Following developments in the Republican presidential nominating contest the instability of the race is stark. Every political contest involves flawed candidates: how could it be otherwise? But often the public develops a firm sense of the perspective of the candidates and chooses to join a team. As primary campaigns are waged on a state-by-state basis, it is expected that in some realms one candidate will do better than another, but psychiatric mood swings are something else. We saw the politics of allegiance in the competition between Barack and Hillary (and the wormy love apple: imagine our blue dress politics in an Edwards presidency!). In the states of the industrial Midwest, home to Reagan Democrats, Hillary posted strong numbers; Obama was more successful in states not so hard hit by industrial decline, states with a rainbow electorate, and those open to a new type of politics. Soon one knew the metrics of the race, even if the outcome was uncertain. But the Republican campaign upends these rules as voter preferences lurch wildly. This is a campaign year that reminds us of voters’ cultural fickleness – their political ADD. They are watching a reality television show and so are we (Jeff Goldfarb describes his pained reaction in “The Republican Reality Show”). If one is not newly tickled, one turns away. Media narratives set our politics.

We have gazed at candidates, quasi-candidates, and proto-candidates – Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and The Donald – dance with the stars. Can parties fire their voters? Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty could have had his turn had he the internal fortitude or cockeyed optimism to recognize that to be dismissed in August might lead to be crowned a year later. If politics were based on a comparison and conflict of ideas, this would be inconceivable.

But American politics has become, as Jeffrey Goldfarb emphasizes, a reality show – adore it, dismiss it, or despise it, but depend on it. Voters demand diversion; they want bread and circuses, at least circuses. Around the scrum are kibitzers, now Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, who, after deciding to disengage, demand that attention be paid. Palin seems committed to pursuing Rush Limbaugh’s 2008 “Operation Chaos,” designed to prolong the Democrats’ primary contest and undercut the eventual nominee. In her case, the fleeting Governor undercuts what is ostensibly her own party as she tells her admirers to vote for Newt to continue debate, and, presumably, her role in it. Our rogue muffin, a mildly progressive governor of a mildly libertarian state, has assumed her role as a mistress of ceremonies of the grand guignol of tabloid politics.

At this moment, after the Florida presidential primary, Mitt Romney seems to have surmounted Newt’s second surge, despite Sarah Palin’s counter-cultural rap to “rage against the machine” by voting for the former speaker. Images, even those of the heavy metal left, are to be plucked by anyone plucky enough to do so. No doubt twists and turns will continue in this drama on the road to Tampa, as voters get bored with the pragmatic lassitude of Mitt, a man who would be Ike or at least Bush 41. Perhaps Ron and Rand Paul will galvanize voters to throw the TSA off the island, raging against those airport scanners and the bureaucratic touch that follows. More plausibly, we might discover that the sad illness of Rick Santorum’s special needs young daughter Bella, now hospitalized in Philadelphia (from the effects of the genetic disorder Trisomy 18), will provide sufficient weepy pathos to propel his candidacy among an electorate weaned on Love Story.

But what if Mitt triumphs? Mitt as nominee poses challenges for an ADD electorate that demands the frisson of thrills and the flutter of delight. Elections in which a President is on the ballot can be referendums or choices. The incumbent hopes that the voters will see the contest as a choice. The challenger, particularly in parlous economic times, hopes for a judgment of the sitting leader. Despite his deep pockets, if Romney is the Republican nominee, Obama will provide the only electricity in the room. He will be the Ozzy Osborne, Paris Hilton, and Kim Kardashian of October. Perhaps Mitt Romney will find it difficult to energize his base, but Barack Obama will achieve that for him. With Newt on the ballot, the choice will be stark, but with tame, vague Mitt, the election might be a referendum. Our ADD electorate will have to determine the narrative of the moment on that first Tuesday in November. On that day will the president be imagined a Greek naïf, an acolyte of Fidel, or the Great Leader of the resurgent East? Or is being an American Idol enough?

I have a longstanding weakness as a sociologist of media. There are often developments in media popular culture that I know are important, and to which I know I should pay close attention, but I just can’t stomach to read, listen or watch, leading me to be out of the loop. It started with the celebrity gossip in the supermarket scandal sheets. I could skim People magazine only with great difficulty. I remember my dismay when I did review (there were not enough words to say read) the celebrity treatment of Lech Walesa in which it was hard to discern why he was the subject of such close attention. I hit a severe watchers block when it came to the TV program Dallas. Then there were the worlds of Talk Radio and Reality TV. One of the biggest errors of my scholarly life was not paying close attention to the news craze about the OJ Simpson trial, when lack of patience with the silliness of “all OJ all the time” led me to overlook the importance of the racial politics of that media circus. I compensate for my low tolerance for junk by reading up, learning from scholars who reported on and analyzed what I had avoided. From the classic by Ien Ang, Watching Dallas, to Josh Gamson’s telling Freaks Talk Back.

But I am now proud of myself. I have finally followed a TV Reality Show from beginning to end, watching the Republican primary debates. All the elements are there, most apparent in the rise and fall of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and New Gingrich, each a worthy contestant, while an extremely unlikely President.

Bachmann gained limited attention playing in Iowa state fair, a local girl with a solid record of absurd assertions in and outside of the Halls of Congress, running for re-election and to be President of the United States.

