The
Decay of American Politics
An
Ode to Ike and Adlai
by Andrew
J. Bacevich
My earliest recollection of national politics dates back
exactly 60 years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched
the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new
addition to our family, television. My parents were supporting
President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good
enough for me. Even as a youngster, I sensed that Ike, the
former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe in World War II,
was someone of real stature. In a troubled time, he exuded
authority and self-confidence. By comparison, Democratic
candidate Adlai Stevenson came across as vaguely suspect. Next
to the five-star incumbent, he seemed soft, even foppish, and
therefore not up to the job. So at least it appeared to a
nine-year-old living in Chicagoland.
Of the seamy underside of politics I knew nothing, of
course. On the surface, all seemed reassuring. As if by
divine mandate, two parties vied for power. The views they
represented defined the allowable range of opinion. The outcome
of any election expressed the collective will of the people and was
to be accepted as such. That I was growing up in the best
democracy the world had ever known -- its very existence a daily
rebuke to the enemies of freedom -- was beyond question.
Naïve? Embarrassingly so. Yet how I wish
that Election Day in November 2016 might present Americans with
something even loosely approximating the alternatives available to
them in November 1956. Oh, to choose once more between an Ike
and an Adlai.
Don’t for a second think that
this is about nostalgia. Today, Stevenson doesn’t qualify
for anyone’s list of Great Americans. If remembered at
all, it’s for his sterling
performance as President John F.
Kennedy’s U.N. ambassador during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Interrogating his Soviet counterpart with cameras rolling, Stevenson
barked that he was prepared
to wait “until hell freezes over”
to get his questions answered about Soviet military activities in
Cuba. When the chips were down, Adlai proved anything but soft.
Yet in aspiring to the highest office in the land, he had come up
well short. In 1952, he came nowhere close to winning and in
1956 he proved no more successful. Stevenson was to the
Democratic Party what Thomas Dewey had been to the Republicans: a
luckless two-time loser.
As for Eisenhower, although there is much in his
presidency to admire, his errors of omission and commission were
legion. During his two terms, from Guatemala to Iran, the CIA
overthrew governments, plotted assassinations, and embraced unsavory
right-wing dictators -- in effect, planting a series of IEDs destined
eventually to blow up in the face of Ike’s various successors.
Meanwhile, binging on nuclear weapons, the Pentagon accumulated an
arsenal far beyond what even Eisenhower as commander-in-chief
considered prudent or necessary.
In addition, during his tenure in
office, the military-industrial complex became a rapacious
juggernaut, an entity unto itself as Ike himself belatedly
acknowledged. By no means least of all,
Eisenhower fecklessly committed the United States to an ill-fated
project of nation-building in a country that just about no American
had heard of at the time: South Vietnam. Ike did give the
nation eight years of relative peace and prosperity, but at a high
price -- most of the bills coming due long after he left office.
The Pathology of American
Politics
And yet, and yet...
To contrast the virtues and shortcomings of Stevenson and
Eisenhower with those of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump is
both instructive and profoundly depressing. Comparing the
adversaries of 1956 with their 2016 counterparts reveals with
startling clarity what the decades-long decay of American politics
has wrought.
In 1956, each of the major political parties nominated a
grown-up for the highest office in the land. In 2016, only one
has.
In 1956, both parties nominated
likeable individuals who conveyed a basic sense of trustworthiness.
In 2016, neither
party has done so.
In 1956, Americans could count on the election to render
a definitive verdict, the vote count affirming the legitimacy of the
system itself and allowing the business of governance to resume.
In 2016, that is unlikely to be the case. Whether Trump or
Clinton ultimately prevails, large numbers of Americans will view the
result as further proof of “rigged” and irredeemably
corrupt political arrangements. Rather than inducing some
semblance of reconciliation, the outcome is likely to deepen
divisions.
How in the name of all that is holy did we get into such
a mess?
How did the party of Eisenhower, an architect of victory
in World War II, choose as its nominee a narcissistic TV celebrity
who, with each successive Tweet and verbal outburst, offers further
evidence that he is totally unequipped for high office? Yes,
the establishment media are ganging up on Trump, blatantly displaying
the sort of bias normally kept at least nominally under wraps.
Yet never have such expressions of journalistic hostility toward a
particular candidate been more justified. Trump is a bozo of
such monumental proportions as to tax the abilities of our most
talented satirists. Were he alive today, Mark Twain at his most
scathing would be hard-pressed to do justice to The Donald’s
blowhard pomposity.
