Its what put George W. Bush close enough in the vote count to be selected over Al Gore in 2000 and elected over John Kerry in 2004.
Its why scientists, experts, and generally smart and informed people are treated with open suspicion.
Its what sends manifestly dishonest and incompetent extremists, ideologues, and wingnuts back to the House and Senate year after year.
What is it? Diebold machines? Voter suppression? The PATRIOT Act? A vast right-wing conspiracy?
(Tear open the box for the secret toy surprise...)
No. Its none of the above. What makes all the above possible is one thing: The Myth of The Real.
The Myth of The Real is the notion that some Americans can be more American than others. It suggests that there are a set of characteristics that are quintessentially American and those possessing the greater number of those features are more authentic than those with fewer.
Take a moment and recall the politicians past and present whom you admire. No doubt one thing all members of your public service Hall of Fame have in common is a sense of authenticity, that they meant what they said, that they were exemplars and defenders of American principles, that they were true Americans.
But what makes your political heroes so prototypical of American virtue? Is it their honesty, their support for the little guy, or their no-nonsense style? Was it a towering intellect, or the successful policies they supported? Is it their audacity, persuasive personal charm, or the ability to stay cool under pressure?
Bullshit. They are your heroes because you identify with them. Period.
This not to say that your heroes and mine did not posses the virtues we associate with them, they probably did at least to some degree; but the qualities we list when we think about what makes them true-blue Americans tells us more about us than it does about them. What makes them the cashews among the mixed nuts of American politics is fundamentally that we share a sense of cultural identity with them. They tried (or did) what we would hope to do in the same circumstances, for the same reasons we would. Our heroes stand out because the strength of perceived tribal bond between them and us permits us to project onto them our ideals.
Sincerity matters. The bond of realness we feel with our favorite pols may be a fictive social construct but like all successful myths it persists because it touches something deep within us and gives us a handy narrative structure around which to organize the world. The sense of a candidate's realness is what gets them elected, far more than sound policy proposals and hand-handy 10-point plans. You can have the best ideas and the slickest ads in the world, but if those things don't serve to communicate a sense of shared identity that makes you a real American in the minds of the voters then you, gentle reader, will be job hunting on the day after the election.
Chris Bowers highlights this in a must-read post over at MyDD
Over the past year and a half, I have slowly developed an argument that the electorate is, in general, non-ideological, not interested in policy, and generally unmoved by the day-to-day minutia of political events that, within the blogosphere, are treated as cataclysmic events. Sure, most people hold general political beliefs, but in general national voting habits are motivated by something else--something more basic. As we look for ways to motivate voters in November, we need to remember the powerful role that identity plays in political decision-making. As progressives, we shrug off concepts such as the "battle of civilizations," but if you look closely at demographic data, maybe it is a battle of civilizations taking place after all. We may very well be living in an era of identity politics. Who knows, maybe every era of American politics is an era of identity politics.
The world of words is knee-deep in the bleached bones of those who have attempted to unravel the tangled knot of American tribal identity and I'm not going to add mine to the pile by trying to do so here (that's right, I'm a big chicken). Its enough to say that perceived authenticity is the coin of the realm for American public figures. No one votes for an obvious fake. With all this in mind, let's take a snapshot of recent news to evaluate how Democrats are doing with respect to the Myth of the Real.
Recently, Senator Clinton offered an astonishingly wonkish and detailed speech about the future of our nation's energy policy. Given that the energy question the most substantive issue of the day, underpinning as it does, everything from soaring gas prices, to global climate change, to the core motives of our foreign policy-- what do Washington op-ed Pundettes offer us? An in-context analysis of her proposals? A take-down of her ideas, or their proposed implementations? A list of reactions to her plans from the key players in the energy game?
Of course not.
We got fashion fluff about what Mrs. Clinton wore during her speech and lunchroom tittering about the NYT's essay about Hill'n'Bills's sex life that, coincidentally I'm sure, was published just that morning. Methuselah Pantyraid (aka The Post's David Broder) fills us in:
But the buzz in the room was not about her speech -- or her striking appearance in a lemon-yellow pantsuit -- but about the lengthy analysis of the state of her marriage to Bill Clinton that was on the front page of that morning's New York Times.
Three times in the question-and-answer session, she referred to her husband as "Bill," praising him for seeing that his library in Little Rock incorporated a lot of energy-saving features.
Other than that, the elephant in the room went unmentioned.
emphasis mine
Get it? "The buzz" wasn't about Clinton's heavyweight speech on the single most important topic of the day, or even about how she might play the politics of not pissing off The Big Energy Donors while advancing an energy policy that would disrupt the status quo; it was all about the wandering Clenis and its faithful sidekick, the neglected Clintoris, that's what the real Americans in the room were thinking about.
Here's how it plays out: when Republicans (even those with deep historical connections to Big Oil, like Dear Leader) talk about kicking our national petroleum habit they are serious adults trying hard to address substantive problems. When Democrats (especially ones named Clinton) propose a further-reaching, more nuanced and detailed plan to banish the Oil Monkey, its inauthentic election year pandering that we can safely ignore in favor of tabloid fashion-talk and "are they or aren't they?" snickering.
