As I mentioned before, McCain released a new ad almost immediately after Biden was announced as Obama’s running mate. Biden, of course, ran against Obama in the primary and had some pretty harsh criticisms of him at the time. Perfect fodder for a McCain ad:
There’s only one problem with this ad: people today don’t care. We live in a world where cognitive dissonance is the norm. We’re so conditioned by our society toward relativism and cynicism that an about-face in opinion like this doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. It’s a modern ad in a postmodern world.
In earlier times, people would look at this ad and decide one of three things: Biden was lying during the primary, he’s lying now, or he was grossly ignorant of Obama’s “readiness” during the primary and in just a few short months has discovered his error. Whichever one they landed on, Biden’s credibility and trustworthiness would be severely damaged. People still believed in integrity; they believed that insincerity in one area was a character flaw that would affect all areas of a person’s judgment. That is, they would think to themselves, “if we can’t trust what he says about Obama, how can we trust what he says about how he would improve the economy?”
Not so today. Today we shrug our shoulders and say, “that’s politics.” We can do that because we have replaced the values of integrity and character with the values of pragmatism and utilitarianism. In other words, no one cares whether Joe Biden has personal integrity; they care whether he’s going to help or hurt the Democratic ticket, and whether his ideas for change will benefit the nation.
We’ve been conditioned to think this way over many years, through many political campaigns and administrations.
This isn’t the first time a bitter primary opponent became a cheerleading running-mate. Remember the 1980 Republican primary? Who was it that ridiculed Reagan’s proposed economic policies as “voodoo economics”? That would be George H. W. Bush, during the primary. Later, of course, Bush became Reagan’s veep and suddenly supply-side economics was okay. Nobody cared about that — but they did care when he pledged not to raise taxes and then broke his promise. When it impacted policy and, ultimately, people’s pocketbooks, it cost him reelection. We learned.
Then there was Bill Clinton. Sure he was a louse — unfaithful to his wife, lecherous in the Oval Office — but nobody cared as long as the economy was going well. Since his moral lapses and character flaws didn’t appear to impact public policy, everything including perjury was rationalized away. We learned.
Meanwhile, we’ve learned about and highlighted the moral failings of earlier presidents — Kennedy and FDR having mistresses, Washington and Jefferson owning slaves, etc. — and these facts have been used to convince us that no leader has ever had real integrity. All perceived heroes are deconstructed. We’ve given up hope of the possibility that any candidate could ever really be a person of character, so all that’s left to us is the practical and utilitarian.
And that’s why McCain’s ad doesn’t work. He’s not going to get any traction trying to tear down his opponent’s integrity, or for that matter playing up his own integrity and heroism (’96 also-ran Bob Dole was a war hero, too). What voters want today is someone whom they perceive as competent and having domestic (primarily economic) and foreign policies that will benefit them (voters) the most.
Pragmatism and utilitarianism are the only currency in modern political campaigns. Integrity is passé.
Ah … but constant negative ads WORK. It’s not about swaying the majority of the voters. It’s about getting that handful of undecided voters.
But I’ll tell you what, C.J., let’s you and I make a promise to constantly flood the Peoria blogosphere with discussion of issues related to the presidential race. And by issues, I’m not talking about the day’s spin about who owns how many houses …
Billy: First, I cleaned up the horrific misspellings in your comment (don’t say I never did anything for you). 🙂
Second, yes, of course negative ads work. But some negative ads are more effective than others. All candidates use negative ads, and yet only one candidate wins in each contest.
Third, I’m all for covering the issues.
The dirty little secret is that you usually only have to sway about 10% of the voters… everyone is going to vote party lines or the same way they always do. That’s why the polls are always 40-40 at this time of year and 48-48 around election time.
There it is. You hit the nail squarely on the head. Nobody has any personal responsibility nor any integrity left. Those of us that do are in the minority and are scorned for it.
Adept, skillful and articulate analysis. Enjoyable reading.
But there has to be some thing like integrity, some “faint semblance of Eden” that resides within our future leaders, isn’t there? I can’t spot it. So, what residence of comfort can be afforded us voters concerning these candidates? If they have not the cornerstone of integrity, then what foundation do they provide that can build our trust? Are we just gambling nowadays within our elections? Are our votes nothing more than currency at the betting window?
You have hit the nail on the head C. J-great post.
Iknow who to blame for the lack of ethics in our elected officials.
Look in the mirror.
Walter Mondale told the truth, and we hated him for it.
There’s a reason why candiates concentrate on nonsense and not the issues: IT WORKS.
“nobody cared as long as the economy was going well.” Nobody? You usually don’t do this CJ. Overgeneralizing. Some of us cared. Some of us (yes, on all parts of the political spectrum) still have integrity. Unfortunately, we are in the minority, but we are not giving up.
Mouse — it was a rhetorical device, not a literal statement.
If the idea is that we should elect McCain because he is a war hero, then we should have used the same argument in 2004 and elected Kerry over Bush. Being a war hero does not make someone qualified to be President.
Ben — The only qualifications for President are being a natural-born citizen of the U.S. and being at least 35 years of age. But I get your point. And you’re a perfect illustration of what I was saying. Personal character and integrity are not seen by the general public as essential qualities for being president anymore.
I recall someone commenting a week or two ago, that they will not vote for McCain, but will be voting for McCain’s VP. And as pointed out here kcdad, the choice in VP is about swinging that middle ten percent.
A crazy idea occurred to me: What if McCain chose Ron Paul as his running mate? There are a lot of avid Ron Paul supporters still slapping fresh bumper stickers on their cars.
Feel free to bash the idea to bits… I’m not trying to gain support- just proposing a “what-if” scenario.
@Thomas
RP would never VP with McCain. He has too much personal integrity.