Leon Panetta qualifies for the label "statesman," an observation he reinforces with his latest bi-monthly column in the Monterey County Herald entitled "What's Missing in the '08 Run". The former congressman and White House Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton offers some lofty ideas about what the crop of candidates for both major parties ought to be addressing in what he calls this "interminable presidential campaign."
Panetta points out that the candidates on both sides have spent their time on the same old, same old on the campaign trail. He encourages all candidates to begin talking about five key topics he says are crucial to our next national leadership team:
* Vision of America
* Unification of the nation
* Respect for the Constitution
* Mobilization of the nation
* Honesty
While it's hard to argue that these are the conceptual areas on which many of us who think deeply about politics in America would like to see emphasized, Panetta seems to be a tad on the naive side when he says, "The American people would do well to make clear to all of the candidates that their judgment will not be based on sound bites, TV attack ads, or party propaganda." It seems to me that if the Democrats should have learned anything from the past few Presidential elections it is precisely that it is sound bites and TV attack ads to which the majority of the electorate responds. That is unfortunate but that doesn't make it less true.
The GOP -- and more particularly the Religious Right -- is a bumper-sticker party. Sloganeering substitutes for discourse. Over-simplification wins voters; nuanced explanations lose them in the dust. Republicans have become past masters of the sound bite and of the notion of the Big Lie. They have benefited from vicious and untrue attack campaigns like the Swift Boating of John Kerry. They judge -- and results seem to indicate they are correct -- that the American people do not want carefully studied and subtly defined positions on complex issues. They want to be promised exactly what they want with no shading of meaning and no qualification.
Republicans understand that to hold power, you must first obtain it and to obtain it you must do what the public wants and expects and understands. They've shown repeatedly that there need be no connection between what you say or promise in the campaign and what you actually do once you have the power.
Democrats dismiss that point intentionally but to some detriment to their cause.
I would love it if America would prove me wrong. I understand how cynical what I'm saying is. But if you let the Republicans run on their over-simplified 30-second solutions to major problems and ask Democrats to talk about the five crucial issues raised by Panetta, the Republicans will win election after election despite being completely out of step with America. Democrats must learn to oversimplify and understate problems and issues during campaigns so that they can gain the power to carry out their nuanced approaches to global issues from a position of political strength.
