The Politifact feature that appears in a number of US newspapers tries to rate the relative truthfulness of statements by public figures, including key politicians. As with other local efforts, the Politifact Wisconsin feature in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel too often has not only focused on relatively trivial but easy to understand statements, it sometimes finds itself struggling to shoe-horn statements onto its linear, one-dimensional scale, ranging from "true" on down to "pants on fire."
After all, policy-making in a highly technical and sizable, diverse culture like ours is a very nuanced business. Politics? Not so much. And yet, using something other than the broadsword of a linear "Truth-O-Meter" could help citizens better understand complex issues while not getting sucked in by cheap rhetoric or simplistic "gotcha" statements.
There's a role for both approaches, and it seems the Journal Sentinel has learned its lesson, trying now to become more analytical -- at least some of the time.
And that leads me to recommend very highly today's Politifact Wisconsin installment, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Umhoefer and entitled, "What makes America 'exceptional' "?
Umhoefer has done yeoman's work prying apart a new Republican Party campaign theme that's structurally ambiguous. That theme, in my view, is built on a wobbly, three-legged stool: (1.) America's presumed exceptionalism, informed by (2.) deceptive messaging about our dangerous decline, an idea that Republicans hope will create a dream-like (3.) "inception" (i.e., dream manipulation, from the movie of the same name) among voters to reward Republicans.
Read on below the orange puff of backroom cigar smoke as we further examine these three components of the GOP campaign "strategy" in the coming year's elections.
The GOP's golden meme-theme, of course, is that if voters will only give over full control of all branches of government to Republicans, the US will return to those exceptional (but mostly illusory) days when the US was the world's cop, money flowed like water (but somehow trickled up, not down), and America could achieve almost anything it wanted (note to Republicans: best not to try accounting for Vietnam or for that matter those endless Mideast wars).
On the one hand, that theme -- used by an increasing number of Republican presidential hopefuls -- advances the message that the United States is currently weak and wallowing because of incompetent leadership (ignoring the fact that national policy decisions have in great measure been influenced by the GOP's "block all Obama initiatives" tactic).
On the other hand, the GOP presidential candidates speak over and over about how the US ("America," usually) is an "exceptional" nation. Read this excerpt from Umhoefer's piece on how Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an unannounced yet nearly full-time campaigner for presidential votes, has employed the Big E word, over and over:
"America is an exceptional country. And I think, unfortunately, sometimes there are many in Washington who think those of us who believe we are exceptional means we are superior, that we’re better than others in the world," Walker said.
"No," he continued. "Being an exceptional country means we have a higher responsibility than others, not just to care for ourselves and our own interests, but to lead in the world. To insure that all freedom loving people who have the capacity to yearn for that freedom, have that freedom."
For Walker that's three doses of "exceptional" in four sentences, along with three doses of the always tasty "freedom." Nor does he bother to deal with the uncomfortable truth that "exceptionalism" sounds to a whole lot of Americans and people in other countries as if he's saying, "Everybody in the world must do this and must do that -- except for us."
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has used "exceptional" in much the same way as Walker. So has US Senator Rand Paul, who just formerly announced his candidacy for president, to no one's surprise. Hey, what a coincidence, don't you think? What is the Republican presidential nominee slate anyway? A string of paper dolls?
So why this GOP triangulation of "exceptionalism," "freedom" and the inceptional, alleged "weakness" of Barack Obama?
It's a handy way for GOP candidates to sound stirring in their political rhetoric, playing to feel-good American hubris and ultra-patriotism, while carefully denouncing on their own selective terms Obama's inability to get absolutely everything he wants, much less everything that needs to be done.
Those failures, such as they actually exist, are of course due in most cases to obstructionism by those very Republicans. That's the deceiving aspect of this widening theme from the GOP, which increasingly functions more like what might be called the Decepticon Party. It's a party that's a mechanical dinosaur, weapons-heavy but with a brain the size of a walnut.
Many Americans already are well aware that after more than six years of denigrating Obama's skills, biography and accomplishments and seeking to block his every move, Republicans have then proceeded with each new election to get voters to reject both the president and Democratic legislators, too. That has entailed not just thwarting progress, but dumping on the considerable progress that actually has been achieved in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
Thus it's no accident when Republican Rudy Giuliani openly questions Obama's very patriotism. That's been added to the GOP's Obama negatory, and serves as a foundation for the idea that the US is in danger of no longer being "exceptional," or maybe, that we already have arrived in Ordinaryville.
And it's no accident when, over in another corner, an increasing number of shrill conservative pundits have begun to claim that the cause of the massive drought in California isn't climate change or cyclical weather cycles or limited water supplies in the face of burgeoning population and economic growth. No, the main cause is ... Obama! He is, don't you know, a reckless enviro-freak-in-chief who has dared to mandate that some of the state's free-flowing waters continue to be reserved to protect endangered aquatic species.
Of course, the Decepticons are not so prepared to diss themselves for championing massive oil fracking operations that tainted around 42 billion gallons of precious California well water in 2014 alone.
If you want the full monty on this strategy, simply run an online search on the phrase, "Obama to blame for" and watch the indictments roll across your screen. ISIS? Obama. "High" gas prices? Obama. Ebola? Obama. Decades of declining middle-class incomes? Obama. School lunches? Obama. Katrina? Yes, even that pre-Obama event is all Obama's fault. Apparently, America's first black muslim president from Kenya has a time machine.
The good news is that this little GOP game may be playing out, at least in terms of its impact on electoral politics. As Politifact's Umhoefer explains, all these downbeat counter-messages from conservatives tend to dampen their lilting trills about just how special America is. The full theme tends, in other words, to neutralize itself. From his piece:
In 2010, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that 73 percent of Democrats and 91 percent of Republicans agreed that America’s history and the U.S. Constitution give it a unique character.
But more recent polls have showed significant slippage in that belief, something Republicans are bemoaning as they seek to win back the White House.
So the Decepticons have as usual doubled own, clumsily trying to tie anything wrong in the US around Obama's neck, like a rhetorical flaming tire. It's what passes for progressive politics on the GOP side:
Exception. Deception. Inception.