A while back, I did a thread here about the career and political views of Huey P. Long. No one responded. History says that Roosevelt was the prime populist mover of the 30's. The SSA.gov history pages say otherwise.
What is it that makes a politician "mainstream"? What is it that makes people view themselves as "centrists", middle of the road? Is it necessary for a "serious" candidate for US president to have been right, on major issues on his resume, much of the time, once in a while, or doesn't matter?
Could it be that the majority of likely US voters are actaully of "unhinged", and incoherent sentiments? I'm suspecting it's so.
My question is whether the major part of the US electorate is so "glued to the center", that the 2008 presidential candidates who are widely viewed as the "serious" ones, are actually the unglued "nut cases" bought off by corporate interests, and the candidates who have a more reliable view and, in hindsight, track record, are viewed as the extremists?
Are we where we are....divided right down the middle, federal finances shattered, freedoms under threat, and involved in endless, bankrupting and grinding war, because of the electorate's support of the "centrist" candidates, and those who have been elected in the past, were and are people who are not centrists, at all? Could it be that the centrist electorate and the media, all of the opinion that they perceive "reason" and measured solutions, are not at all reasonable...that they actually promote and push nutcases to the top?
Quote:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.c...extremists.php
....The trouble, though, is that on top of his out-of-the-mainstream views, Paul is also a huge weirdo who seems a bit crazy. Rebecca Traister made some <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/05/kucinich/">similar points</a> about Dennis Kucinich. The difficulty is that in a country as big as the United States, it's easy for a set of views to simultaneously be very unpopular and also be supported by millions of people, but out of those millions of people the folks who decide to enter electoral politics in order to take on a principled, "no compromise with the electorate" approach are going to be the eccentrics. More normal, well-adjusted people with extremist views are going to prefer to do something less frustrated and isolating with their lives.
As a result, views like Kucinich's social democracy and Paul's libertarianism wind up represented by eccentric politicians, which winds up making their views seem weirder than they deserve to be.
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Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...aul/index.html
Monday November 12, 2007 14:31 EST
Ron Paul distortions and smears
......" A "principled conservative" is someone who aggressively objects to the radicalism of the neocons and the Bush/Cheney assault on our constitution and embraces a conservative political ideology. That's what Ron Paul is, and it's hardly a surprise that he holds many views anathema to most liberals. That hardly makes him a "fruitcake."
<h3>Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of a sovereign country that had not attacked us and could not attack us -- as did some of the commentators now aggressively questioning Ron Paul's mental health or, at least, his "seriousness." She supported the occupation of that country for years -- until it became politically unpalatable. That war has killed hundreds of thousands of people at least and wreaked untold havoc on our country. Are those who supported that war extremist, or big weirdos, or fruitcakes?
Or how about her recent support for Joe Lieberman's Iran warmongering amendment, or her desire to criminalize flag burning, or her vow to strongly consider an attack on Iran if they obtain nuclear weapons? Is all of that sane, normal, and serious?
And I read every day that corporations and their lobbyists are the bane of our country, responsible for most of its ills. What does it say about her that her campaign is fueled in large part by support from exactly those factions? Are she and all of her supporters nonetheless squarely within the realm of the sane and normal?</h3> And none of this is to say anything of the Giulianis and Podhoretzs and Romneys and Krauthammers and Kristols with ideas so extreme and dangerous, yet still deemed "serious."
That isn't to say that nobody can ever be deemed extremist or even crazy. But I've heard Ron Paul speak many times now. There are a lot of views he espouses that I don't share. But he is a medical doctor and it shows; whatever else is true about him, he advocates his policies in a rational, substantive, and coherent way -- at least as thoughtful and critical as any other political figure on the national scene, if not more so. As the anti-Paul New York Sun noted today, Paul has been downright prescient for a long time in warning about the severe devaluation of the dollar.
And -- as the above-cited efforts to compel Congress to actually adhere to the Constitution demonstrate -- few people have been as vigorous in defense of Constitutional principles as those principles have been mangled and trampled upon by this administration while most of our establishment stood by meekly. That's just true.
Paul's efforts in that regard may be "odd" in the sense that virtually nobody else seemed to care all that much about systematic unconstitutional actions, but that hardly makes him a "weirdo." Sometimes -- as the debate over the Iraq War should have demonstrated once and for all -- the actual "fruitcake" positions are the ones that are held by the people who are welcome in our most respectable institutions and magazines, both conservative and liberal.
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This whole concept of singling out and labelling as "weirdos" and "fruitcakes" political figures because they espouse views that are held only by a small number of people is nothing more than an attempt to discredit someone without having to do the work to engage their arguments. It's actually a tactic right out of the seventh grade cafeteria. It's just a slothful mechanism for enforcing norms.
Under the right circumstances, enforcement of norms might have some utility. Where things are going relatively well, and the country has a healthy political dialogue, perhaps there isn't much of a need to expand the scope of ideas that we consider "normal." Having all the people whose views fit comfortably in the mainstream stigmatize as "fruitcakes" all those whose views are outside of the mainstream might, under those happy circumstances, bear little cost.
But our country isn't doing all that well right now. Our political dialogue isn't really vibrant or healthy. It seems rather self-evident that it is preferable to enlarge the scope of ideas that we consider and to expand the debates that we engage. The "norms" that have prevailed over the last six years have led the country quite astray and are in need of fundamental re-examination, at the very least. That a political figure (or pundit) clings loyally to prevailing norms isn't exactly evidence of their worth, let alone their mental health. The contrary proposition might actually be more plausible.
There is something disorienting about watching the same people who cheered much of this on, or who will enthusiastically support for President a candidate who enabled and cheered much of it on, trying to constrict debate by labeling as "weirdos" and "fruitcakes" those who have most aggressively opposed it all. As the debates of 2002 should have proved rather conclusively, the arguments that are deemed to be the province of the weirdos and losers may actually be the ideas that are right. They at least deserve an honest airing, especially in a presidential campaign with as much at stake as this one. .......
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