I received a phone call during another presidential election, several years ago. One of the candidates wanted a meeting with a few people who could "infuse new ideas into the campaign." But it soon became apparent that the would-be president had a national television appearance on "Face The Nation" the next day and desperately needed some new language and symbols to save his faltering campaign.
Further probing revealed that a substantial discussion of political vision and direction was not really being requested. "Sound bites"--that's what he wanted. He lost. Since then the competition has gotten stiffer. And the public has gotten more cynical.
There is nothing quite like a presidential election year to reveal how empty and dissatisfying our political process has become. "Democracy" has got to mean more than this. Fully two-thirds of the American people now expresses deep concern and dissatisfaction with the basic direction of the country. Yet, another national election will likely go by without those concerns being fundamentally addressed or even seriously discussed. We can safely predict that our declining patterns of voting in the United States will continue this year, with upwards of half of those eligible not bothering to show up on November 3, and untold numbers of people (especially those at the bottom of the economic scale) never even registering to vote.
The ritual of passive public polling has now almost completely replaced genuine citizen participation as the operative practice of political life. Candidates compete against each other with their quick media sound bites, negative attack ads, and carefully calculated images on the television stage, which has become the primary--and virtually the only--arena of public political discourse. After the exchange of symbols, code words, and dishonest slander, a poll is taken and the winners declared. The election is merely the final poll, with the networks declaring the outcome even before the voting booths are closed.
The media celebrities who modestly claim to only "report the news" are clearly its arbiters now, along with their producers and, especially, the huge corporate conglomerates that now own the news business. These telegenic superstars "tell" the public what the issues are, determine how they should be defined, decide who gets to speak to them (and who doesn't); and then the commentators tell us what "reasonable" people should think about them. Then they take another poll to see what we think about what they have told us. Right on cue, the eager candidates, along with their own pollsters and "spin doctors," take the results and announce their positions on the issues.
Genuine public dialogue and debate about the questions that most affect people's lives and impact the national character are continually pre-empted by this closed system of media-oriented political "bread and circuses," which gives enormous advantage to those forces in the society whose money and power already control the political landscape. The triumph of technique over substance now governs American politics. Television has taken over the role that party bosses once played in selecting the political candidates, but that can hardly be called reform.
THE IDEA OF local, national, and global issues being the subject of grassroots public discussion and debate (even between election years!) and then filtering up the political process is so foreign to us in our top-down, media-stifled discussion that we have almost completely forgotten how such a democratic, "town meeting" tradition influenced our earlier history. With American demographics changing so quickly and a multicultural future emerging so clearly (despite the wishes of Pat Buchanan), a fundamental renewal of the "arts of democracy," as Frances Moore Lappe has described it, is absolutely crucial now to prevent most of us from feeling and being simply left out.
Left out is what most Americans seem to feel again this election year. In the midst of a domestic crisis and international opportunity that cry out for new vision, the dominant political characteristics in the land remain cynicism and despair. The horribly shattered link between what people believe and what they ever have a chance to vote for could begin to be repaired.
But not this year. George Bush's lack of "the vision thing" has finally caught up with him; many are unsure whether the president really believes anything, and the quintessential manager of the system becomes quite vulnerable when the system is failing. No one doubts that Pat Buchanan really believes in things--like an America designed primarily for conservative white European men and the political utility of blaming the nation's problems on all those who don't fall into that category.
We know by now that Bill Clinton is very bright and very ambitious. But we don't yet know whether his vision extends much beyond becoming president of the United States or if the American people will ultimately trust that he has integrity. Clinton is the only candidate to reach out successfully to both blacks and working-class whites (with rhetoric borrowed from Jesse Jackson but lacking Jackson's content). Whether that will result in a substantial challenge to the powerful monied establishment, which Clinton represents, remains to be seen.
Fellow Gulf war enthusiast Paul Tsongas attracted support for his personal perseverance and perceived "honest talk." But the words suggested no real alternative to the pro-business, trickle-down economics that we have endured for so long; a new strategy for investment falls far short of a call for the transformation of economic and political power.
That seems to be the message of Jerry Brown, who has struck a responsive chord among environmentalists and those who believe the system is "rigged" for those at the top. His candidacy demonstrates the future political space for a new message, but Brown's failure so far to reach out to the disenfranchised and his lack of a coherent plan beyond a dubious "flat tax" and a constantly repeated 800 number may doom his campaign to fall far short of its potential.
Tom Harkin, who might have brought a true "rainbow coalition" together, ran a horrible campaign, choosing old Democratic rhetoric over a new populism and demonstrating a mean spirit and negative style that turned off even his would-be friends. And Bob Kerry's campaign never got off the ground.
WHILE THIS presidential election year will again feature the moral bankruptcy of the ruling political powers and the lack of compelling alternatives, it already has demonstrated the deep hunger for something better. A politics rooted in principles that again spark people's imagination and involvement, a social vision based on bringing people together instead of dividing them, an economic plan governed by the ethics of community and sustainability instead of competition and unlimited growth, a restored sense of our covenant with the politically abandoned poor and with our severely damaged environment, and a renewal of authentic citizen politics--such renewal could reawaken the public impulse to participate in the political process.
Indeed, the creation of such a spiritually rooted politics is already under way in many places, which should not be forgotten despite the dismal presidential debate. We must all make our personal choices in regard to the narrow options that again confront us this election year. But the construction of new political options based on our most deeply held values and best religious traditions remains our most important public priority.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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