PRESUMPTUOUS NOMINEE: “Presumption,” Intelligence and Policy

The press, and many other largely illiterate Americans, refer to a candidate who is not yet nominated, but presumably will be, as a Presumptive Nominee. This is one of those conventionally received usages of a term that is a commonplace. Maybe it sounds smart, but it is finally ignorant because it is unexamined. To my ear, the ordinarily intelligent sound stupid when they parrot this term.

What we think is meant is the candidate in question is the presumed nominee. Unless what is meant is the Presumptuous Nominee.

If what is meant is the Presumptuous Nominee, then we might excavate a little deeper and recover some further meaning.

It is possible that what underlies accusing Senator Obama of being presumptuous is that he sounds superior.

Does raising the question of whether he seems presumptuous allow us to ask ourselves whether he acts superior, or acts as though he feels superior, without actually acknowledging this? Without being intellectually and personally honest about what we are suggesting?

Goodness knows, True Americans don’t want their candidates or their representatives to sound superior or, god help us, to feel superior.

“…Bush did not have to work at sounding like a regular guy with a less than elite education; despite summers in Kennebunkport and stints at Ivy League institutions, the words “nuclear” and “government,’ which presidents must use with considerable frequency, will always roll trippingly off his tongue as “nucular” and guv’mint.” Bush’s presidential demeanor has been characterized by a sneering, aggressive provincialism, which he displays not just at home but abroad, for the edification of foreign leaders.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House, New York: 2008. pp. 285

Electoral politics here has a long and august history of resentment and rejection of those who sound superior, or intellectual, or informed, or literate. We are thinking of Willie Lomax.

“During the last four decades America’ endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a news species of semi-conscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by an ignorant popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic. This new form of anti-rationalism, at odds with not only the nation’s heritage of eighteenth-century Enlightenment reason but with modern scientific knowledge, has propelled a surge of anti-intellectualism capable of inflicting vastly greater damage than its historical predecessors inflicted on American culture and politics.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House, New York: 2008. pp. xi-xii

Certainly, we understand those who fear the (unspoken) ridicule of those who are educated and erudite. Hell, they can’t talk without making you feel stupid.

Insecure, fearful and resentful Americans truly resent the hell out of people who sound superior. That might mean erudite, or educated, or literate.

Unfortunately it often extends to informed, or sound of mind, or sound in judgment, or honest.

What a pickle! Without even examining the cruel logic we have created, we have ensured that we will never even allow someone who might be perceived as sounding as though they might feel superior, or even be superior, or be better, or even be good, to become a Presumptive Nominee!

And since we are such a doggedly populist, inclusive and fair group, some among us never relent in their digging up the yet more uneducated, stupid and inferior against which we must weigh, and discard, our representatives.

Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George Wanker Bush have all been unable to speak in grammatically correct and complete sentences, even simple ones. McCain doesn’t either. And think about the literate and the articulate: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.

This is a truly telling cultural divide. In Governor Palin, we have for the first time in my adulthood embraced a candidate who is determinedly and resolutely presented as being truly low-brow. We have met Joe Six-Pack and She is Us. We can hope for fireside chats about tips and tricks for home-reloading your own ammo. What caliber do you recommend? And she is the Governor of fucking Alaska, for god’s sake.

When the Right would like to trot out their disingenuous Populist disguise, they actually cannot, and won’t, speak correctly or in complete sentences. Think of it.

To appeal to this electoral demographic, one must be, or persuasively appear to be, stupid. The aggrandizement of this group, the continual pandering of Right extremists to the self-image and underlying sense of inferiority of this group, now perpetuates their righteousness and pride in self-identifying and perpetuating themselves as the Great Stupid. Nixon’s “silent” (inarticulate, angry, mumbling, white) majority. Fortunately, they have people who are at least literate, like Karl Rove, to help them sort out who’s who.

At least for this group, we have available a simple and precise mechanism (foul line) for ruling out candidates. The smart are excluded. Even the dishonest, clever smart among them are almost sure to exposed and “outed” for the smart that they are.

It is, after all, very difficult to appear to be smart, or even articulate, while espousing and defending positions and beliefs that are at best wrong, ridiculous, unsupportable or stupid, and at worst vilely and transparently hypocritical. It is pretty easy to spot the true believers- those who are hypocritical in a loud, clear voice of unquestioning conviction. No mumbling, so dissembling or prevarication, just… wrong. Simplicity! Clarity! Joy!

