It has been widely discussed, at least in my own margins of political science and literature enthusiasts, that the previous presidential elections were battled on the basis of a rather unfelt intellectual pulse.
The 2008 presidential election season produced a candidate who couldn’t stop pretending to be the Savior, a grumpy old man who, like the Kakapo bird in New Zealand, had forgotten some of his basic traits — like being a maverick.
Also Sarah Palin, who as if in Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” woke up one day in a completely different world and wasn’t sure how to function. We can’t forget that the 2008 election cycle also produced Joe the Plumber.
The culminating result, delivered to us in a cacophony of network television punditry, candidates appearing on special interest dinners and/or occasional stops at burger joints, was a philistine embrace of anti-intellectualism.
It seemed as though the grizzly bears of the American cultural divide had come to arousal, permanently marking their territory out of reach by wit and reason.
Although it does seem like America is in a perpetual state of campaigns and elections (how else can we justify our democratic rhetoric around the world?), I write this mostly because of the upcoming 2012 presidential elections.
I recall once theorizing that our country is afflicted, politically speaking at least, with multiple-personality disorder.
Whenever America desires, like an excited girl before a long-awaited date, to put on her educated (the term often terrorized as elitist), cultured and tolerant garments, she is immediately beaten over the head by her other half, urging her against false modesty, wanting her to look like the common folk.
Before you put on your annoying 17th century hats and witlessly say, “That is what the Founding Fathers had intended,” consider that they never intended for any political parties. I should say that reintroduction of those values is neither prudent nor beneficial.
This, of course, never happens elsewhere in the developed world. I somehow can’t imagine a German public-office candidate questioning the validity of DNA and be taken seriously, or a Norwegian candidate claiming foreign policy prowess just because his or her province shares a border with Sweden.
But that’s been the plight of the American voter in the previous presidential election: political figures who invoke the popular rhetoric of commonality and of immense stupidity.
This is important because since 2008, America certainly hasn’t become more ‘elitist’ (the kind of change some of us really hoped for), and though it is certain President Barack Obama is running for second term, the GOP prospect of candidates looks no better than 2008.
The potential GOP candidates range from Donald Trump, who has just recently announced he isn’t sure Obama is an American citizen, to Newt Gingrich, who cannot lecture us on family values as he has been married three separate times, and potentially Sarah Palin, about whom, dear reader, I am sure you know plenty.
I wonder if 2012 will be the year where no French wine, church or NRA memberships will be shoved down the electorate’s throat. I wonder if for once, leaders are elected on the merits of their policy platforms and not their folksy or entirely ‘elitist’ rhetoric.
I, for one, doubt it.
Reach Sohail at sbayot@asu.edu