Similarly, how did the party of Adlai Stevenson, but also
of Stevenson’s hero Franklin Roosevelt, select as its candidate
someone so widely disliked and mistrusted even by many of her fellow
Democrats? True, antipathy directed toward Hillary Clinton
draws some of its energy from incorrigible sexists along with the
“vast right wing conspiracy” whose members thoroughly
loathe both Clintons. Yet the antipathy is not without basis in
fact.
Even by Washington standards,
Secretary Clinton exudes a striking sense of entitlement combined
with a nearly complete absence of accountability. She shrugs
off her misguided
vote in support of invading Iraq back in 2003,
while serving as senator from New York. She neither explains
nor apologizes for pressing to depose Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi
in 2011, her most notable “accomplishment”
as secretary of state. “We came, we saw, he died,”
she bragged
back then, somewhat prematurely given that Libya has since fallen
into anarchy and become a haven for ISIS.
She clings to the demonstrably false
claim that her use of a private server for State Department business
compromised no
classified information. Now opposed to
the Trans Pacific Partnership (TTP) that she once
described as the “gold standard in trade
agreements,” Clinton rejects charges of political opportunism.
That her change of heart occurred when attacking the TPP was helping
Bernie Sanders win one Democratic primary after another is merely
coincidental. Oh, and the big money accepted from banks
and Wall
Street as well as the tech
sector for minimal work and
the bigger money still from leading figures in
the Israel lobby? Rest assured that her acceptance of such
largesse won’t reduce by one iota her support for “working
class families” or her commitment to a just peace settlement in
the Middle East.
Let me be clear: none of these offer
the slightest reason to vote for Donald Trump. Yet together
they make the point that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed
candidate, notably so in matters related to national security.
Clinton is surely correct that allowing Trump to make decisions
related to war and peace would be the height
of folly. Yet her record in that regard
does not exactly inspire confidence.
When it comes to foreign policy, Trump’s preference
for off-the-cuff utterances finds him committing astonishing gaffes
with metronomic regularity. Spontaneity serves chiefly to
expose his staggering ignorance.
By
comparison, the carefully scripted Clinton commits few missteps, as
she recites with practiced ease the pabulum that passes for right
thinking in establishment circles. But fluency does not necessarily
connote soundness. Clinton, after all, adheres resolutely to
the highly militarized “Washington playbook” that
President Obama himself has disparaged
-- a faith-based belief in American global primacy to be pursued
regardless of how the world may be changing and heedless of costs.
On the latter point, note that Clinton’s acceptance
speech in Philadelphia included not a single mention of Afghanistan.
By Election Day, the war there will have passed its 15th
anniversary. One might think that a prospective
commander-in-chief would have something to say about the longest
conflict in American history, one that continues with no end in
sight. Yet, with the Washington playbook offering few answers,
Mrs. Clinton chooses to remain silent on the subject.
So while a Trump presidency holds the prospect of the
United States driving off a cliff, a Clinton presidency promises to
be the equivalent of banging one’s head against a brick wall
without evident effect, wondering all the while why it hurts so
much.
Pseudo-Politics for an Ersatz
Era
But let’s not just blame the candidates.
Trump and Clinton are also the product of circumstances that neither
created. As candidates, they are merely exploiting a situation
-- one relying on intuition and vast stores of brashness, the other
putting to work skills gained during a life spent studying how to
acquire and employ power. The success both have achieved in
securing the nominations of their parties is evidence of far more
fundamental forces at work.
In the pairing of Trump and Clinton, we confront symptoms
of something pathological. Unless Americans identify the
sources of this disease, it will inevitably worsen, with dire
consequences in the realm of national security. After all, back
in Eisenhower’s day, the IEDs planted thanks to reckless
presidential decisions tended to blow up only years -- or even
decades -- later. For example, between the 1953 U.S.-engineered
coup that restored the Shah to his throne and the 1979 revolution
that converted Iran overnight from ally to adversary, more than a
quarter of a century elapsed. In our own day, however,
detonation occurs so much more quickly -- witness the almost
instantaneous and explosively unhappy consequences of Washington’s
post-9/11 military interventions in the Greater Middle East.
