I stayed up to listen to George Bush's state of the union speech last night. It was homework. I am okay listening to people I hate or disagree with, as long as the experience is okay.
Why are polticians so dull? Because that's what really bothers me. Bush is dull. We know he has loads of speechwriters and advisors drafting this stuff for him and what these great minds create is just dull dull dull. There is no crafted use of rhetoric, nothing you can nod in surprise agreement with, no turns of phrase that are admirable or delightful and nothing that raises your ire and has you shouting at the radio in fury.
In fact, his speech was not a speech, but reading out. I listened again and imagined that I was marking this speech as if it was GCSE English speaking task. Overall it was barely a C grade.
And, of course this is a strategy. To portray him as a regular dullard who can't really talk in elegant sentences or even pronounce words (nuke-ular) correctly makes him the perfect candidate. The secret is not to put anyone in charge who actually looks like they deserve it. People want a Prez who makes them feel better. They want a Prez who is like the woman in the supermarket dressed in a washed out sickly beige uniform who, even if the customers are in an egg-stained worn out velour track suit, makes them feel a little superior.
The second thing to do is to lower the expectations of what is actually said. Make your speech stoopid and easy to understand for people who can neither read nor listen beyond grade 7. Declare that in a unique, challenging and original moral twist that obviously reverses centuries of wisdom and thought, you won't give in to evil. Let's ban mad scientists making Spiderman. Yeah, that covers the complex, ever-evolving and morally ambiguous questions that arise with the speed and breadth of genetic research. Lets not make Hedgehog-Boys or Penguin-Girls. Hurrah. I agree with that! Hail to the chief!
I think people in general are threatened by culture, cleverness and learning. It makes them feel inferior. What I personally want is wise and clever people in charge of making complex and crucial decisions such as sending my children off to die by the side of a road in a dusty broken down country far away, or whether I can still have a job tomorrow, but it seems that Americans can't handle that.
Bush's White House fosters and supports this notion by making their man appear as dumb as possible and making the topics of debate as simple and boring as possible. Their aim is to deliberately turn the public off political thinking. They want it to feel like the homework that you can't face doing because American Idol is on the other side.
Politics is NOT therapy. That's the bloody problem here.
ReplyDeletePolitics is NOT about you. That goes for "you" the candidate and "you" the voter.