sozobe wrote:When I think about "why," the first thing that comes to mind is "character." That seems like a uniquely American preoccupation when it comes to public figures. I think other cultures are more likely to judge a politician on what laws he or she passes, what effect he or she has on society, what he or she does in the capacity of politician.
If that's true (it's a spare though, I dunno if it is), the question is still WHY is that a uniquely American preoccupation? Maybe something to do with frontier, pioneers, Horatio Alger -- the American story, the American narrative, who we think we are as a people. Our character. I think politicians are supposed to demonstrate a certain fundamentally American character... blame Teddy Roosevelt, blame JFK, blame MLK even ("not by the color of their skin but the content of their character").
And if that general premise is true -- that character is uniquely important -- then it's hard to draw lines. He's a good guy -- except that he's a louse to his wife. (As mentioned here, I think a guy could be considered both basically good and lousy to his wife more easily in the recent past than now.) Vs. (non-American view): He's an effective politician. He gets stuff done. (Who cares what he's doing in his private life, it's not pertinent to his job.)
This is a great post, which I feel was brushed past a bit on the page or two after -- and it resonates hugely with me.
Lemme ramble for a while to maybe make clear what I mean.
I'm from a country where people overwhelmingly vote on the basis of politics. Ideology is too big a word maybe, but you're leftwing or Catholic or liberal (read: free market, entrepreneur or wealthy), or Protestant or centrist... and you vote accordingly.
For sure, we have a lot more "floating voters" than, say, 10 years ago in the Netherlands, far more than 25 years ago; and the completely "pillarised" society from the early and mid-20th century, in which people basically didnt interact with other people outside their religious or ideological pillar, are long gone. And thanks to the superficiality of media coverage and the ever smaller ideological differences, more and more people also do seem to vote on the basis of superficialities, like whether they like someone.
But even with such developments trending up, the overwhelmingly majority still votes on the basis of -- if not quite the intricacy of policy -- political orientation. There's a lot of electoral volatility as people flit from party to party, but the proportions between the different currents are very stable. Because in the end, you vote
for the guy you agree with. End of story.
It's not much different here in Hungary, where society seems to be split in two social tribes, which split the political landscape in two and probably would no matter who or what the party leaders are. You dont particularly vote for Gyurcsany, if you vote MSzP - you vote for that party because you're part of the socialist/postcommunist/leftwing tribe. And popular though Viktor Orban may be, people who vote for his conservative Fidesz party vote for
Fidesz, and would mostly vote for it no matter who led it, short of the guy being a homocidal rapist.
From that perspective, US politics is maddening. Party ties are very weak, and apart from minority constituencies like the Religious Right, even ideological loyalties are comparatively shaky. Less than they used to be, there's been a lot of "sorting", but still you can have conservatives voting for a Dem (see Mysteryman with Evan Bayh), or moderates voting for a radical Republican (Reagan winning in a landslide).
You got people voting for someone, into a position of executive power so vast in its authority we Europeans have trouble even contemplating it, whom
they dont agree with on a whole bunch of things ... because he's a Good Person. Or because they Trust Him. You have someone like O'Bill mad for Obama, for example. Charisma plays a bigger role and party affinity a smaller one, and whole swathes of muddily centrist voters in the end just make an assessment of what kind of person the guy is, and vote purely or dominantly on that.
Taking all that into account, I'm not so surprised that any personal scandal then gets blown up too -- now that there's a plethora of TV stations and internet sites that dont hesitate on much any subject in place to amplify it.
I mean, if in the end, you see your voting duty not as seeking out the person who most agrees with your beliefs and/or is most likely to successfully act on them, but as seeking out the person who's most trustworthy, reliable, strong, whatever -- then well, you're gonna use what you can get. And that's the candidate's personal life, and everything in it.
In that sense I see the incomparably greater fascination/obsession with the life story and "character" of the candidate in the US as an expression of a far going de-politicisation, funny as that may sound after 8 years of Bush. Sure, partisan passion now runs high among both parties' activist base, but outside the religious right and the rarefied elite spheres of the WSJ and Weekly Standard, and outside the liberal academia and the anti-war activist base, there's just a void of ideology.
In as far as there
is a fundamental clash of beliefs anyway, it's the culture wars -- which again centre highly on individual, moralistic notions rather than ideological, economical ones: abortion, guns.
So even aside from household sensationalism, the whole focus of political culture pulls the audience's attention to, say, politician's X extramarital affair (rare peek at the man behind the mask!) rather than, say, the outrageous mistake he made about health care policy (he'll have managers to sort that out).
Still riffing about this theme, there's another aspect pegging into this. You have this media sphere where politicians move around in divisions of PR armor, each with their legion of spinners replacing objective experts as the TV's pundits, and all of them rarely challenged critically by journalists beyond gotcha questions. Nothing is improvised, leaving very litte authenticity out there to observe. So you have an electorate which desperately seeks a sense of who these people really are, what their souls are like, basically; and a virtual media reality where no authenticity that can provide any reliable check on that exists. In that contest, breaking scandals, things that were meant to stay a secret but blow up unintentionally, then become one of the very few ways in which the public can "catch" a sense of , ahh so thats who he really is beneath the veneer!
Anyway, that's how Soz's post really resonated with me - the person- and personality-focused discourse of US politics is maddening enough for someone who comes from a largely party- and ideology-focused discourse. Other than that, of course, I think you have to look at the media, media culture, the slash and burn of commercial competition for attention, etc; and, on a causally related note, at the increasingly exhibitionist culture channeled through it, in which nothing is kept private, and nothing is considered off-limits. (When it comes to people's private lives, of course, secretive policies are a different matter). Well, the Big Brother era, etc etc. Presidents in previous generations were no less caddish, but the media didnt ask, etc. All the obvious points. May all be more important than the above riff, but that one's definitely an element.
! it was given EXTENSIVE coverage by the german press - and germany has a lot of magazines that thrive on "celeb" stories of all kinds .
