Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Democracy goes mute


By

Adam Tanous

This just might be the longest presidential campaign in history?or so it seems?and one with virtually no debate.

There?s plenty of noise. There are plenty of campaign aides, bloggers and 527 groups blasting their message into the ether of public consciousness. But in their strident tone and the snide nature of the messages, it is obvious these people aren?t really conversing with anyone except themselves. It?s as if political discourse has been reduced to a bunch of angry white men, and now some women, shouting in a room.

Inside that room there is a deafening roar: plenty of passion and conviction, but no soul. Soul implies empathy and understanding and more than a glimmer of humility, all of which are potent elements of democracy.

The world the rest of us inhabit?outside that room?the passionate pleas sound more like a cacophony. Like sound waves out of phase, the ?blue voices? and the ?red voices? join in destructive interference. The room falls silent.

And while it?s convenient to pin the sound and fury on the voices paid to blather on, those at the top set the tone and nature of the election.

John Kerry and President Bush have been adept at distancing themselves from the shout-fest. Ultimately, though, both have been complicit in limiting the political conversation.

A few weeks ago when John Kerry was fiddling around on a windsurfing board in Nantucket Sound, the blue voices chimed in that the campaign was faltering?dying in the wind as it were. Kerry wasn?t tough enough, the voices said.

So, Kerry got tough. Every day since then he has fiercely criticized the president. It has quieted the blue voices, but it has done little to inform the political discourse. And, in the process, he has played into his own greatest fault: a failure to articulate a positive plan of his own.

At the recent Sun Valley Writers? Conference, I interviewed author David Halberstam. He put it this way: ?He can?t win simply because people are anti-Bush. They need to be pro-Kerry. He hasn?t convinced people to vote for him.?

It?s not enough for Kerry to say Bush has done a bad job with the war on terror, or in Iraq, or with the economy. If he wants to reach anyone other than the blue voices?who are going to vote for him anyway?he had better explain why things aren?t right and how they can be fixed.

In most debates, both sides have, at least, some degree of merit. Pointing out that merit and then explaining how and at what point a policy has gone wrong is the beginning of discourse. Offering a solution that takes off from that point of failure is what flushes out the political argument.

The Bush team has been equally vigilant in snuffing out real discussion. When the president met last week with Iraq?s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, he said Kerry?s criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq ?can embolden an enemy.?

Earlier in the month Vice President Cheney said, ?if we make the wrong choice (on Election Day), then the danger is that we?ll get hit again, and that we?ll be hit in a way that will be devastating.?

Suddenly political debate has been equated with causing terrorism or, in the case of Iraq, greater insurgency. It is an absurd stance, and one that affects much more than the outcome of this election. Are we to assume that, since the war on terrorism and the instability in the Middle East is going to go on forever, that criticism of foreign policy?coming from the right or left?is now forever off limits?

When we refuse to engage in real political discourse?acknowledging merit and offering viable points of departure from existing policies?or when we claim that the discourse is too dangerous, that uttering words of opposition dooms us, then we truly are doomed.




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