This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 17, 2012 - There was a time when issue voters were avidly courted in political circles. These informed citizens owed allegiance to no particular party, were impervious to the allure of charisma and susceptible to rational argument.
Though actual encounters with these rare beasts were a lot like Sasquatch sightings — often reported but never quite proved — candidates would go to great lengths to detail their positions on a variety of complex issues in hopes of winning their support. It was for them that debates were held.
Today, of course, all that has changed. Ideology has transformed politics into an exercise of secular religion and issue voters are its least persuadable participants. Whether the topic is abortion, guns, animal rights, immigration, evolution, ethanol or life-after-death, the true believer will stand behind his champion, regardless of his short-comings.
In Missouri, for instance, Republican Todd Akin was locked in a dead heat with the Democratic incumbent, Claire McCaskill, for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Then “Odd Todd” strayed off the reservation during a televised interview with Charles Jaco and ventured into the always treacherous realm of speculative gynecology.
His resultant commentary was so bizarre that leaders of his own party publicly implored Akin to quit the race. He refused and promptly dropped about 5 percentage points in the polls, where he has since remained. But note that his core pro-life constituency did not jump ship, reasoning, I suppose, that the captain’s ideological virtues outweighed the vices of his practical misconceptions.
With the general public intractably divided on most significant issues, critics complain that modern debates are little more than over-hyped beauty contests. This assertion is both true and not as bad as it sounds.
To the extent that a debate consists of rational argument over stated propositions, the televised presidential spectacles may be better understood as episodes of a reality show. “Survivor, D.C.,” perhaps…
But they do give the audience a chance to get to know the candidates, to see how each responds under pressure. After all, these guys are auditioning for a job and it seems reasonable for their potential employers to demand a pre-employment interview to better judge an applicant’s character.
Of course, most viewers have already made up their minds, so it falls ironically to a thin sliver of “undecideds” to decide the outcome. Some of these people are the woefully clueless who only recently learned that an election is pending. Others may be the elusive, classical issue-voters I mentioned at the outset. For this latter group, I offer a couple of questions you may want answered before you cast your ballot.
Mr. Obama: The Budget Control Act provides for automatic spending cuts at year’s end if Congress can’t get its fiscal act together by then. Under terms of the sequestration, the Pentagon’s share of the misery would be a $492 billion reduction for the rest of the decade. Defense officials predict disaster if the cuts are imposed.
Meanwhile, we’ve had about 30,000 US troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War. For those of you keeping score at home, hostilities in that one ended 59 years ago. Today, South Korea is a prosperous, free-market republic.
Q: If these people still can’t protect themselves from their psycho neighbors to the north, shouldn’t they at least assume the cost of maintaining the U.S. forces that do so? If they won’t pay, isn’t it time for us to go home? Shouldn’t all of our foreign military deployments be subjected to the same test? Wouldn’t this strategy reduce defense spending without jeopardizing national security?
Mr. Romney: You propose to counter the looming Medicare crisis by modifying the program. As I understand your plan, citizens 55 and older would receive the current benefits while those younger would receive an annual subsidy when they retire — a voucher, if you will — to purchase private health insurance.
Q: As medical insurance companies exist to make a profit, they’d prefer to insure healthy young people who don’t ride motorcycles. How could they possibly provide the current coverage to seniors more cheaply when Medicare is going broke doing just that on a nonprofit basis? Why would they want to? And don’t you think the younger taxpayers will come to resent paying for a program from which they’ll never benefit? Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply extend Medicare to everyone and allow employers and participants under 65 to divert the private premiums they now pay into the system?
Question to both: Given the overwhelming problems confronting the next president and the amount of crap you have to endure to get elected, shouldn’t we be worried that you guys have some unresolved ego issues of your own?