After the campaign
McCarthy, Abigail
Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy AFTER THE CAMPAIGN A CHANNEL FOR DISCUSSION THIS CAMPAIGN of 1980—may its like never afflict us again! It has been ignoble and exhausting. As I went about on...
...Panel shows in which candidates are allowed one- and two-minute answers to questions calculated to goad them to some unguarded reaction are hardly more illuminating...
...When one thinks of the recent elections in Britain, Canada, and Germany one can hardly fault the latter point...
...The emphasis is on attention-getting charge and countercharge rather than on policy and program...
...Would it work today...
...But the independents have a great deal to do with choices made in primaries...
...There was a time when I lectured vehemently against the independent...
...That would be one giant step on the way to a mature campaign in 1984...
...It is equally unlikely that voters will go back to the old party structure or give up the idea of independence...
...Only if the representative concept is undemocratic...
...And what could we say to the people of other countries who saw matters of crucial importance to their own economies and security hanging in the balance or affected by the vagaries of our political winds...
...The rise of the independent voter, for one thing...
...What is independent about being reduced to picking between men selected by others—and others who do not represent you in any way...
...The system may be different but the end is the same—to provide the nation with effective leaders...
...Abigail McCarthy Commonweal: 614...
...It was not very long ago that party and conventions gave us Franklin Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, DWight D. Eisenhower, John Kennedy, to name but a few...
...His was the leadership of persuasive development of ideas and of cadenced eloquence...
...No, because the parties are immeasurably weaker and themselves unrepresentative...
...is there any reason why we cannot take the airwaves which belong to us, and find one free channel for public discussion...
...As a result of the dissatisfaction surrounding this year's election some Americans are looking back fondly to the days of nomination by party and choice by national convention...
...It has become almost a cliche to say that Lincoln would have been ruled out as a candidate by the demands of television...
...And in less than twelve years the primary—once thought of as a means to which to resort when a party or a president was too inflexible or unyielding—has become the normal means of choice, and the conventions serve only to confirm a choice already made...
...Independent voters are supposedly voters who can discern qualities of leadership and know enough, and keep themselves well-informed enough, to understand complex issues and to have ideas as to which solutions to our economic and social problems are preferable, and as to 7 November 1980: 613 what is sound in foreign policy...
...David Broder in his recent Changing of the Guard (Simon & Schuster, $14.95) on the emerging leaders of the future—people who, he notes, may be unable to lead because of their skepticism about the very idea of authority—points out that all these men and women grew to their political maturity in the age of television and that, in consequence they feel more "in touch" with prominent political Figures, and more sensitive to style...
...We may reorganize primaries so that they do not exhaust potential presidents and their campaign staffs as they now do, but it is unlikely that we shall give them up...
...The choice was greater in this next-to-final step than it is today...
...The selection of these snippets is made by producers and film editors of whose background and bias the voter knows nothing...
...How does it happen that a country so big and so important can labor so long about a decision which should be made as quickly as possible and decisively...
...The information the independent needs comes to him in snippets on the nightly news...
...They need information...
...But are "style" and the illusionary political intimacy of the camera valid bases for choice...
...We seem to have lost ourselves in the process and forgotten its end...
...Was it undemocratic to make the choice in that way...
...He was not photogenic, and, as contemporary accounts of his appearances show, he was well into his speeches before audiences lost the initial bad impression made by his unprepossessing appearance and his high thin voice...
...For two long years it has been—supposedly—in the forefront of the nation's attention...
...The proliferation of primaries, for another...
...And the debates which are no debates at all are a pathetic substitute for what was once a staple of American elections—the chance to see and hear candidates in full-scale examination of each other's positions...
...There is no time for that on television now...
...They were the front runners at those conventions, it is true, but there were also a variety of favorite sons and other serious candidates—any one of whom might have been chosen in case of a deadlock or a series of close votes...
...As a guest at some of the events of the foreign ministers' conference at the United Nations in September I found myself on the defensive when some of those accompanying the ministers — aides, wives, journalists—queried us Americans in all good faith...
...But we must move—and quickly—to improve the method of communication which is conditioning our method of choice in a ridiculously illogical way—television...
...It begs the question to say that we have a different system...
...Television today does not serve our need—and its cost is draining campaigns financially...
...What has happened...
...In a nation so developed and with so many millions of educated people, how can you have such a paucity of leaders to choose from...
...Why, after a selection process which went on so long, through the announcement period, through primary after primary, caucus after caucus, and convention on convention, did almost all Americans feel so thwarted and so dissatisfied in the arena of political choice...
...An independent has no effect at the choice level, I used to say...
...As I went about on the lecture circuit in the last weeks it was impossible to find anyone who felt good about it...
Vol. 107 • November 1980 • No. 20
