Gunpowder Chronicle posted on April 2, 2008 3:42 PM | Rating:
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Jim Geraghty, posting over at Campaign Spot on National Review Online, has been saving us all the pain of reading the Obama tome "Dreams of My Father" and has uncovered a serious timeline problem: putting Jack Kemp as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development four years before he actually was.
Now I am sure that there are those who will say, "Holy crap, you are really digging for that one!", and they would have a point.
What I think it actually points out is the utter failure and venal stupidity of what I call "narrative politics". Narrative politics is the idea of running as a candidate based on your "story"; the hubris of arguing that you should be elected because your life experience or your life story is more compelling than your opponents'. Narrative politics is the political version of brand marketing, where the "concept" is more important than the product.
The problem is that marketing is about image and perception, not fact and reality. America would be better served if its politicians were engaging in the crucible of ideas, not the fog of branding. Republicans and Democrats are both guilty of this "treason of the polity". Neither party is willing to engage in a real battle of ideas -- a battle that would burn away the bullshit and get down to the nitty gritty issues.
The reason, of course, is simple: politicians are lazy. It is hard to gird your intellectual loins for a real battle of ideas and philosophy. And sometimes, fealty to your beliefs requires you to take difficult and uncomfortable positions. (Example: if you really believe in freedom of speech, you must defend all political speech, not just that you agree with). Politicians are lazy, and don't want to be buttonholed. So they fall back to the easy position and talk in nebulous branding terms like "leadership", "experience", "hope", "vision".
And so the story becomes the campaign. And fiction becomes reality. And no one is held accountable for anything anymore.