There’s No Business Like Political Show Business

Irving Berlin wrote:

and as we enter that particularly American bit of show business we call a Presidential election cycle, how can anyone ignore these lyrics. Now of course, Mr. Berlin wasn’t necessarily thinking about politics when he wrote ‘…everything that traffic will allow’ or for that matter’ when you are stealing that extra bow’ but as we look on in mock horror at the growing line-up of Democratic Presidential candidates just beginning to emerge… why not make it a theme song for the 2020 Presidential election cause if that’s not going to be a show what is.

The President’s State of the Union speech, his first campaign rally in El Paso, Texas and his warning that socialists have taken over the Democratic Party establishes the plot. He assumes the starring role and relegates the huge Democratic line-up on stage for the Presidential debates next year as a reprise of his successful slaying of the 17 Republican dragons whom he defeated one by one, debate by debate in 2016. The way he thinks, it is perfect. The more the merrier and even though he will not be stage center in the Democratic debates, who is going to predict that his Presidency won’t be?

And that remains the question and the challenge. Can the Democrats focus, as they did successfully in the recent Congressional midterm elections, on matters beyond the man in the White House? Can they compete among themselves on what the country needs, on the reality that this once exporter to the World now exports only armaments and soybeans; that this is a country where income inequality equals what it once was at the turn of the 20th Century; that we have a weak public education system that no longer teaches the history which should inform decisions made today; a country with policies that now deregulate established norms and protections and inflate the pockets of the privileged few who already own far too much of America?

And can they do this while withstanding the daily barrage of tweets from the rapper D. Trump which often distort facts and truths and sometimes just plain decency? Because a street-fighter is a street-fighter, a nick-name caller and a competitor who insists you play the game his way or lose. Democrats must recognize that if they play that game to regain the White House, they will not. If they understand that they will lose the show business game, the campaign will become the serious business it should be.

WHAT’S IN A NAME

So who will the Democratic candidate be?

Well without naming names, take your pick. He or she will be a:

Moderate, centrist, progressive, social democrat, Democratic socialist, economic liberal, social conservative, economic conservative, social liberal…the possibilities of political identification seem endless and are based on the need to separate one another from the pack.

Some will speak of ideologies and policies; others will be about being able to get tough on the President. Some will appeal to the mind, others to the emotions. Some will stress that a vision, what one thinks, that ideas will matter most and not whether those ideas, that vision can or will work.

But here’s a point for consideration: will ideas, ideologies and policies be understood by the national audience of potential voters?

Already the media is pointing at such oldsters as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the group of mostly women just elected to the House of Representatives as dragging the Party to the left as the result of their talk of Medicare for All, higher taxes on the rich, free college education and the Green New Deal an approach to fighting climate change.

The easy charge made by the media and picked up by Republican politicians of all stripes is that “These lefties want to make America socialist” as if any of them can clearly define socialism and make any decent case for the charge.

When Senator Sanders made his lightening charge across the country in 2016 to such millennial and student acclaim, he reminded people that he was a Democratic Socialist not a Democrat. We never did see any real media or social media coverage about who Democratic Socialists are. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used real legwork and determination to oust a twenty- year incumbent, Joe Crowley, from his House seat – while he was busy plotting how he would replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker – she also identified herself as a Democratic Socialist.

So perhaps understanding what all of these labels are about might be an important factor in determining which of these announced and as yet unannounced candidates will win the nomination.

LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING

We do not learn what we do not understand.

Historians tells us that the great powers who once ruled the World, lost those powers because they failed to educate their children.

And America has not disappointed. We too have lost the power that we gained in the 20th Century and held for so many years. We too have failed to teach our children the way we taught our grandparents. And as the years pass that lack of knowledge accumulates rapidly effectively dumbing us down so that our choices of limited people to lead us lead to unfortunate choices of limited people – and so weaken us.

Generations ago media would help them explain policy positions to voters, those days are gone. No longer does what we once called the fourth estate teach, explain and reveal. Today’s media – whether newsprint, broadcast or social – is about facetime, repetition, speculation and often unproved theories passed off as fact.

For instance, wouldn’t it be nice if someone in the media explained what Democratic Socialists are? If they told us about its founder Michael Harrington, an academic, historian, advocate, organizer and writer who understood that America would never accept the socialism of the 30’s and 40’s because it had become the undisputed world leader of capitalism. But who also understood as all liberals do, that while government should not control the marketplace, it must be able to influence the marketplace to balance opportunities for all, or the result would be unfettered income inequality – that kind of inequality we have today where a tiny percentage of Americans own the vast majority of this country’s wealth.

In 1962 Harrington wrote of poverty in America. It was the most comprehensive look at poverty ever written about this country and it became the foundation of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Harrington formed the Democratic Socialists in the 1980’s as an organization not a political party. It exists today in that form. All the talk of the left as socialists is just that…talk.

And undoubtedly great material for America’s chief rapper. You won’t be able to miss it.

That said there is a decent argument that those presenting new ideas have a responsibility to explain how those ideas can and will work. Vision is critical but it must also be something that caring citizens can understand and discuss. Tearing across the country promising a new America is wonderful – just ask Bernie. But never explaining how that America will work will not get you elected. Just ask Bernie.

Our weak education system has not prepared America for a high level of policy sophistication. The ultimate challenge will be to defeat ignorance and disrespect with simplicity and intelligence. The candidate who does it best will ignore the show business and show us some truths.