The Politics of Disillusion
TYLER, GUS
Countdown '76 THE POLITICS OF DISILLUSION BY GUS TYLER Is there a Ford in our future? In mid-August, the answer was "definitely not." By mid-October, however, it has become "unlikely" after...
...The personalization of politics worked very much to Jimmy Carter's advantage in the primaries...
...Apparently, therefore, Carter was doing things—or was having things done to him—that caused him to lose ground...
...A Democratic contender, committed to his party's platform, could not and certainly should not have responded otherwise...
...The focus on the face is furthered, too, by the preeminence of TV in political journalism...
...In addition to slowing down Carter, the Philadelphia debate had the effect of underlining the trend against issues...
...The responses, of course, reflect opinion polls that have shown the electorate riding a roller coaster since early summer...
...In Mach-iavelli's day there was a semblance of Christian politics...
...At the top of the list were "efficiency" and "honesty," while "unemployment" and "inflation" came in third and fourth...
...The face, as filtered through the lens, becomes the magic opening that lets viewers sense the soul, the true being, of the candidate...
...But by Labor Day Carter had recouped his losses and possessed the same kind of lead he had enjoyed before both party gatherings...
...What is more, economic and political forces seemed to be working strongly against Ford...
...This did not come as a total surprise to Carter, who had predicted a narrowing of the gap himself...
...So they rehearsed facts and figures and statistics for weeks, and on the air they looked and sounded like meaningless computers...
...Yet in each case he was on the defensive, having left himself open to attack...
...unemployment is no longer at nine per cent...
...A few days later, a survey of economic indicators revealed a downward economic trend in the third quarter of 1976...
...More than a decade ago, French lawyer and social historian Jacques Ellul noted that politics, once a moral matter, had been reduced to social engineering—in effect, a mechanical science whose supreme good was the productive functioning of the machine of state...
...When neither man could dominate the publicity after the campaign began in earnest, Ford began to overtake his rival...
...Before the Democratic convention, Jimmy Carter was far ahead of Gerald Ford...
...For each of his gaffes Carter had an explanation...
...Recovery was at least stalled, and perhaps reversed...
...These results were undoubtedly confirmed by other polls, and candidates have responded accordingly: They have presented themselves as competent and clean above all else...
...One plausible explanation for Carter's loss of velocity traces it to self-inflicted wounds...
...Carter, because he lacked experience in Federal government...
...He projected efficiency, being a businessman who had worked his way up, and his Christian devotion evoked morality...
...that the purchasing power of the typical family had fallen...
...Ford had to show that because many thought he was a dummy...
...Some of the sudden ups and downs occurred because of massive media exposure that helped boost each candidate after his nomination...
...The performance confirmed many voters' general feeling about politics: that it is a dull, juiceless, overcomplicated exercise operating outside the ken of the people...
...For the antigovernment folk, Ford remains the real thing...
...Concrete differences between the two candidates did emerge...
...the nation is no longer at war...
...In contrast with his predecessor in the White House, Gerald Ford appears to be the essence of honesty...
...And there his im-pressiveness ended...
...afterward, the Georgian's margin was greater still...
...It was quite unnatural for Carter: His determination to suppress his overadvertised smile forced him into a rather poor imitation of his unexciting opponent...
...he gave the AP a quickie interpretation of proposed tax increases in terms that allowed Republicans to claim he was about to raise the levy on half the nation...
...the true culprits were the makeup and camera technicians at the television studios...
...With the second debate Carter advanced once more, and now most predictions indicate a close finish on Election Day...
...Governing mechanisms have become so intricate that it takes every erg of effort and neuron of ingenuity simply to keep them running...
...Machiavelli really demonstrated that the Prince's role, above all, is to be effective...
...Unfortunately for Carter, though, the important programmatic differences have not been dramatized in 1976, and this appears to be the principal reason for the dramatic fluctuations in the polls...
...To further undermine Ford's image of control, his veto of a $56 billion appropriation for HEW was overridden by Congress with the strong support of Republicans, making for an ignominious Presidential defeat...
...that the number of Americans who had exhausted their unemployment benefits doubled from '74 to '75...
...The public attitude is worth exploring, because it suggests the rise of our own kind of democratized "personality cult...
...Then the challenger began to slow down, and the momentum passed to Ford...
...JFK did not really do Nixon in at their 1960 debates...
...The second debate, highlighted by Ford's Eastern European blunder, was somewhat less obviously programmed...
...he used the words "shack up" and "screw" in a Playboy interview...
...The tendency for elections to become less a referendum on ideas than a search for trustworthy men was reenforced by this nation's Watergate trauma and the recent peccadillos of some prominent Democratic Congressmen...
...Following the Republican convention, Ford picked up considerable ground...
...Yet an AP poll reported in the New York Times two days after the confrontation revealed that Carter had come out ahead not because of his foreign policy stands, but because he showed " 'more confidence,' more sincerity and a 'better appearance.' " On Eleotion Day there will, of course, be millions who will cast their ballots as a response to unemployment, inflation, crime, urban rot, educational crises, the taxation dilemma, and the continuing crumbling of freedom in the world...
...The personal, the petty and the prurient have fed the media's hunger for excitement...
...The closest he came to sounding like a worthy commander was his acceptance speech at Kansas City: It was well written, well rehearsed and well recited...
...One Republican TV ad calls him "forceful, as with his vetoes...
...But these qualities have not served Carter so well in the general election...
...While the confrontation was supposed to deal with specifics—instead of the vagaries of personalities, honesty, trust, and bigness—few saw it that way...
...Indeed, during the weeks when Ford was closing in on Carter, the Republican accomplished very little that could be said to account for his improved rating...
...The Republican was not running faster, the Democrat was running slower: The tortoise was catching up with the hare...
...Voters are still in search of morality, but not in EI-lul's societal sense: They would be satisfied with a man who is not a crook or a liar...
...But there will be other millions whose sense of inadequacy in the face of these perplexing issues will lead them to vote for a political candidate who seems to share their disillusionment with finding real solutions to real problems...
...In either case, the voter is in search of a person rather than a platform with clean-cut, dovetailed planks...
...The Reagan people, many of whom had sworn never to back Ford, began to return to the fold—some because of their leader's firm support of the President, others because they saw the standard bearer as the lesser of two evils...
...In a campaign where the theme of "leadership" is so prevalent, this latest of Ford's failures to hold his party in line should have sealed his doom...
...65 out of 145 Republicans voted against their party chief...
...By mid-October, however, it has become "unlikely" after passing through a "quite possibly" phase...
...The toll in the House was 312-93...
...Yet even Carter must have been shocked at the speed of Ford's progress...
...the fact is, as David Rosenbaum of the New York Times reported on Ootober 3, "the 94th Congress set a modern record for overriding Presidential vetoes...
...He echoed the people's fear of bigness, particularly as embodied in the bureaucratic entanglements of Washington, D.C., giving strength to his appeal for trust...
...This was natural for Ford, who came across as himself...
...His own Bureau of the Census announced on September 25 that both the number and percentage of people living in poverty in the United States rose significantly last year...
...Because television is designed for visible images rather than intangible abstractions, the medium is person-oriented: In a smile or smirk, a smooth skin or five-o'clock shadow, a hair-do or twitch, the tube uncovers character...
...He was highly photogenic, especially with his ever-ready smile, recalling the Kennedy image of vigor and vitality...
...Even the President's seeming victory in the first television debate was indecisive...
...in an extraordinary epoch he seeks a savior who offers rhetorical salvation for all societal sins...
...If a manager is what the country needs, why not stick with someone who has had experience in Washington rather than Georgia...
...He seems to be able to run the complex ship of state competently as well: Inflation is no longer in two digits...
...efficiency is regarded as the supreme good by all...
...Ford, by contrast, could point to his record of vetos as real proof of his efforts to chop the Federal giant down to size...
...In late winter of this year, a polling-research team of the Democratic National Committee came up with a revealing finding about what were considered to be the most significant questions in the race for President...
...In the Senate, the vote to overturn the veto was 67-15, with 19 out of 38 GOPers counting themselves against the President...
...When Carter spoke of how he would use $60 billion of added income in 1981 to meet national needs, the President rushed in to suggest that the first national need was to reduce people's taxes...
...It is the latter millions who have caused the roller-coaster effeot in the opinion polls and who, as the campaign draws to a close, make the outcome uncertain...
...people claimed that they were Christians and followed Christian morality...
...Jimmy is still a G-man...
...Surely Ford himself had done little to prove he was a great leader...
...More important is the American voter's perception of government and poMtics...
...Today, we no longer have the choice...
...This focus on the faces and foibles of the candidates rather than the problems and prospects of our civilization did not originate with the Carter or Ford camps (although they have done nothing to stop it, and occasionally have contributed to it...
...By doing, so, he introduced a new perspective, revolutionized his time, introduced efficiency as a value...
...The viewers left their television sets unenlightened and uninspired, and natural prey for a candidate cast in that image...
...the Georgian described the programs he would enact as a dynamic President...
...For the average citizen—the voter—the operations of this mammoth, multiheaded and mysterious monster are beyond comprehension...
...But for millions more, the words are of far lesser import than the personal impression created...
...He spoke too hastily about firing FBI director Clarence Kelley and then backed off...
...The first question in the first debate between the two asked Carter for his specific plans for combating unemployment...
...Thus he reacts in one of two ways: In ordinary times he looks for an honest mechanic to run the government...
...The candidates certainly didn't: Both of them oame to the studio with the same object in mind—to prove they were informed...
...One important factor in the transformation of political values that Ellul recognized was the growing complexity of society...
...Indiscretions like these might very well have been overshadowed in a contest where the big issues were being hotly debated...
...In their campaigning, they have borne out the belief that politics consists of the art of personified prophylactic efficiency...
...People are turned on or off by the "tone of his voice," by "that look in his eyes," by the "way he talks without moving his mouth...
...Consequently, he was able to campaign without hate yet be the beneficiary of any loathing voters felt for other politicians...
...In short, he was the perfect candidate for the countless Americans who had come to experience "political disillusion...
...What had happened...
...as a result, much has been made of minutiae...
...Moreover, for all those who fear "big government," Ford has an appeal that Carter cannot quite match...
...What the politico says does hold some interest, especially to issue-minded ideologues...
...In his book, The Political Illusion, Ellul wrote: "The sole quest for efficiency in our time is no longer a matter of choice but an intrinsic element in the political situation...
Vol. 59 • October 1976 • No. 21
