roachboy

there are several problems floating beneath the surface of the opening post, i think.

first is the idea that in the american political system, it is ok for an incumbent to engage in permanent campaigning. i do not see how this is beneficial to anyone.

second is the centrality of television as medium for campaigning. this is a problem both in itself (in the surface-orientation of campaign activities---i remember for example the idiotic interpretations of the bush/gore debates, which were reduced to the level of backstage debates over who would get to be prom king/queen) and in the expense entailed for using the medium.

i do not understand why campaigning could not be restricted to a finite period of time before an election, stopping 3-4 days before the vote (the assumption is that voters are able to make considerations of theiur vote and might require a bit of time to do it) and why, duing this period, the networks are not compelled to recognize their service as a public service and give time to campaigns free of charge.

the relation between the first and second points here is circular.

third is the question of the extent to which holding the office of president of the us is parallel to a ceo position in a large corporation. a ceo usually presides more than directly does things---signs off on decisions the details of which are delegated to a professional staff on whose judgements the ceo can rely. the staff is critical, as is trust in that staff. one result of this is leisure--a kind of symbolic capital particular to the corporate elite (how to differentiate yourself from the regular folk? be in the same environment, but not in a position where you actually have to do what they have to do)

(caveat: the above is obviously general---a list of ceos who conform more to the model of the petit bourgeois entrepeneur seems to be beside the point-----though i can see one coming....)

a president is "elected"..whence the problem:
do people expect a different kind of relation to function from an "elected" president?
this simply because the president is elected?
or is it simply a matter of appearance---- the (illusion?) of direct presidential engagement with decision making has to maintained in order to legitimate claims about the "democratic" nature of the system as a whole?

either way, is this problem underneath the reactions to bush's unseemly affection for vacation?

in other words, is there anything going on here that refers to questions of principle?

or is the problem really that the left does not have an apparatus for articulating and disseminating the politics of ad hominem that the right does (radio, fox talking heads, etc etc etc)?
so is the problem really a sense of injury or unfairness on the part of those whose politics are not conservative because bush is not being raked over the coals for this?


fourth: the question of class domination of the american political system. looked at in terms of economic and professional position, the american system resembles an oligarchy.
but you need to be able to use these categories to do the analysis.
if you bracket these categories, you land fairly quickly in the kind of problems that played out above, where actual questions about oligarchy (for example) get diverted into questions about adjectives--with the result that the whole debate implodes.....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite