How Reality Television Is Destroying the Right To Vote

In the September 29th issue of The New Yorker, John Cassidy writes a Comment: Bailing Out in which he reminds us that in March 2008, Barack Obama gave "a thoughtful speech, tracing the sub-prime crisis to lax oversight, and calling for a major overhaul of regulatory policy." No splash! No one paid much attention.

Instead by post-convention September, John McCain and Sarah Palin's chant "Drill, Baby, Drill" became the media's focus. According to the old guy, if we could find enough domestic oil, there would be no energy crisis or economic slow down.

The point I want to make is that the media bought McCain and Palin's framing of the issue, which turned out dead wrong, and ignored Obama's, which turns out was right, or more precisely "correct."

Many people saw this financial crisis barreling down. For example, read James Fallows' 2005 Countdown to a Meltdown in The Atlantic. Back in 2006, Kevin Phillips wrote American Theocracy, in which he focused on three aspects of the Republican Party's rise and perilous rule. First, he traced the history of energy and empire, from wind, to wood, to steam, to coal, and finally to oil. America had long depleted our own oil reserves. Saudi Arabia is close, if not passed its middle mark. Too much of the Bush administration's policy was driven by a focus on oil, anything to get oil, and anything to get rich from oil. Remember all of those secret Energy meetings that Cheney held in his vice president's office before 911? Just whisper Carlyle Group, the global private equity investment house, and whose faces appear: Bush I and Jim Baker. Both of them are very wealthy now as a result of Bush II.

The Republican Party's drastic turn to the right began as an effort to energize and woo religious voters. Eventually, as we have witnessed with McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin, the Party is now desperate to appease those voters in order to stay in power.

Lastly, Phillips focused on the insane use of debt financing that deregulation was permitting, and the "financialization" of America. We weren't manufacturing anything except for bizarre bundles of debt for sale across global markets.

Click here for a link to the table of contents of American Theocracy.

When Phillips speaks, we should listen: he was the Republican strategist who "invented the Sun Belt" and named "the New Right." His new book Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, which I haven't read yet, pretty much explains what would happen and did happen. Bad Money was published this spring.

Which brings me back to the right to vote.

This country is in serious economic trouble. We need serious minds to come together to understand and solve this multi-dimensional crisis with as little damage to ordinary people as possible. We need schools for our children, we need health care, we need safe food and water, we need transportation, energy, and a sustainable economy so that our people can work.

We don't need pandering.

Which brings me to the crippling impact of reality television shows. Every time someone votes for his or her favorite on American Idol, Project Runway, Top Chef, whatever, the essential nature of the political right to vote is likely to be diminished. Voting in an election shouldn't be about whether we like someone or how we feel. Voting for government is about thinking. And we should vote for the best and the brightest, because the problems facing our country and our planet require thoughtful, analyzed, and strategic decisionmaking. Not gut reactions.

We are living through a time when everything has been improvised, because the people in office are incompetent. It's not only our economy that is at risk, but our constitutional way of life and government. Everytime a solution is improvised, whether it's post 911 eavesdropping or post Lehman Brothers bankruptcy bailout that gives exclusive authority to a non-elected Treasury Secretary, we lose our grip on the rule of law. Once it's lost, it's hard to grasp onto again.

Think before you vote.