The Sham Of “Personality”

Over the last few decades the demand for “personality” in our elected national leaders, or in the candidates for national office, has been growing. Among our electorate almost everywhere one hears such laments as “but he’s so dull,” and “he (or she) has no umph,” and “he just turns me off.”

This is, of course, a costly and potentially harmful criteria for deciding upon a candidate for office, or for withholding one’s critical interest in the job an elected official is doing. Using personality as a measure of competency or qualification for office would have cheated the country and its people out of the services of such presidents as Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and such senators as Robert Byrd and Bob Dole.

Pushing this growing addiction, of course, is the general media. Perhaps they initiated the pandemic lament. They certainly perpetuate it, desperate as they are to transform honest reporting into “entertainment,” especially on TV; of course for ratings.

Why has this demand taken root? It is a symptom of a growing dysfunctional culture in the U.S. It is not the fault of the populace. Generally people are no longer inspired nor encouraged to read, research, study, seek out answers to issues for themselves. Therefore they are not prepared nor are confident in thinking for themselves, though they would scream denials of this, when it comes to the important challenge of choosing leaders; the leaders who are responsible for shaping the quality and direction of the land, and the very conditions confronting the lives of the people.

Voters are left to depend on sound bites from TV, the characterization of leaders by others: supporters, opponents, news people and “pundits,” the biases of family and friends. The electorate is subjected to the hypnosis of sloganizing, commonly used in campaign strategy, character assassination and slurry innuendo, the cheapest form of political propaganda, and hype piled high and deep around the ears of the body politic.

We the people, individually and inherently capable of independent thinking, are thus conditioned into the trap of emotional reaction and herd mentality.

Roots of de-individualizaton

How did things come to this sad point? It starts in the home. More and more are the economics of the land and the value of money being skewed in favor of the wealthier and corporate factions of society. The adults of the typical family are more and more forced to work harder and longer for less value in their pay checks. They are burdened with the struggle to make ends meet, hard pressed to find time for rest, relaxation and energy to devote to their children.

Less and less do adults have the time or the attention to read for themselves and to their children; teaching them the delight of reading and doing lessons with their children, making it fun. This, of course, is how the young ones learn to enjoy study, reading and thinking for themselves.

The lure of just popping on the TV and numbing out with some brew at the end of increasingly hard days is almost irresistible. The children are left to entertain themselves, of course, with the same stultifying gadgets: TV, computer games and the like.

Let the talking heads think for us. Let the slogans and bites and hyped up images manipulate our emotions one way or another. Let the candidates and electees pump themselves up to perform like puppets, knowing that their political lives are dancing at the end of the strings.

Thus the passivity and dependency on the culture of hype starts in the home.

The typical school system presents the next level in the downward trend of individual competency and independent thinking. Why do so many young people find school boring and, except for friends, resent having to spend their time in class and doing homework? The system and culture of instruction in our schools is historically authoritative and oppressive.

Lessons are imposed, with the threat of negative criticism and stigma of poor grades. Students are typically not seen, nor encouraged, as unique individuals with unique potential and talents. Students are herded into stereotyped groups which are labeled in a classist way: dumb kids, poor learners, average kids, pretty smart and smartest kids. The population of these student groups is thin at the “top” and increases as the scale runs down.

Why is this so and why does it go on, despite the efforts of some to change and humanize the system? The system and culture of the wider society is itself structured in the same way. That is, society at large is organized in a classist, oppressive way in order to perpetuate the historical status quo: the elite and wealthy, the middle managers, the middle class, the working poor, the impoverished. This translates also in terms of family background, race, nationality, even religion. The greater number is at the bottom and the fewest, “privileged” occupy the top rung.

This is an ancient social arrangement that each succeeding generation is conditioned and socialized into accepting, no matter how unhappy and conflicted it makes human beings and their social relationships. Because we are inherently smart and self respecting, there are those who continually struggle to change and uplift human society. And, of course, there are the reactionary factions who, in order to protect their interest in the status quo, are forever trying to suppress and stigmatize the social changers.

In effect our school system is the great cookie cutter. It is the devaluation factory that spews out young people to conform to the dehumanizing architecture of society.

Flim flam in the 2004 presidential campaign

In the 2004 presidential campaign, it was heard over and over, drummed by the media, that the voters were not sure of who Senator John Kerry, the Democratic party standard bearer, was or what he stood for.

It remained for the Democratic National Convention, in July of the year, on the last day of the four day convention, to heavily feature John Kerry’s background, his family life and his “story.” As if cramming such a volume of information into a few hours, especially in “primetime” television, could really do a thorough job of it.

This was so exactly for the reasons spelled out in the above description of the declining culture of intellectual responsibility and independent thinking.

Of course the electorate had all the opportunity and means to learn about Kerry (and mostly all the other candidates) for weeks and weeks before the convention.

For many months, particularly from March through July of the year, once it was clear that Kerry became the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, countless articles appeared in the daily papers, on the Internet and other information sources, covering the life, the background, the “story” of John Kerry; countless articles about his views and potential policies.

I daresay there was much more printed about John Kerry than President Bush. Because Bush was president, that seemed to automatically infer that voters need not know more about him. In fact little detail was, and at this writing, is still not known, about George W. Bush, other than the few not so attractive headlines of his life: his drug and alcohol use as a young man, his questionable military service during the Vietnam war, even his record as Governor of Texas, although that is amply there for the reading.