We are quick and automatic to dismiss anyone from qualification to speak for us, who can speak. We reject anyone who is functioning ordinarily, as “superior.” We revile the articulate as presumptuous. Or presumptive…?

Let’s examine the term superior for a minute though. Senator Obama will serve as an excellent example for our little analysis. Senator Obama is educated, charismatic, informed, knowledgeable and erudite. There is a lot of presumption here. We presume that we share a common basis for understanding what constitutes a good education in the canons of Western civilization. That charisma is, at least, a not-undesirable characteristic in a leader. That there is a community of knowledge about which we might agree. An accepted body about which it would be unreasonable (damn stupid) to disagree.

Schoolyard Diplomacy: Erudition is somehow competitive. Superior erudition is somehow a victory. Until you beat them up.

Then comes the presumption. That those among us who are educated, knowledgeable, charismatic, reasoned, persuasive, are somehow intentionally, deliberatively, ridiculing us and deriding us with their tone, their high-brow dance of mocking words.

Then we lose. When such things become games,  there are winners and losers, and the un-intellectual are the losers. Certainly, those who are suspicious of erudition and charisma are losers. By the very definition of the terms of the game, they lose.

So the problem is superiority. The smarter, more informed, more educated, more reasoning, more qualified and intelligent among us sound superior. There is the problem.

We will make a Judgment Here. In public discourse, leadership and government, policy-making and the determination of public policy, erudite is good. Charismatic is good. Literate, educated, informed and knowledgeable are certainly very good. A Presumptive Candidate with these features would be good. Better than one without. Superior even.

And we think, and you may agree, that within a certain realm of human endeavor- the public, thinking, reasoning, choosing, acting, consequential, intellectual one- these attributes and capacities are good. Better even. Superior. But that would be only among us intellectuals we bet.

Take a moment and consider the idea that maybe we ought to encourage, welcome and elect the intelligent among us. That we should directly ask ourselves if they are superior, in the characteristics that might matter to policy. And willfully, gratefully, elect them.

Or maybe it would be easier to just see if they are convincingly (if inarticulately) hypocritical about logically unsupportable and inarticulate “issues” like guns, abortions, gays, environmental degradation and violence abroad. And elect them.

Let’s ask ourselves if our prospective, presumptive representatives are superior, and have the courage, honesty and integrity to embrace, elect and fully support them.

WRONG PERSON: McCAIN/BUSH. It’s Not Personality, It’s Conspiracy

Things have gone wrong. Dear God, I am glad we are not going to have Bush in office again. I bet you hope I won’t vote for the likes of him.

THAT WAS A MISTAKE.

Not long ago, in fear and hatred, we conflated reservations about Bush with unpatriotism and terrorism. Then, referring to that asshole as Bush rather than, with reverence, as President Bush would have seemed like a personally endangering betrayal to many Americans. Seriously: treasonous. That makes us Vulnerable to our Enemies. Somehow.

Now he is Bush. A tone of disregard, derision, dismissal and contempt has crept into the speech of press, pundits and philistines, even Right Reactionary True Believers. He is so over. Boy, was he the Wrong person.

John Ralston Saul has shown, in his profound book, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason, how (and why), since the time of Napoleon, we no longer choose or judge our leaders by their policies or their leadership or their opinions. We have come to expect our leaders to be heroes: cult celebrity figures. We judge them by their gestures and their postures (and impostures) and their lapel pins. A Working Class White Hero pounds whiskey. A Black Hero…is what? Would you care to comment?

We expect our leaders to be celebrities, and we choose celebrities to be our leaders (eg. Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger). Why then will it surprise us if our leaders act like Dennis Rodman?

We revile them and turn against them for their humanity and their mundane decency and uncertainty. When they act like people, they betray our expectations of cult heroes. When they are honest, they are partisan. When they opinionated, they are unbalanced. We expect them to spout only the most conventional of received ideas, and to do that so poorly and dishonestly that the questions of Power and Money and Identity that underlie them never surface. The massive theft of public goods remains invisible.

When they act like cult celebrities, knowing, we are vindicated. We know they are acting as predicted, are conforming to expectations, are in character, so we are not surprised. But we must revile them. So we shrilly, triumphally, affirm our own wisdom in having foreseen their fall.

Cult heroes must offer the promise of spectacular inhumanity, of grotesquery. Of foretold tragedy. Mere affairs and petty grafts will not do. Nothing less than the possibility (or promise) of superhuman (or subhuman) abominations will make for satisfactory dramatic theatre. Our leaders must be known to be capable of truly apocalyptic failure.