So here’s a matter worth pondering: How is it that
all the months of intensive fundraising, the debates and speeches,
the caucuses and primaries, the avalanche of TV ads and annoying
robocalls have produced two presidential candidates who tend to
elicit from a surprisingly large number of rank-and-file citizens
disdain, indifference, or at best hold-your-nose-and-pull-the-lever
acquiescence?
Here, then, is a preliminary diagnosis
of three of the factors contributing to the erosion of American
politics, offered
from the conviction that, for Americans to have better choices next
time around, fundamental change must occur -- and soon.
First, and most important, the
evil effects of money: Need chapter
and verse? For a tutorial, see this essential 2015 book by
Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard: Republic
Lost, Version 2.0. Those
with no time for books might spare 18 minutes for Lessig’s
brilliant and deeply disturbing TED
talk. Professor Lessig argues
persuasively that unless the United States radically changes the way
it finances political campaigns, we’re pretty much doomed to
see our democracy wither and die.
Needless to say, moneyed interests and incumbents who
benefit from existing arrangements take a different view and
collaborate to maintain the status quo. As a result, political
life has increasingly become a pursuit reserved for those like Trump
who possess vast personal wealth or for those like Clinton who
display an aptitude for persuading the well to do to open their
purses, with all that implies by way of compromise, accommodation,
and the subsequent repayment of favors.
Second, the perverse impact of
identity politics on policy:
Observers make much of the fact that, in capturing the presidential
nomination of a major party, Hillary Clinton has shattered yet
another glass ceiling. They are right to do so. Yet the
novelty of her candidacy starts and ends with gender. When
it comes to fresh thinking, Donald Trump has far more to offer than
Clinton -- even if his version of “fresh” tends to be
synonymous with wacky, off-the-wall, ridiculous, or altogether
hair-raising.
The essential point here is that, in
the realm of national security, Hillary Clinton is utterly
conventional. She subscribes to a worldview (and view of
America’s role in the world) that originated during the Cold
War, reached its zenith in the 1990s when the United States
proclaimed itself the planet’s “sole superpower,”
and persists today remarkably
unaffected by actual events. On the campaign trail, Clinton
attests to her bona fides by routinely reaffirming her belief in
American exceptionalism,
paying fervent tribute to “the
world’s greatest military,”
swearing that she’ll be “listening to our generals and
admirals,” and vowing to get tough on America’s
adversaries. These are, of course, the mandatory rituals of the
contemporary Washington stump speech, amplified if anything by the
perceived need for the first female candidate for president to
emphasize her pugnacity.
A Clinton presidency, therefore, offers the prospect of
more of the same -- muscle-flexing and armed intervention to
demonstrate American global leadership -- albeit marketed with a
garnish of diversity. Instead of different policies, Clinton
will offer an administration that has a different look, touting this
as evidence of positive change.
Yet while diversity may be a good thing, we should not
confuse it with effectiveness. A national security team that
“looks like America” (to use the phrase originally coined
by Bill Clinton) does not necessarily govern more effectively than
one that looks like President Eisenhower’s. What matters
is getting the job done.
Since the 1990s women have found plentiful opportunities
to fill positions in the upper echelons of the national security
apparatus. Although we have not yet had a female
commander-in-chief, three women have served as secretary of state and
two as national security adviser. Several have filled Adlai
Stevenson’s old post at the United Nations.
Undersecretaries, deputy undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries
of like gender abound, along with a passel of female admirals and
generals.
So the question needs be asked: Has the quality of
national security policy improved compared to the bad old days when
men exclusively called the shots? Using as criteria the
promotion of stability and the avoidance of armed conflict (along
with the successful prosecution of wars deemed unavoidable), the
answer would, of course, have to be no. Although Madeleine
Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Clinton
herself might entertain a different view, actually existing
conditions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen,
and other countries across the Greater Middle East and significant
parts of Africa tell a different story.
The abysmal record of American
statecraft in recent years is not remotely
the fault of women; yet neither
have women made a perceptibly positive difference. It turns out
that identity does not necessarily signify wisdom or assure insight.
Allocating positions of influence in the State Department or the
Pentagon based on gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation --
as Clinton will assuredly do -- may well gratify previously
disenfranchised groups. Little evidence exists to suggest that
doing so will produce more enlightened approaches to statecraft, at
least not so long as adherence to the Washington playbook figures as
a precondition to employment. (Should Clinton win in November, don’t
expect the redoubtable ladies of Code
Pink to be tapped for jobs at the Pentagon and
State Department.)
