Will others vote for him? How much money have others given him? Never before have these questions been asked so frequently leading up to a presidential election.Voters should evaluate a candidate based on his/her ability to solve the problems facing Americans, not by speculating how others will vote. In short, voters should ponder ideas, not the placement of ideas.
Somehow, "electability" has become a campaign issue -- alongside environmental policy, health care, and foreign policy.To be sure, electability should not be confused with viability -- whether a candidate has enough experience, runs an organized campaign, has enough supporters.
Electability bases itself not on a voter's opinions as to whose ideas serve Americans best but rather on whether my neighbor thinks her neighbor's brothers' boss's sister's friend's dad likes the candidate or not. See how cyclical this is -- and how silly it is? Too often, voters replace their own opinions with speculation of others' opinions. Essentially, nobody stands for her own opinion.
John Stuart Mill wrote how government declines when individuals allow others to form their own opinions. Mill disdained the mass of people whose "thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers." Mill would hate voters considering electability.
Wesley Clark is the quintessential candidate propped up by the electability issue. Next to nobody has said, "He has good ideas!" Besides the foreign policy issue, he finds his support merely based on the electability issue: "He can beat Bush" generates the enthusiasm instead. Make General Clark run in a Congressional race in Pennsylvania, and he won't make it through the primaries (in fact, he has never won an election, not even a student council one). In short, some support Clark not because he has the answers for America, but because they think others will like him.
George W. Bush's political fortunes have risen not from his ideas as much as his fundraising. Sizing up the 2004 election, pundits do not look at the size of his ability to recover the 2.9 million jobs lost during his tenure but instead look at the size of the stack of his Benjamin Franklins. Since when is democracy a betting house? Democracy wanes in this country when politics lacks debates, and millions in the Bush campaign prevent a feasible challenger for debate.
Howard Dean's first flurry of attention lamentably came when he was able to amass many donations (albeit much smaller ones than all other candidates) last summer and not from his plan to insure the 43 million Americans who currently suffer without health insurance. His ideas merit more analysis than his campaign's money chest.
Returning to the electability perversion, it hinges upon placement.That is, placement on a political spectrum. To place candidates is a glib oversimplification of politics. Nobody can know which position will best befit the country.
First, it remains impossible to accurately place each candidate along a spectrum. OK, so he supports renewable energy sources. Put him in left field, just a tad closer to the center from the communists! How to place a candidate who supports multilateral cooperation among nations, preservation of wild lands, yet advocates gun-owning rights and balanced budgets? Impossible.
Second, electability fixates exclusively on Democrats this election. Even if a placement mechanism could be found (someone e-mail Sabato), Bush and his radical administration would be falling off the right wing, despite his flag pin. Such a jolt to the right may have upset the political balance so much to earn a moderate Democratic candidate jeers that he's "too liberal." Just look at Bush's crusade to end federal overtime protection for sweaty workers while eliminating dividend taxes for idle investors. It's hard to call someone centrist who rewards wealth, not work.
Third, an emphasis on placement by the politicians themselves dilutes their principles and instead can leads to what some call "pandering." Here goes Joe Lieberman's new television ad airing in South Carolina: "How do we defeat Bush's extreme agenda? It'll take more than extreme anger. Joe Lieberman has spent 30 years rejecting the extremes of both parties."
Lately politicians have pandered to the ambivalent swing voter. Politicians then tend to vote against their consciences to send Marines to Iraq, where they shot fourteen-year old Imad Mohammed and his dad to death in April while they peacefully drove through Baghdad.
Since when did undecided, under-informed, uninterested Americans determine public policy? Does an uninsured girl in Texas whose femur just snapped care about the political placement of the leader who can provide her with health care?
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison spoke of their fear that economic power might seize political power. In this election, voters should choose the candidate who can reverse this seizure and not speculate about who Suzy might like. It's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.
(Brandon Possin's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bpossin@cavalierdaily.com.)
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