There is shadow under this red rock
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
As some of you know, I took break from being a Contributing Editor at the Big Orange to work on a top-tier Senate campaign. As experiences go, it was as expected -- simultaneously exhilarating and maddening. It served both to validate what we've long suspected about why politics is often so dysfunctional, and it galvanized my resolve to try and change the game (no matter what the gatekeepers may say about the futility of the task). In that spirit, I'd like to share some thoughts on campaigns in general.
Campaigns are nasty, brutish and long, and far too many people who work on them or cover them are nasty, brutish and ignorant. It's not the nastiness or the brutishness that makes modern politics so vile. After all, there's something delightfully satisfying in seeing your political opponent cowering in a corner, bruised and beaten, while you lick the taste of success off your own lip and move on to the next target. There is also an elegant efficiency in the elbow-knocking, blunt-faced nature of a minute-by-minute media cycle.
It's ignorance -- real or feigned -- that putrefies the entire political process.
Let's begin by differentiating between the two.
In politics, those who constantly lose or who so miserably fail at their jobs will generally sink to the bottom, and those who consistently excel may rise to the top. But in the vast ocean between those two extremes are staffers and consultants who are just average or below average. Averageness operates like a life preserver in campaigns. It keeps you alive -- head above water for the most part -- as you tread and make your way to shore. But politics is stormy, and when a crisis wave hits, even the most treasured names can be awash in ignorance of how to handle a given situation or how to plot the best way forward.
It could be because they lack the skills or because they simply don't see the proverbial forest for the trees. They could be ill-equipped or lack all the facts. Decisionmakers can be overwhelmed by the cacophony of "advice" and simply guess the best way forward. Whatever the reason, ignorance often gives rise to panic rather than reasoned deliberation. And panic, of course, is the mother of overreaction or ill-reaction. All the while, the pretense of strategic thinking never wavers. The veneer of competence never cracks.
In other words, if it looks like someone's playing "eleven-dimensional chess," they're likely playing checkers with chess pieces and hoping no one notices.
And often, people don't. If, by luck, success eventually happens, they claim credit. But losses -- those are often chalked up to external factors rather than a deficiency of performance.
And after an election? Cyclical osmosis causes these same folks to gravitate over to other campaigns where there is a need to staff up, merit be damned.
The end result of many campaign cycles is that one may have a resume three pages long without having any real political talent at all. "Experience" is far too often measured simply in terms of years, not talent or track record. This phenomenon of "failing upwards" isn't limited to campaigns. We've seen it in the news industry as well.
There are countless of brilliant, hard-working, ingenious minds working on campaigns, committees, and publications. It is a sad reality that their efforts are too often diluted into ineffectiveness by those who have failed so elegantly as to be at the top of the pack.
This real ignorance creates (more) disorder. But it's feigned ignorance that operates in the opposite fashion -- it's meant to stifle progress, stall creative solutions, and preserve the status quo.
What is feigned ignorance in the political world? It's when "no one could have imagined" that Wall Street would run amok or that Citizens United would be abused. It's exhibiting shock (shock!) when Republicans bite an outstretched Democratic hand. It's faux puzzlement at a political or policy failure that was transparent from the outset. It's the "gee whiz, we don't know how we got here, but we have to make the best with what we have and figure out a way forward."
The feigned ignorance of "how we got here" is meant to absolve culpability and avoid accountability. Quite simply, feigned ignorance keeps people in power, no matter how little they deserve it.
For all of the attention we dedicate to people in power, little attention is paid to the actual, gritty workings of American political campaigns. Understandably, we're laser-focused on the members of Congress and the White House. They are the most public faces of our political system. But the White House and the 535 members of Congress are propped up by an industry that rarely gets analyzed. Staffers, consultants, advisors, fundraisers -- they live primarily in the shadows, in a dusty corner of our politics that receives little sunlight or accountability. Most of the billions spent in campaigns every year gets funneled through their hands.
Over the next few weeks, I'll explore the structure and working of political campaigns. From fundraising to polling to online advocacy, we'll lift the rock and take a peek underneath at the foundation of our politics.
I hope you'll share your thoughts on campaigns as well. Thanks
Update [2011-1-7 18:26:6 by georgia10]:: Sunday will mark the beginning of the series, so make sure to check back as we discuss how candidates spend most of their time (hint: it's not on the campaign trail talking to voters about the issues).