Paper Tigers
At some point in history, if a politician wanted to win an election, they had to have good and useful ideas for improving society. Considering the current state of today’s political climate, I realize how insane that sounds, but it’s true – candidates were measured by their policies. To the extent that a politician’s personality factored in, it was primarily in terms of how it might affect a candidate’s ability to implement their policies.
Then came the rise of horse-race journalism, which attempts to quantify anything a candidate says or does in terms of how it will help or hurt them at the polls. For example, when a politician rolls out a legislative agenda, horse-race journalism ignores the questions that should be asked – Are these good policies?, What impact will they have? and so on – and focuses instead on inside-baseball nonsense like Does Politician A’s agenda differ sufficiently from that of Politician B to earn the votes of Rust Belt Voter X? Their only utility is to justify the salary of the person being paid to ask them. If horse-race journalists were the only ones asking these questions, they might be more easily ignored in favor of more substantive analysis. Unfortunately, a consequence of horse-race journalism is that the average American is now suffering from what I call “Pundit Brain.”
There are a variety of ways in which Pundit Brain manifests itself, the most common being an inability – or unwillingness – to judge a political debate on the merits of the arguments being presented. Take, for example, the question of whether prisoners should be allowed to vote. A normal person is capable of mulling over the issue and taking a position on it. (The answer, if you were curious, is “Yes”: any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 has the right to vote, as outlined repeatedly in the Constitution. You don’t stop being a U.S. citizen when you go to jail.) People with Pundit Brain, on the other hand, treat their feelings as being of secondary importance to what they believe is the more important question: How will this play in the red states?
In fact, those with more advanced cases of Pundit Brain often don’t have a position at all. Which frees them from any moral obligation to act in support of that position. They can argue that obviously they think it’s wrong to put migrant children in cages and then, in the next breath, warn everybody that fighting for that practice to stop is the kind of thing that will hurt us in a general election. You can’t abandon your principles if you never really had them to begin with.
Pundit Brain is by no means a new phenomenon, but it’s become an epidemic in the wake of the 2016 election. Polling data and the nebulous concept of “electability” were once the preferred counter-arguments of anyone who had enjoyed success under the existing system and didn’t want that train to stop. Since 2016, however, more and more people are pining for a return to the way things were pre-Trump – even if they weren’t doing all that well under the old status quo.
Take, for example, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Viewed through the lens of “electability,” “Mayor Pete” – so called because nobody can pronounce his last name – ticks all the boxes. He’s a Harvard graduate, an Oxford fellow, a veteran of Afghanistan, a devout Christian, a polyglot, and is openly gay. He is, it would seem, the anti-Trump, which is enough to satisfy most #Resistance types who want to restore the illusion of the presidency as a position fit for only the most worthy. On top of that, his service as a Troop™ and his faith are the kinds of bona fides that could convince moderate conservatives to vote for him over Trump.
To a large swath of Pundit Brain sufferers, therefore, Buttigieg is the clear choice for Democrats in 2020. His proposed policies, his vision for the country, and how he intends to get there are but an afterthought to this crowd, because their only focus is on having Things Go Back To Normal. For them, a Pyrrhic victory is as good as any other. And make no mistake, that’s exactly what a successful Buttigieg campaign would be, as Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs recently and expertly demonstrated. (If you’re excited about Mayor Pete, do yourself a favor and read that piece, then throw your support behind a candidate who’s not a real-life version of this Parks & Recreation character.)
The fundamental flaw of Pundit Brain lies in the assumptions it makes about the public. The first assumption is that the public will only vote for a candidate who possesses the greatest number of characteristics that voters like (or, failing that, the fewest characteristics they don’t like). By that logic, only one candidate in each election can meet that criteria, which means that every other candidate is raising and spending millions of dollars on Quixotic, doomed-to-fail campaigns that can only harm the Chosen One’s chances of ascending to elected office. Which – unless you’re Howard Schultz – is not the case.
The second assumption is that the public is inherently resistant to change. Thus, an unknown quantity with good policy proposals will always be less palatable to voters than a politician who has terrible ideas – or none at all – but fits the mold of what a politician ought to look like. (See: O’Rourke, Beto.) This, too, is nonsense; were that the case, we would never have had a black president solely because, well, we’d never had a black president.
