The Glue that keeps Featherweights together

How do you size up a political candidate to ascertain that he or she will turn out to be a governing heavyweight if elected President of the United States while keeping out the featherweights?

This is a question that has a different meaning to different people, which is why there are different approaches as to how surveyors pose it, therefore how it is answered. Most of the time, what happens is that each person gives a response indicating what their priority is. And most of the time, the answers that come close to resembling each other are grouped by the surveyors to make a short list of what the priorities of the public are. Comparing this list with the priorities that each candidate professes to have, the pundits can tell who is in tune with the public, therefore most likely to get elected.

But this does not answer the original question because the candidate that is most likely to get elected may not necessarily turn out to be the governing heavyweight that the public had wished for. Well, does this mean the above exercise in democracy is flawed? Maybe it is. But again, this does not mean there is a better system for doing things except for the fact that in exposing the flaws of the existing system, the people involved in it will consciously avoid its shortcomings.

The most important of the shortcomings is that the candidates running for office hire their own surveyors to canvass the public and make a list which the handlers turn into talking points they give to the candidates who take them to the public. The result is that most candidates sound the same when laying out their vision for the nation. Once in a while, however, one of them says something offbeat, and thus “breaks out” of the pack. But the favorite method of most to stand out above everyone else does not consist in rising above them. Sadly, it consists in suppressing them by running negative ads against the nearest and most likely rival.

If you think of this as being one layer of flaws plaguing the democratic system, there is another layer you should worry about. It is the tendency of the pundits to turn themselves into remote handlers that tell the candidates how to comport themselves and what to talk about. You have an example of this in the article that came under the title: “Hawks of a Feather” and the subtitle: “The Republican candidates and foreign policy.” It was written by Michael Warren and published on May 29, 2015 in the Weekly Standard.

Warren is not being subtle about what he is trying to do. Look how he starts the article: “The candidates in the crowded field may each be trying to break out of the pack, but there is one area where debate is scarce … the candidates have all sounded consistent on foreign policy.” This is how Michael Warren, the pundits establishes the notion that to sound consistent on a given priority – which happens to be his own – is a good thing. It is this: “We've got to reinstate American leadership when it comes to world affairs”.

But the author goes on to say that “the glaring exception to all this hawkishness is Rand Paul.” And so, he gives him a friendly little advice: “Whether Paul likes it or not, the GOP is the hawkish party, and its presidential nominee is likely to be hawkish too.” This translates into: If you hope to be the nominee, Rand, get on the bandwagon and adopt a hawkish line as well.

If this is not enough of an incentive to make Rand Paul reconsider his “breaking out” stance, Michael Warren has something else up his sleeve. It is the stuff that negative ads are made of. Oh no, it's not negative against fellow Republicans – don't forget Reagan's Eleventh Commandment – it is negative against the chief opponent of the crowd. It is Barack Obama.

Here is a collection of that: “The field's collective assessment contra Rand Paul, is that Obama's lack of leadership helped create the conditions for ISIS to flourish.” It is also this: “Or consider the field's tough talk on Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.” And this: “On Europe, the candidates decry Obama's accommodation of Vladimir Putin's aggression.” And finally, there is this: “It's not just Cuban-Americans who are outraged at the administration's policy shift toward Havana.” All of which lead to this: “And Obama's former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the perfect foil on foreign affairs for the GOP to unite against.”

Michael Warren tells what else is happening to keep the candidates in line. He tells of a confederation calling itself the John Hay Initiative whose goal is to “encourage the candidates to embrace a, well, hawkish view of America's role in the world.”

Thus, we see clearly that the glue which keeps the potential governing featherweights together, are the attacks on the opponents in the opposite camp … and if warranted, opponents in the same camp as well despite the Eleventh Commandment.