Of course widely known about Bush is that he a member of a dynastic, wealthy and strongly influential family; a family of cloudy past connections and political dealings. What of his “story,” the circumstances of his life that helped to shape his perspective and actions? Are these not important subjects for an electorate to know and to consider in its obligation to choose its national leader (and thus leadership) wisely?

Yet, with respect to Kerry and Bush, (and to all officials of government)it is all there, all available for reading, study, individual analysis; for comparison and contrast. Surely, such an approach is crucial for the well being of our nation when it comes to electing candidates to such meaningful and fateful responsibilities.

This is the flim flam of present day politics. This is how the nation abdicates its duty to choose wisely, and allows leaders to succumb to the lure of big money and the powerful interests whose view of nation, its people and especially its tax payers, has the appearance of a cash cow. This is how voters and their interests are victimized and abandoned to the public relations squads and the squawking of talking heads; left to blow haplessly in the winds of indiscriminate emotion and herd bias; left to be persuaded by “personality.”

Flim flam in the presidential campaign

George W. Bush, in 2004, had the bad luck of being president under such social circumstance. How could he escape the barbs and pitfalls of political flim flam, many of his own making? He could not.

The Los Angeles Times published an article on July 24, 2004, demonstrating a clear example of political flim flam, regarding Bush.

Let’s ask questions and answer them with the following quotes from the article by Maura Reynolds, with contributions by Doyle McManus from Washington:

Is the Bush administration a paragon of flexible intelligence?

“Over and over again the president has resisted pressure for reform from Congress and the public until it became overwhelming.”

Are there any examples?

“He resisted a congressional push to establish a Cabinet level Department of Homeland Security.

He resisted calls to come down on corporate malfeasance.

He even resisted forming the September 11 commission, and, once its work was underway White House staff dragged its feet on providing documents and approving testimony by presidential advisors.”

What did Norman Ornstein, affiliated with the predominantly conservative American Enterprise Institute and an observer of relations between the White House and Congress, say about this?

“What Bush would like to do is to say nice things about how constructive this report is and hope that it goes away.”

What if it doesn’t go away?

‘If it doesn’t go away the president’s usual pattern is to quietly shift course, claiming the idea is his own and proceeding as if he hadn’t resisted it in the first place. Aides insist that he hasn’t flip-flopped (the underline is mine) and that his policy has been consistent throughout.”

But Bush did act in a timely way seeing that the handwriting was on the wall, didn’t he?

“It wasn’t until February (2004), nearly a year after the Iraq war had begun, that Bush agreed to let an independent commission examine the intelligence failures that led to false claims about Iraq’s weapons programs.”

So, how did Bush react to the commission’s report?

“...congressional leaders expressed disappointment with the administration’s initial response and urged that the president get out in front of the issue. Late in the day a White House official said the president had ordered his chief of staff to form an internal task force to review the recommendations.’

And?

“With homeland security...it took them eight months to come around,” said one congressional staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “But with this...the president will want to be seen as doing everything in his power before the election.”

But the implications of the commission’s report is not too great for the president, is it?

“The commission report puts the president in a bind. Many of its recommendations can be implemented by executive order, making it more difficult for the president to delay acting or pass responsibility to Congress.”

Isn’t it difficult to juggle the election campaign and the pressure brought by the Sept.11 commission’s report?

“One result is that the report has cast a pall over the president’s vacation plans (six days of rest during the democratic National Convention)...the president and his top advisors now planned to spend a significant chunk of time studying the report and considering their options.”

(Let me break in here with a personal observation: it’s nice, I suppose, that some Americans, particularly those responsible for the war in Iraq, can take vacations, can consider political options and buy wiggle room, while our young men and women in uniform have no options but to continue to fight for their lives, to bleed and die in the dust and dirt of Iraq. What options were considered seriously before sending our youth into a war that is now seriously considered questionable?)

Guessing how Bush feels about the commission’s report and its recommendations, how will the president handle his options?

“Ornstein suggests that it’s only a matter of time before the president gives in. That moment will come sooner...if his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, adds his voice to those of the commissioners and Congress and makes intelligence reform a battle cry (my comment: which Kerry did right after the Dem. Convention, more than a week ago at the time of this writing. Bush is still studying the report). “When you get Bush in a position where it looks like he’s dragging his feet, he will turn on a dime,” Ornstein said.”

Being a right wing conservative, how would Ornstein advise the president?

“If I were advising the president I would say, “embrace this thing today. Praise the commission to the skies and say, we’ll do it. But that’s not his style.”

Addendum: More flim flam in Iraq

On July 30, 2004, the Los Angeles Times published a revealing report: Iraq Funds Are Focus of 27 Criminal Inquiries. Click “War In Iraq,” go to articles.

In addition to the notorious, and I believe criminal, behavior of the Haliburton, and other corporations, in its rip off of government (tax-payer’s) funds by charging inflated prices for food, fuel and other services, and perhaps for goods and services not rendered at all (for which they paid, by their standards, modest fines), the article cites many ex-government officials and contractors being investigated for the rip off of hundreds of millions of dollars. The rip off seriously hampered progress in bringing order to rebuilding Iraq.

One questions, with a heavy heart and righteous indignation, is the meaning and purpose in the wounding and death of thousands of American youth and innocent Iraqis, as well as the continuing cost in lives and fortune, and the increase of world danger, to be found in the “legal” and illegal profits officials and business people are raking off in this war in Iraq? When shall we say “no more killing and dying for the sake of profit and power. No more, no more!”