mixed qualifications. They were, each in turn, chewed up and banished to the sidelines not because of their ideas or their potential strengths and weaknesses as a political leader, but by unrelenting assaults on their character, being painted with insulting nicknames, or by simply being outshouted for media attention due to a swirl of outrageous and negative statements that defied a response. Negative statements were directed to vast segments of American society, without apology or defense. All of these actions continued through to the general election, creating an unworkable environment for conducting an effective political discourse. Most all of it came from one source – the eventual winner of the nomination and election. Some good people were left deeply scarred from it all, and the American public learned little about alternatives for their future.

But it was not just candidates for office that were casualties of this campaign. Institutions and their leaders were wounded in the crossfires. The chairperson and staff of the Democratic National Committee was caught “guilty as suspected” of favoritism to one candidate over another, a cardinal sin for people charged with guiding the party nominating process. There is much party rebuilding work to do, but what trustable person is available to lead that process?

While the race among Republican candidates proceeded forward, the Party itself was engaged in virtual civil war. After much emotional handwringing, “What is a Republican / What is a Conservative” emerged as principal unanswered questions – still unanswered as of Election Day. Large numbers of voters turned out in Republican primaries, but were these really “the Republican base,” or a wholly new contingent of voters unwedded to any political party? Republican party leadership, elected Republican officials, conservative political philosophers, special-issue promotors, business leaders, Republican voters, and the Republican presidential winner are all out of sync. Candidates with “Republican” labels won big, which can temporarily mask deep divisions. But the fight for control, direction and identity of the Party is not over and will likely prove to be brutal.

The FBI, having spent years successfully rebuilding its reputation for neutral objectivity versus past periods of excesses, became political fodder with its conduct of the Democratic nominee’s email handling. The Director’s public statements, the unprecedented revealing of evidence and notes from a non-prosecuted case, and acknowledged “leaks” of investigations and negotiations by agents from various field offices, clearly made the agency an inappropriate and significant campaign player – a concern for those who still believe in a nonpartisan legal process. It will take years for the public and the agency to recover from this. Even the Supreme Court became an inadvertent player in this campaign, though not of its own making, as the failure to replace the current vacancy due to political and campaign reasons created an abrogation of the Senate’s Constitutional responsibility. The entire federal court system was forced to be drawn heavily into the election process just to deal with all of the voter’s rights / voter suppression cases brought before it. Even our vaunted military institution, which has performed admirably for the past 25 years, took a big hit by unconscionable criticisms of our military leaders, the strategies for defending our country, and veterans and POWs.

The national media once again was a major player in the voting outcome. The most blatant example was its handling of the early Republican primary debates by unilaterally deciding who was a valid candidate and who was not, leading to a “kid’s table / 2^nd tier” debate group. There may have been candidates who did not deserve much attention, but that is for the voters to decide from a level playing field that gives exposure to all. Decisions about who to give air time to, which issues to over- / under-focus on, who to give how much air time, chasing the sensationalized headlines of the most outrageous comments, and the incessant drumbeat of poll standings which reduced the campaign to seemingly a running score of a sporting event, seemed very poorly made. “The national media” is an easy campaign target, and often an intended distraction from poor campaigning, but at times it is a target well deserved.

Then there were the “values” casualties. Truth probably took the biggest hit. We are used to the normal suspension of reality for campaign rhetoric – out of context TV ads, sound bites over substance, painting the opposition’s bad character as formed by his/her supposed misdeeds. This campaign took mistruth to a whole new level through inventing “facts” out of completely thin air, drawing from unproven conspiracy theories, and using the fantasies of the National Inquirer as research material. In turn, debates –the give and take of ideas to arrive at better conclusions – disappeared, replaced by a series of televised insults and noise-making, won not by the strength of intelligent argument but by who succeeded more in talking over the other. Values of interpersonal respect evaporated in “a basket of deplorables,” social media fights with Gold Star parents and a beauty contest winner, and audio tapes made on a bus ride. Integrity fled when violence to candidates and voters was encouraged while taking no responsibility for frightening outcomes – both real and potential. Unproven accusations of dishonesty (“Lying Ted,” “Lock her up”) and non-impartial federal judges insulted our dearly-held principles of justice.  Respect for America itself was defaced when voting itself, and the elected outcomes, were cast in suspicion as “rigged systems” and probable cesspools of “voter fraud” – accusations which quickly disappeared when the accuser won! (These accusations often put Republican voting officials in the awkward position of defending their voting systems as “safe, secure and sound” after spending several years, and much time and money, on Voter ID Card proposals because supposedly our election systems were so rife with potential abuse!)

Before we get on with the necessary job of planning for governance, why is this recapping of the litany of campaign horrors needed? We were all there. We lived through it all. We saw it all go down, albeit perhaps through very different eyes and interpretations. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we also acknowledge that many of We the Voters did not perform very nobly either, descending into the profanity and violence of character modeled by too many of the candidates. Therefore we recap these events not to emotionally dwell on the past, or to relive our personal disappointment or elation.  Rather, we do so to remind ourselves how bad this campaign really was, involving so many players – both principals and sidelineders, and ourselves. How much this embarrassment cost this country, financially and emotionally, as well as in our principles of character. How the image of the world’s leading aspirational democratic country, the in fact leader of the globe’s developed nations (a leadership now called into question by much of the world), descended into a 3^rd-world image of the democratic process. We recap these events to energize ourselves to never let this form and degree of negative experience happen again regardless of our political opinions and preferred directions.

I have many concerns, if not fears, about where our country will be driven over the next four years. One of those concerns is that there are many aspiring politicians out there right now thinking about running for office in the future. “How to win” is one of the things they are thinking hard about, perhaps more than they are thinking about their positions or about actually serving the public. Will they conclude that 2016 is now the model for how one runs a campaign, how one wins an election in America? A model not based on our best American Character of optimism, respect and good will but of negativism and division.  Is what we just saw to be the “new normal” for us? We passed up the opportunity to say “No” to this form of campaigning in 2016 by in fact endorsing it. How will we – Republican, Democrat, Independent of all differing political views – stop it from coming back around again in 2018/2020? Sometimes, the past is our future. We have unleashed a Pandora’s box of electoral demons. Whether we can return those demons to their container is highly questionable. It will be for all of us to decide.

©   2016   Randy Bell             www.ThoughtsFromTheMountain.blogspot.com