In the end, it’s not identity that matters but
ideas and their implementation. To contemplate the ideas that
might guide a President Trump along with those he will recruit to act
on them -- Ivanka as national security adviser? -- is enough to
elicit shudders from any sane person. Yet the prospect of Madam
President surrounding herself with an impeccably diverse team of
advisers who share her own outmoded views is hardly cause for
celebration.
Putting a woman in charge of national security policy
will not in itself amend the defects exhibited in recent years. For
that, the obsolete principles with which Clinton along with the rest
of Washington remains enamored will have to be jettisoned. In
his own bizarre way (albeit without a clue as to a plausible
alternative), Donald Trump seems to get that; Hillary Clinton does
not.
Third, the substitution of
“reality” for reality:
Back in 1962, a young historian by the name of Daniel Boorstin
published The
Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.
In an age in which Donald Trump and
Hillary Clinton vie to determine the nation’s destiny, it
should be mandatory reading. The
Image remains, as when it first
appeared, a fire bell ringing in the night.
According to Boorstin, more than five decades ago the
American people were already living in a “thicket of
unreality.” By relentlessly indulging in ever more
“extravagant expectations,” they were forfeiting their
capacity to distinguish between what was real and what was illusory.
Indeed, Boorstin wrote, “We have become so accustomed to our
illusions that we mistake them for reality.”
While ad agencies and PR firms had indeed vigorously
promoted a world of illusions, Americans themselves had become
willing accomplices in the process.
“The American
citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality,
where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly
dare to face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so
pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality
is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the
great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on
ourselves.”
This, of course, was decades before
the nation succumbed to the iridescent allure of Facebook, Google,
fantasy football, “Real
Housewives of _________,”
selfies, smartphone apps, Game of
Thrones, Pokémon GO -- and,
yes, the vehicle that vaulted Donald Trump to stardom, The
Apprentice.
“The making of the illusions which flood our
experience has become the business of America,” wrote
Boorstin. It’s also become the essence of American
politics, long since transformed into theater, or rather into some
sort of (un)reality show.
Presidential campaigns today are themselves, to use
Boorstin’s famous term, “pseudo-events” that
stretch from months into years. By now, most Americans know
better than to take at face value anything candidates say or promise
along the way. We’re in on the joke -- or at least we
think we are. Reinforcing that perception on a daily basis are
media outlets that have abandoned mere reporting in favor of
enhancing the spectacle of the moment. This is especially true
of the cable news networks, where talking heads serve up a snide and
cynical complement to the smarmy fakery that is the office-seeker’s
stock in trade. And we lap it up. It matters little that
we know it’s all staged and contrived, as long as -- a preening
Megyn Kelly getting under Trump’s skin, Trump himself
denouncing “lyin’ Ted” Cruz, etc., etc. -- it’s
entertaining.
This emphasis on spectacle has drained
national politics of whatever substance it still had back when Ike
and Adlai commanded the scene. It hardly need be said that
Donald Trump has demonstrated an extraordinary knack -- a sort of
post-modern genius -- for turning this phenomenon to his
advantage. Yet in her own way Clinton plays the same game.
How else to explain a national convention organized around the idea
of “reintroducing
to the American people” someone who served eight years as First
Lady, was elected to the Senate, failed in a previous high-profile
run for the presidency, and completed a term as secretary of state?
The just-ended conclave in Philadelphia was, like the Republican one
that preceded it, a pseudo-event par excellence, the object of the
exercise being to fashion a new “image” for the
Democratic candidate.
The thicket of unreality that is American politics has
now become all-enveloping. The problem is not Trump and
Clinton, per se. It’s an identifiable set of arrangements
-- laws, habits, cultural predispositions -- that have evolved
over time and promoted the rot that now pervades American politics.
As a direct consequence, the very concept of self-government is
increasingly a fantasy, even if surprisingly few Americans seem to
mind.
At an earlier juncture back in 1956, out of a population
of 168 million, we got Ike and Adlai. Today, with almost double
the population, we get -- well, we get what we’ve got.
This does not represent progress. And don’t kid yourself
that things really can’t get much worse. Unless Americans
rouse themselves to act, count on it, they will.
Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch
regular, is the author most
recently of America’s
War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.
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Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead,
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Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in
a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2016 Andrew J. Bacevich
Thanks to TomDispatch.com
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