Is Saying Incredibly Dumb Things, in Order to Get Elected, Good for the United States? — the Failure of Representative Government, as the Founders Probably Envisioned It

© 2011 Peter Free

 

14 November 2011

 

 

A key question about America’s future

 

Can a democratic nation act more intelligently than its lowest common denominator?

 

 

If we don’t rise above “nitwit-ism,” we’re going to fall farther than we should

 

The Republican Party’s presidential debates have illustrated how ignorant demagoguery is wrecking the nation’s success prospects.

 

The key point is not that the candidates are fools, although some clearly are.

 

The more important institutional question is whether capable politicians — operating under the tempestuous political rigors of modern American democracy — necessarily have to undercut Reality, by feeding on (and pandering to) the public’s ill-considered passions and often abysmal lack of knowledge.

 

 

Two examples of pure craziness from the last Republican presidential debate

 

The 12 November Republican Party debate saw Governors Romney and Perry destructively pandering to the public’s ignorance.

 

Former Governor Mitt Romney said that he, unlike President Obama, could prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons:

 

On Iran, Romney . . . mentioned sanctions and the Iranian opposition when asked about steps he would take to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But he made clear that those were merely first steps.

 

"If all else fails, of course you take military action," he said . . . .

 

"If we elect Barack Obama, Iran will have nuclear weapons. If you elect Mitt Romney, if you elect me, they will not."

 

© 2011 Stephen F. Hayes, Weekly Standard: The Great Foreign Policy Debate, NPR (14 November 2011)

 

And — apparently not wanting to be left off the Idiot Wagon as it rolled out of Lunacy Station — Governor Perry said that he would end foreign aid:

 

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas proposed wiping out standing foreign aid commitments to all nations — including Israel — and making them meet American conditions before receiving a penny . . . .

 

© Jim Rutenberg and Ashley Parker, Up for Debate: Foreign Policy and Obama, New York Times (12 November 2011)

 

 

“So what’s wrong with these ideas, Pete?”

 

The Iran and foreign aid ideas are (obviously) geopolitically unworkable and, therefore, “stupid.”

 

In regard to Romney’s silly bragging, Russia and China (and quite a few other nations) will not permit the United States to take unilateral military action against Iran.

 

Even if Russia and China did get out of our way, the United States has already demonstrated that it is incapable of completely subjugating Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were considerably less powerful than Iran.

 

As for Perry’s foreign aid guillotine, it apparently has not occurred to him that aid is vital in to securing America’s hard and soft power around the world.  With so many interests involved, cutting off these funds overnight is simply not going to happen, no matter who is president.

 

Equally obtuse, Perry’s emphasis on cutting foreign aid misleads the public into thinking that foreign aid is a major part of America’s distressed budget.  It’s not.  Foreign aid accounted for only about 1.46 percent of government spending, averaged over fiscal 2008 and 2009.

 

 

Ignorant blowhard-ism is bad for the United States

 

Two propositions:

 

First, hubris got us into this mess — more of the same “ain’t gonna” get us out.

 

Second, American politics no longer has anything to do with confronting real problems in effective ways.

 

Professor/Colonel Andrew Bacevich has often pointed out that the United States no longer has the power to dominate the world.

 

 

Hubris, like candidate Romney’s, is our enemy:

 

[W]e now know that U.S. military power, however imposing, falls well short of enabling the United States to impose its will on the Greater Middle East.

 

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates caught the new reality best:

 

“Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

 

© 2011 Andrew Bacevich, Big Change Whether We Like It or Not, Huffington Post (14 November 2011) (paragraph split)

 

In regard to our American democracy’s institutional ineffectiveness, Professor Marty Kaplan today concluded that politics has become entertainment, not the stuff that makes for a successful future:

 

We have finally arrived at the point that political campaigns are actually bad for America.

 

The more we watch, the less we know. The more they spend, the less we notice.

 

If you were to set out to design the process most likely to trivialize the toughest problems we face and least likely to build coalitions to solve them, you'd end up with pretty much what we have now.

 

What's on our country's plate is really scary stuff, but we're behaving as though this were Survivor, not survival.

 

© 2011 Marty Kaplan, Keeping Up With the Kandidates, Huffington Post (14 November 2011) (paragraph split)

 

 

The moral? — Misleading the public merely increases the ignorance that impedes us at home and abroad

 

Presidential candidates should not pander-paint escapist fantasies.

 

We can’t solve our problems, if we don’t know what they are or what contexts they operate in.

 

If American democracy really requires that our representatives be (and remain) as ignorant as the rest of us often are, the United States is in deep trouble.