To be fair, Pundit Brain sufferers have relaxed their standards for what constitutes a presidential “look” since the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. This would seem to suggest that there is a cure for Pundit Brain after all; unfortunately, their ideological standards regarding the policies for which a presidential candidate should advocate have, if anything, become more rigid. So it’s not a question of whether Bernie Sanders’ policies would help red-state voters, but whether they can be convinced to cast their votes for someone who represents a radical shift from the norm.
So what does this all mean for presidential campaigns? In short, nothing good.
Beto O’Rourke’s campaign website is chock full of ideas that sound good on paper – End income inequality! Strengthen our diplomatic ties! Access to healthcare for everyone! – but lack any cohesive strategy to turn them into reality. In some cases, it appears O’Rourke doesn’t have a long-term plan at all: the “Immigration” section decries the Trump administration’s practice of separating migrant families at the border before asking readers to “acknowledge that every man, every woman, every child in detention […] are our fellow human beings and deserve to be treated like human beings.” His plan for immigration is to first recognize that immigrants are people too (which is, uh, not the problem), and then to “let this country of immigrants – Republicans, Independents and Democrats – rewrite our immigration laws in our own image, from our own experiences, and in the best traditions of this great country.” What would those rewritten laws look like? How would they change the process of immigration? Who cares? The end result isn’t that we’d (possibly) reform immigration, but that we’d do it together. (The same can be said of Joe Biden’s candidacy: all hat, no cattle.)
As feckless as O’Rourke’s platform is, it’s positively Rooseveltian compared to Buttigieg’s. Here are Pete’s positions on The Issues:
Immigration: “It’s about more than winning an election. It’s about winning an era.”
Healthcare: “America is at its best when we master change for the benefit of every American.”
Foreign Policy: “We cannot find greatness in the past.” (Or, if you prefer, “There is no ‘again’ in the real world.”
Income Inequality: “We need to insist on a better future.”
There is literally not a single policy proposal on Buttigieg’s campaign website. Hell, there aren’t even ideas on his website. It’s Mayor Pete’s resume spread out over two slickly-designed pages. If Buttigieg were running for Class Historian, it’d still seem a little thin; by the standards of a presidential candidate, it’s embarrassing. It’s laughable. Or, at least, it ought to be, especially considering his primary opponents include Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, whose sites are packed to the gills with impressive and thoughtful policy proposals.
Here’s the problem: the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll has Biden leading with 24%, followed by Sanders (15%), Buttigieg (7%), Kamala Harris (6%), and O’Rourke (6%). And what of Elizabeth Warren, one of the few people in this race with a concrete plan for making tangible improvements to the lives of Americans?
Five percent. As any Pundit Brain will tell you, her DNA test gaffe would kill her in a general election.
When Pete Buttigieg tells us to “insist on a better future,” he’s telling us that he has no idea what that future looks like. Not having a plan for the country beyond “better” allows Buttigieg to position himself in such a way that if things turn out poorly, he can’t be held responsible. It would seem, then, that the absence of a clear vision for the country or anything approaching a stance on any issue from Buttigieg, Biden, and O’Rourke is not a bug, but a feature. They can be whatever you need them to be. Their ideas for improving the country and society will not, therefore, be their own – they will be yours. (Assuming, that is, enough people share your views to constitute a clear majority; if not, well, better luck next time, hope you don’t die before you get another spin of the wheel.)
Candidates do this because Pundit Brain demands it. The Pundit Brain doesn’t care if you have good ideas or honorable goals, nor does it much matter if those goals are achieved or if they were even achievable to begin with. The Pundit Brain just wants to be wined and dined, to hear a good sales pitch; it doesn’t care whether you can do the job, just as long as you make it believe you can do the job.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need to prop up those who are clearly unqualified for the role of president because they feel like the kind of candidate who could maybe, possibly, one day grow into the position. Not when we have a wealth of options available to us who have a vision and are far more able to carry it out.
The cure for Pundit Brain is straightforward: focus on what’s there right now, not what might be there down the road. Don’t assume meager, incremental changes are more valuable than sweeping and much-needed ones because the latter “might be a tough sell.” If the status quo isn’t working for you, reject it, then identify the candidate who has a real plan to bring about the changes you think work best for you. Stop trafficking in “intangibles” – you’re measuring a presidential candidate, not scouting a baseball prospect. Demand more from the people whose job it is to improve the society in which we live.
We shouldn’t have to sift through a mountain of paper tigers to find a real one.