A second wind

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

By Grace Hammond

We may have a real election on our hands.

In the time it takes to brush your teeth in the morning, the polls change, a new frontrunner’s name sprints across the headlines, and a shiny new scandal sees the light of day. A scrap of information emerges – Clinton’s favorite gemstone! Obama’s naked lapel! – and the news stations crowd around it like overexcited drunks playing darts at a bar. Some shots graze the target, others hit the wall, and a rare few stick to the board.

In this climate, the nomination process is a parody- a fixed game. Early on, Giuliani and Clinton were crowned king and queen of the election ball. They smiled, they waved, they mouthed the lyrics to the songs their parties wanted to dance to. The moment they got to the top, they knew there was nowhere to go but downhill. So they became tight-lipped, calculated and reticent to engage the media or the public in debate or discussion. And when they couldn’t avoid it, they “stumbled.” They had “gaffes.” Their victories were called too early, leaving pundits with nothing to talk about. Every new nugget of information about the frontrunners damaged their positions.

And there, the parody collapsed. Now, we read, nothing is certain. Huckabee’s ahead! Obama’s killing! Someone named John Edwards is back in the race, and Ron Paul may be the Republican Party’s Ralph Nader this time around. The two-party system expands when there’s enough room in the news for the little guys to get a word in while the frontrunners take a beating.

This great overload, the compulsive real-time over-analysis, simultaneously fascinates and bemuses. There are so many places to turn to for information that they cancel each other out. It is one thing to hear a solid bloc of news channels declare one person “electable” or “a sure thing” – it is quite another to be surrounded by a babble of updates, each with a five-minute shelf life.

The top headlines have become things only campaign staffers should care about: “Barack Obama to go on the attack tomorrow. Tune in at 6 p.m. to hear his bold new strategy.” We learn that he is going to cock his head to the right, set his jaw, and, in front of God and everybody, deliver a missive tinged with reproach, wrapped in a whisper of recrimination and echoing with the reverb of subtle disapproval. (So don’t miss it, folks!)

The good news is that when so much is declared, undeclared and redeclared, the news itself becomes the parody and the election becomes real. If you can’t trust the headlines, and you can’t trust the polls, who can you listen to? The candidates. More and more, people are tuning out the pundits and the predictions. The pressure for the candidates to “be real” and “tell it like it is” is tangible for this reason. The system, then, shrinks back to its essence, rendering the race unpredictable: one person, alone in the voting booth, with only the voices of the candidates ringing in their ears.
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A second wind | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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