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Pruning down the field of US presidential candidates to the two main contenders has involved the longest and most over-viewed vetting process ever devised. The only comparable media event would have to be "Celebrity Big Brother," which also alternatively riveted, bored and disgusted a considerable portion of the world's population, whether they could cast a vote or not. For better or worse, this is how our participatory democracy works these days, and the real question, of course, is how well we can see past the smoky mirrors set up by the media and the campaign managers and satisfy ourselves that our choice of a favorite qualifies as an informed decision.The parallels between the two spectacles are probably already obvious to anyone familiar with both. Having volunteered to endure a 24/7 public scrutiny for months on end, contestants and candidates cannot legitimately complain when the electronic surveillance provides the world with an inside view of all their successes and foibles. Like it or not, they have to contend with the constant demands for personal details, the sudden outbreaks of nasty spats and the regular competitive tasks, be they serious debates or frivolous bowling contests, any of which might result in a very public humiliation. Most similar of all is the anxiety of knowing that the camera is waiting to pounce every time one of those embarrassing little toads the kind that Anne Bancroft and Shirley Maclaine let loose in "The Turning Point" hops out of someone's mouth at an unguarded moment. And then finally, whether through an indiscretion or simply the inevitable process of elimination, they have to leave the scene, one by one, to cheers and jeers.
If this seems an odd way to select a president, perhaps there is nonetheless a certain survival-of-the-fittest logic behind it. If we accept the notion that candidates who can successfully run the reality-show gauntlet will probably be able to endure pretty much anything real-reality subsequently throws at them, maybe it is a valid way for them to prove they have the "cojones" to do the job in the end. It's certainly the theory of CBB that the winner will inevitably be the one who most deserved to triumph, and viewers seem to buy this conclusion. We also cannot forget that personality and policy both count significantly in voters' minds, and in the worst of times, which the present time certainly is, history usually does come down to the quality of the person at the helm and his or her ability to discern the best course of action as well as implement it in the best possible way.
The problem is that, despite all the months and months of endless scrutiny, having confidence that we have seen the candidates' true colors always remains elusive. It's almost as if the more Big Brother facts we collect, the more impossible it becomes to feel we know these people as real flesh-and-blood human beings. Sooner or later, it might even reinforce the idea that ultimately human beings are just very strange creatures indeed, ever unpredictable, ever unfathomable, and ever untrustworthy.
And such a conclusion, while true to an extent, is not going to help us when it comes time to cast our vote. At some point, we have to fall back on our own ability to judge whether to believe what we see or not.
To persevere, we need to deal with an even more complex aspect of our public vetting process, which I call the 'What Lies Beneath' phenomenon. More than introducing the shadow of a doubt, this phenomenon whispers that what appears to us to be pretty good could very, very easily be its exact opposite. In this suspicious mind-set, it feels as if something has shifted in our whole perception of reality rather as if the magnetic poles had swopped places and nobody told us. In this suspicious mind-set, as in the film of that title, Harrison Ford of all people can turn out to be a monster, without any foreshadowing or explanation at all.
We see this phenomenon at work on Obama, as we might expect, in the fear-mongering rightwing media, painting him as an appeaser, a radical Marxist or a Black Power revolutionary. These attacks are also more disturbingly coming from the left, however, identifying Obama as a corporate stooge, a black Bill Clinton or even an articulate Bush-clone. Sometimes, as in the case of John Pilger, the attack comes from a figure highly worthy of respect, thus rendering his suggestion that Obama is "liberalism's last fling," the pretty face who will administer the final coup de grace to America's chances of ever doing penance for its dark foreign policy past, much harder to ignore.
Nonetheless, my solution to this conundrum will be to remember that people are almost never either as good or as bad as some imagine them to be. We can all be wrong and often are, but the main problem lies in our own tendency to think the best or the worst about others as a matter of course. Interestingly, there's a Buddhist mediation practice that uses exactly that approach to help us put our friends and enemies into a more leveled perspective.
So, as well as reminding myself that Obama is probably not the devil in disguise (Tom Hanks supports him, after all), I will also never mistake him for Luke Skywalker and expect him to be the last, best hope for the Galaxy. There's no need to falsely exaggerate his abilities or join the Obamaniacs who see him as the perfect One to vote for him; after all, most US presidents have been mediocre, few have had appropriate experience, and the only decision we have to make is whether or not he is preferable to McCain.
And, to be fair, neither man is responsible for the larger-than-life grip that political candidates gain on our public and private consciousness. I will therefore also keep in mind that, since keeping up suspense to keep us tuning in is a key part of the Big Brother process and a close contest is a godsend to the ratings, the only safe prediction we can make is that we should expect to see headlines such as the following right up until November 4th: CNN Poll: McCain and Obama locked in a dead heat.
