Gil Troy: Myths of Campaign 2004

As the campaign to select the putative Leader of the Free World ends, myth-making proliferates amid the image-making. Even when the conventional wisdom errs, it will nevertheless shape this election. The most popular misconceptions, festering left, right, and center include:

That This is The Nastiest Campaign Ever: In fact, most campaigns get vicious, and there is a grand tradition of American political mudslinging. The slick Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads pummeling John Kerry as a poseur, a coward, and a traitor, pale in comparison to the Coffin Handbills circulated in the 1828 election. These coffin-shaped pamphlets accused Andrew Jackson of murdering soldiers who deserted his command. As for the attacks on George Bush, the candidate in 1884, Grover Cleveland had not even served in the National Guard during the Civil War. Critics mocked Cleveland for paying $500 for a Polish immigrant to serve as his surrogate – although his opponent had done the same.

That African-Americans were Disenfranchised En Masse in 2000: Quick, barely half the American electorate bothered voting last time, what percentage of eligible African-Americans voted? Americans and Canadians, leftists and rightists, having absorbed the Michael Moore-Jesse Jackson spin, invariably guess 15%, 20%, 25%. In fact, according to the New York Times, 57 % voted – a higher percentage than whites. Of course, there must be zero-tolerance for electoral intimidation, but we may need to rethink stereotypes, considering blacks MORE politically engaged overall than whites.

That The Campaign is Too Expensive: True, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics estimates that Campaign 2004 will nearly cost $4 billion, with the presidential race alone costing $1.2 billion. Yet in a country of 300 million people, where Procter & Gamble budgets $2 billion to advertise detergents and the Yankees’ spend $180 million on baseball salaries, averaging $4 per American to provoke a transcontinental conversation about choosing a President is not bad.

That Bush is Too Stupid to be President: Ignoring the obvious contradiction that the same people who condemn nasty campaigns often trash their leaders – "Bush and Stupid" gets 1,760,000 hits on Google – this is doubly misleading. First, Bush’s IQ is not the issue, his ideology is. Second, great presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt were considered to have first rate temperaments but second-rate minds, while one of the smartest recent presidents, Jimmy Carter, was quite the disaster. Maybe the issue is not formal brainpower but emotional intelligence or people smarts.

That Kerry is Too Much of a Waffler to Win: Two words: Bill Clinton. Clinton’s verbal acrobatics put Kerry’s on-again, off-again $87 billion authorization votes to shame. In 1992, the man who as president would teach us that "it all depends on what your definition of the word is, is," frequently proclaimed: "We can be pro-growth and pro-environment, we can be pro-business and pro-labor… we can be pro-family and pro-choice. The Republican Vice Presidential candidate Dan Quayle called such waffling "pulling a Clinton." Many Americans nevertheless, shook their heads, shrugged their shoulders, and pulled the lever for Clinton, twice. Apparently, Americans don’t mind being served waffles.

That the Press is Biased: Conservatives are sure that the liberal media elite disrespects them; liberals complain that the media corporate shills serve the status quo. The New York Times ombudsman, after certifying his paper’s news coverage as bias-free, ceded his column space to two critics, one Left, one Right, each of whom berated the Times for its slanted coverage. In truth, the press is biased, but not toward one party or the other necessarily. The media’s bias is toward action, conflict, over-simplification and polarization, mindlessly reducing complex issues to a polarized he-said-she-said, and selling newspapers – or advertising space.

The German leader Otto von Bismarck supposedly once said: "God protects children, fools and the United States of America." Thanks to a hyperactive press corps, overly aggressive partisans, hysterical observers – and a perilous world -- we may need that prayer again this year. Then again, as this exercise in myth-busting suggests, the conventional wisdom just may be wrong – the United States may be more mature, stable, focused and free than the stereotypes suggest. Perhaps the country, like its current incumbent, should not be "misunderestimated."