Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit

It's now day 7 of the cold front, but the end is in sight. I played some basketball and went for a bike ride this morning, and I felt okay afterwards. The rest of the day will be for reading and writing.

Before I enter into the main thrust of this post, I wanted to share some thoughts about yesterday evening. I had dinner with Dr. Steinberg, who is in town for a national speakers' convention. He gave me his keynote speech in its present incarnation. The keynote is a concentrated version of the book I was helping him to write last summer. I imagine the speech will change drastically in the coming weeks as he hones in on the most important parts of his message and whittles away the components that obscure it. I was genuinely impressed by the progress he's made. I'm someone who has almost no patience for self-help books or the like, but I like how he approaches the big questions from a philosophical-spiritual-scientific angle and then takes it home with the experiences from his life. It's good stuff if he can streamline it and make it more accessible to the general public. I look forward to this vision of his coming to fruition, so he has nothing to do with the title of this post. That goes to the following paragraphs.

Okay, now on to the next topic: politics, politics, politics. I'm not much of a political scientist, but I took a course on public opinion and voting behavior during my senior year at Northwestern (we got a free pizza party at Lou Malnati's at the end of the term--best class ever). In light of what I learned during that course, the presidential election has become much more fascinating over the past few weeks as it dips into the realm of filthy mud-slinging. As citizens, we should be disgusted. How often do we read or watch the news on the race and see something about health care? Energy? Strategies for the economy? All the coverage focuses on other immensely significant questions like, "Was Obama having lunch at Spago on Friday with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton?" or "Did Obama pull out the race card when he made the comment about the dead presidents occupying our currency?"

In the age of the sound bite, the photo op, and the video highlight, these questions end up shaping the public opinion of a candidate. As far as issues go, most people will vote along party lines. It's the impression that will end up swaying swing voters. And no one is better at creating a negative impression of their opponent for the voting public than Karl Rove and the Republicans. It's gotten to the point that when the McCain camp pulled out the "Obama is playing the race card" card last week, I didn't even bother to debate the merits of their argument; I knew it was completely inane. But I had to marvel at the political strategy behind it. The second Obama said something that could be remotely construed as racially charged, they jumped on it so they could make race fair game in the discussion AND say that Obama started it. Never mind that Obama only months ago delivered one of the most eloquent and powerful oratories in American history on the subject of race. Never mind that saying "Obama played the race card" has absolutely no meaning behind it whatsoever. Think about it; it doesn't. There's no meaning behind any of these stories, only the insinuation for many voters that the negro everybody seems to like so much has something up his sleeve. That's why it's so hard for Democrats to fight back against these allegations, from Gore to Kerry but hopefully not to Obama. They try to counter with rational arguments, but you can't fight nonsense with reason.

While I was taking the class, I read what I believe was a New York Times article on a popular political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. Both parties were vying for his services because he had such a stellar grasp on the campaign process and the framing of public opinion. The article began with a powerful speech by Al Gore denouncing George W. Bush's fraudulent attacks upon his character and then launching into a vicious attack on all of Bush's well-documented shortcomings. The article then asked the reader, "It doesn't sound familiar does it? That's because Gore never made this speech." It turned out that the speech was written by this political scientist, who lambasted Gore and the Democrats for taking the high road and being afraid to get dirty. The problem with the high road, he argued, was that it allowed the insinuations to remain in the public consciousness. Denying the attacks only further legitimized them. However, by getting a little dirty you question the motives, records, and character of the other side and it puts the negative focus back onto them.

I was reading a political blog a couple of hours ago, and I was amazed by the depth of its analysis of McCain's tactics. I scanned down to look at the author's bio, and I realized that it was written by the very same Emory political scientist I had read about all those years ago. I thoroughly recommend reading this article. It doesn't denounce McCain or Obama, but it takes a frank look at just what McCain's camp is doing at a strategic level to hang tight in a race that by the issues he has no right winning. Here is the link to the article.

I know politics is a touchy issue, and I would never presume to tell anyone what to think about any candidate. Of course I'm more than happy to share what I think about a candidate. The point of this post is to activate a higher level of thinking about what you read, what you see, and what you hear. When you're making a voting decision, and you're looking at all the different things you've seen, read, and heard about a candidate, make sure to think about the context and the framing of how those images, sound bites, videos, and ideas were presented to you. Thinking about how politicians frame their issues makes the whole game a lot more interesting. I sincerely hope you read the article.

If not, Mel Brooks always manages to do it better. I think the first minute and twenty seconds of this clip capture it best: