LizzieMaine
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Just going to try to keep this within the context of an historical observation. I don't see it so much as a matter of corruption- except that the amount of money thrown into campaigns has really gotten out of hand. In "the era" and later, I think that there was a consensus among both major parties that business, labor, and agriculture were all necessary for the economy, and that all of their interests needed to be respected.
One of my favorite campaigns was the 1948 Truman- Dewey contest. If you study it, you'll see that both sides offered support for what they felt were legitimate concerns of the small businessman, the farmer, and the union worker. None were demonized- but it was pointed out that excesses could occur and would be addressed. There was a passionate partisanship, but civility could be maintained. In fact, some deemed Mr. Dewey as too civil... but I with that were a concern among all today.
There was certainly a fringe element in the Era that heaped the invective -- during the 1936 election, this element centered around the Hearst-McCormick press and right-wing extremists of the Liberty League type, as well as so-called populists like the Coughlinites, and FDR took note of it in one of his most famous speeches that campaign, declaring that "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred!" But the actual Republican candidate, Gov. Landon, positioned himself above that part of the fray, and came across as a reasonable, amiable fellow in his own speeches. It may be that he felt that to be the best strategy, given that he had Colonel McCormick standing by to be his attack dog, but nevertheless you didn't get the personal candidate-to-candidate invective you get today.
It was much the same situation in 1940. The actual Republican Party ran a pretty bland campaign, and Wendell Willkie, who personally liked and admired the President, ran on what many called a "me-too" platform. But the extremists were out in force under the banner of the America First movement -- and this extremism got vicious, hateful, and baldly anti-Semitic by charging that FDR was in league with shadowy "Jewish financiers" in plotting to bring the US into a "needless war." Some of the Firsters were sincere, but there were also a great many opportunistic fanatics in their ranks. The Firsters alienated a great many thinking voters with all this, and Willkie himself couldn't stand them and tried to distance himself from their support.
I think the big difference between then and now is the way the media covers the campaigns, the whole political party as sports team thing. There are strong parallels between watching political coverage on any of the cable news channels and watching "SportCenter" on ESPN, and the parallels between political talk radio and sports talk radio are even stronger. There's a "storyline" that has to be followed, the parties are viewed more as competing teams than as civic institutions, and the individual candidates are matched up and evaluated like competitors in a boxing match. The coverage is about "winners and losers," not about serious and sober consideration of candidate positions.
I'm not just pulling this out of my backside. I've listened extensively to radio coverage of political campaigns going back to 1932, and have watched archived extensive television coverage of every election back to 1960. The changes I'm talking about took place gradually, but as recently as the 1980s the manner of coverage had much more in common with the serious-minded approach taken in the Era than it does with that of today. The big change happened in the 1990s, following the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, with the advent of the modern approach to cable news and the rise of partisan political talk radio and the internet, and it's gotten progressively worse every election since. Far from standing above this sort of coverage, the parties have embraced it and play to the yawping yahoos who make up the bulk of the audiences for such coverage. They call it "energizing the base," in the same way sports teams whoop up the crowd at a ballgame by playing "Charge!" over the loudspeakers.
We are in big trouble as a nation, and we're just sitting by and letting it happen because we find it "entertaining." *WE* are to blame for this. We tolerate it, we encourage it, we pay good money for it, and we're getting exactly what we deserve. Keep dancing around that golden calf, folks, Moses ain't coming back.
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