We are truly and completely screwed and befuddled by this. We can only be assured of the heroic status of our public figures if we are sure of their repugnance. We know they will damage us and endanger us. The only basis that we might have for judging whether we might trust them, or not trust them, would be their humanity, and the humanity of a person disqualifies him or her from public life. We encourage you, Reader, to see our Essay titled What Wouldn’t You Do and dated (Insert Date), and please read John Ralston Saul’s book.

By the same turn, our public figures cannot be policy makers, or thinkers, or leaders. These are human practices: they are the true gestures of real people in the mutuality of (public) trust, and as such could not be present in the true cult hero.

Policy, leadership, judgment, patience and respect are all practices that can be judged by the lights of real people in real civil relationships. As such, they cannot be tolerated in, and must be erased from, our cult heroes. These measures of a person’s humanity cannot be tolerated in our cult hero leaders, much less trusted as measures by which to judge them.

Our public figures are not leaders, or policy makers, or people of substance or even people. They are just cult heroes.

We will have no other basis upon which to trust them or not trust them. We can only not trust them. We can only have faith in their ultimate inhumanity and betrayal of us. We all know that they will ultimately, and inevitably, betray their inhumanity and grotesquery and brutality. Once this is all confirmed, then we can elect them, A-OK!

WRONG PERSON. WRONG PEOPLE.

So clearly Bush was the Wrong Person, right? Obviously he is a disappointment, a buffoon, unexpectedly stupid, inflexible, or something. Anyway, the wrong person.

After all, we knew our Hero to be congenitally flawed, and to inevitably be a Sacrificial hero. This much is foregone. On this matter, we refer you to our Essay titled Extremism Is Safe dated (Insert Date).

Maybe some of the other people in power around him are the Wrong People too, though this can stay a bit more fuzzy, can escape a more careful look, if we just focus on Bush and his now obviously distasteful Cult Figure Personality. We just need to crank up the blinding Kleig lights and focus on the casting call on the stage again and focus on who might be the Right Person. Um, one of, lets see, those… two people, right there.

Do you suspect that maybe Bush, and Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, and that other fat guy, and John McCain, and Karl Rove (oh, yeah, Karl Rove), and that senator guy, and, okay, Friedman and those neoliberal fundamentalists, and, well, Ken Lay, and those other corporatist people, and Abramowitz and those other people, and maybe those all of those extremists over there are somehow maybe not so reassuring, maybe even dangerous? Could they all be the Wrong People? John McCain?

It’s not just that turd-basket Bush was a disappointment and turned out to not be the Right Person. There is a real thread of ideas and beliefs and practices and, well, doctrines and policies and consequences that are woven together with –and produced by- these real people. And they are really wrong, really destructive and globally dangerous, and truly frightening. You could, if you cared to, see our Essay titled Wrong Ideas and dated (Insert Date).

These people really are glued together. They know one another. They build their power together. They enrich and cross-pollinate and inseminate one another. Occasionally they eat one another.

There is more to this than just the Wrong Person. There is a cadre, a corporatocracy, a network of related people with related ideas and related projects, with interwoven interests and organizations, many of them secret. Together they have created and caused the real events and circumstances that make up our global crisis. These are the people that impoverish us, deceive us and imperil us. If we are worried about the events, the outcomes, the products of their ideas and their activities, they are all the Wrong People.

We ask you, if you are thinking of voting for any of these people again, consider that there may be more to this than a Bush disappointment. We didn’t vote for Bush. Bush is the Wrong Person. If you voted for him, it was a mistake. There is a reason for everything, we know, and you remember yours, we know, but it was a mistake. If you voted for him again, that was a mistake.

It’s not just Bush. It is these people, and their ideas, and their beliefs, and their practices and policies and their imperial projection of power.

We cannot leave these ideas, and intentions, and indeed these people, unmolested and unexamined as we seek out the right things to do as individuals. We cannot underestimate or disregard their power, and their control of our public institutions, and their appropriation of our ideas and our voices and our judgment and our self-interest.

If you vote for any of these people again, you will be voting for the same ideas, beliefs, doctrines, lies, betrayal, arrogance, ignorance, righteousness, contempt for you and for democracy, follies and dangers, again. You will be endangering we, yourself, “democracy,” participatory government, world stability and ecosystemic viability, again. That is a mistake.

We depart from our promise to not attempt to persuade. Whatever you do, just don’t vote for those bad people again. That would be a mistake.

Bush was the Wrong Person. That was a mistake. Those are the Wrong People. Their ideas are Wrong. John McCain?