So, if Senator Clinton's ideas confer no sense of authenticity, what's Methuselah's take on the other candidate that is being shoved in our faces as 2008's foregone conclusion, what of McCain? We need only look at his May 11 column titled-- I swear I'm not making this up-- Voters' Authentic Yearning
The presumption of authenticity -- the assumption that what he says, he actually believes -- is John McCain's greatest strength going into the 2008 presidential race. That presumption will be tested this weekend when McCain speaks at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, and I will be surprised if he fails the exam.
My guess is that, rather than pandering to the fundamentalist's social agenda, McCain will challenge the Liberty students to bring their moral energy and religious conviction to bear on the struggle for political reform, immigrant rights and environmental improvement -- the causes with which he is most identified.
As much as anyone in public life, McCain has built his reputation on authenticity. No consultant would ever suggest he abandon it.
Get the message? McCain is the creme de la creme of street cred, he is only speaking at Falwell's homeschool-away-from-homeschool to give his manly realness a workout by setting them straight. Its simply unthinkable that Mr. Strait Talk Express might be a pandering hypocrite for courting support from Jerry Falwell-- a man who, in 2000, he famously called "an agent of intolerance"-- McCain is The Real Deal(tm) and his 180-degree reversal vis-a-vis Falwell only proves his authenticity. Somehow.
Note too that Broder's mash note to McCain's realness is prophylactic. He isn't telling us what McCain did, but what he will do. Boy that Strait Talker... he talks so straight you can even tell what he's going to say before he says it. Nevermind that McCain's actual address turned out to be little more than the standard commencement day boilerplate about public service liberally peppered with references to his own religious bona fides and served up with a heaping side of Fundiespeak dog-whistles about the evils of moral relativism-- that was just his way of bringing Teh Real.
Given the importance of perceived realness in American politics, examples like these carry enormous weight. Broder is still considered the Dean of Washington Punditry, he's been around long enough to know how important the Myth of the Real is and the effect that the press pushing a narrative that one candidate or party is more authentic than another will have. He could've simply slapped a "McCain '08" banner in the space reserved for is column and ducked out early that day.
As Digby-tze said in a guest post at FDL last week:
What this does is trivialize liberals. The press corps projects its own shortcomings on to Democrats and then attacks them for it. The silly, insubstantial (idea-less) tabloid mentality is pasted to the Democratic image which allows the Republicans to present themselves as the serious ones (even mental midgets who say things like "is our children learning" or "OBGYN's can't show love to their patients.") The "grown-ups are back" meme, which was very successful for Bush and Cheney in 2000 would have been impossible without the press having spent eight years covering the white house like Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee lived there.
Indeed.
The public's sense of a politician's authenticity is what makes or breaks them, by treating Dems as figures for trashy speculation while ignoring the peccadilloes (or worse the outright crimes) of the Repubs the Beltway Heathers create the perception that Democrats are silly and insubstantial, no more real than this week's celebrity flavor of the month. We may get a cheap jolt from Mr. and Mrs. Federline's escapades but no one wants them near the launch codes. By celebritizing Dems-- focussing on their personalities, social life, and bedroom habits-- the press makes Democrats just as unserious, vapid, and plastic as Kevin and Brittney.
So, the Beltway Kool Kidz seem bent on trivializing Dems and liberals. Forgive my total lack of surprise. That doesn't mean we have to take it laying down. Here's are a few broad suggestions:
1. Play smash-mouth.
The Scimitar of Trashiness that the press wields at Democrats in order to trivialize them swings both ways. High-pressure environments (like newsrooms) often lead to indiscrimate humping, if they want to go through our underwear drawer I have no qualms about going through theirs.
2. I mean it, play smash-mouth.
The Republican slime machine has made a cottage industry of sniffing through Democrats' closets. If there's one basic truism about those who trumpet their own elevated morality its that the over-inflated sense of piety always conceals a snake pit. Always.
3. Encourage Dem leadership and candidates to be what and who they are as strongly and fearlessly as possible.
No more pandering. No more John Kerry in a hunting vest or Mike Dukakis in a tank. No one buys that shit, no one. Democratic candidates need to show that they are proud of what they are and who they are, that others whose choices are different from theirs deserve the same respect.
Not to pick on Senator Kerry, but when some wag snapped a picture of him windsurfing his reaction should have been "Yeah? And? Its what we do for fun where I grew up" rather than pretending it was an embarrassment. Most guys can't relate to windsurfing but they do understand being gung-ho for your hobbies.
4. Demonstrate to the Dem leadership that we have their backs.
We scream and cry about how our Dem leaders need to grow a spine (and they do) but then we sell them down the river the first time they do something we don't like. I don't want to get into yet another boring rehash of the usual principle vs. pragmatism navel-gazing, its enough to say that we could be doing a lot more to give our side some political cover and leave it at that.
Let's close with a little inspiration about why all this matters from Christy at FDL
You want to know why John Kennedy is so revered, still, in West Virginia? Because when he campaigned here, he spoke in the language of hope. Of lifting people out of the dark hell of the coal mines and into whatever dream they wanted to achieve. And, despite being from a seriously wealthy family from Massachusetts, he took the time to speak to regular folks like he valued their opinion and not like he was better than they were -- and they felt the more valuable for it.
What Christy said. Man that JFK, now there was a real American.