Rick Perry seemed to be the charmed candidate until he opened his mouth and little or nothing came out during the debates, a promising star chosen from central casting, but just couldn’t act.

Acting was the strong forte of Cain and Gingrich. Cain knew little about his main issue, the economy other than a simple and appealing slogan. 999 the answer to any and all problems. Once he became the leading not Romney his ignorance became too much even for Republican primary voters, who have been trained by Fox to not pay much attention to inconvenient facts.

Gingrich, on the other hand, played the role of the man who knew too much. He was the master of dogmatic assertion, had a multitude of formed opinions, often in contradiction with each other, could think on his feet with dazzling speed and was a master of appealing to the prejudices of his audience. He started by limiting his demagoguery to the media and Obama, “the greatest food stamp President,” using racism, Islamophobia and parochialism in a way that the primary voters broadly approved. But then in the tradition of McCarthy, he turned on his Republican competition with fatal results.

Romney successfully fought back last night. But please note, the debate was not about substance but form, and the studio audience which bolstered Gingrich in South Carolina, turned against him last night when Romney put in a credible performance. He had a new debating coach in preparation for the season’s finale and he showed himself to be an able student.

The show is over. Newt Gingrich, the last not-Romney standing, was defeated. Mitt won. He won the Reality Show, that is. The race for the nomination is not yet decided. It is pretty clear that Romney will collect the plurality of delegates to the convention, but a combination of Paul, Santorum and Gingrich, still, may block him from a clean victory. There may be real politics at the nominating convention for the first time in decades.

And while the show is over, what it has concealed is not, the real debate in the Republican Party: the tension between fundamental commitments to the free market and to conservative values. Paul and Santorum work out the tension in opposing ways, with Paul emphasizing the market, Santorum, values. Romney tries to fudge the difference without the personal charm of a Reagan or the demagogic force of a Gingrich. Romney showed some previously unseen talents last night, but I wonder how he will play with a real political opponent, with a competing political vision. Such a debate will be more interesting than Reality TV, which still turns me off.

In my last post, I argued that Occupy Wall Street had clear, present and positive goals. I made my argument by focusing on one part of the New York occupation, the Think Tank group. I highlighted its principled commitment to open discussion of the problems of the day, based on a radical commitment to democracy: social, cultural and economic, as well as political. This is serious business. It can be consequential as OWS figures out ways to not only speak in the name of the 99%, but also in a language that the 99% can understand, so that it can respond and act. I promise to analyze directly the challenges involved in a future post.  But I’ve been working hard these past weeks, and don’t have the energy to do the hard work required. Today, I feel like something a bit lighter, and will be suggestive and less direct about the big challenges, reviewing the Republican Presidential field, and some other more comic elements of the present political landscape in the United States in the context of the opening that OWS has provided.

Commentators broadly agree: the Republican field for President is weak. The likely nominee, Mitt Romney, appears to be cynical to the core. Making his name as a reasonable moderate Republican Governor of Massachusetts, he is now running as a right-wing ideologue. Once pro-choice, he is now pro-life. Once for government supported universal health insurance, now he is violently opposed to Obamacare. Once in favor of reasonable immigration reform, now he is an anti-amnesty radical. David Brooks, the conservative columnist we of the left like to quote most, supports Romney with the conviction that he doesn’t say what he means.

After Romney, things get even stranger. If these people mean what they say (and I think they do), we are in real trouble, because one of them could be the next President of the United States, insuring its decay as the global power. Perhaps this is a reason for radicals to support Republicans? But then again, this was the reason for the socialist radicals to support Hitler in the thirties.

Bachmann, Perry, Cain and now Newt Gingrich have successively led the national polls over Romney. They are increasingly outrageous as the true-believing candidate. Bachmann seemed to be so uninfluenced by the facts that she burnt out. Perry seemed to forget who he is, or at least who he claims to be, one too many times. Cain not only conveniently forgot about his history of serial sexual harassment. He appeared to not have ever known much about the world beyond his motivational riffs and his slogan for his 999 program. And now the American blowhard-in-chief, Newt Gingrich, is back, appearing as the last man standing. Said to be the intelligent conservative, filled with innovative ideas, thinking that he is always the smartest guy in the room, his willful ignorance is stunning.

About the Arab Spring:  “People say, ‘Oh isn’t this great, we’re having an Arab Spring,’” he said. “I think we may in fact be having an anti-Christian spring. I think people should take this [assertion] pretty soberly.”

About the most significant danger facing America:

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,”  Gingrich said. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

And in a report today, on the grey non-partisan Congressional Budget Office: “a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.”

These are but a quick sampling, brought to you thanks to the remarkable power of Google. “A Little Red Book of Gingrich” would be pretty funny if he remains an outsider, but that such a pillar of wisdom could become the candidate of a major political party, not to imagine President Gingrich, is truly horrifying.

The poor quality of the Republican field is, I think, not just a consequence of a chance collection of unqualified and undistinguished individuals. It is, rather, a manifestation of a deep crisis in American political culture. The Republican Party has become a bastion of know-nothing ideological true-believers. The Reagan revolution has become radicalized. Christian conservatives, market fundamentalists and nativists (ascendant in response of the election of Barack Hussein Obama) each demand ideological purity. The contradictions among these fundamentalist positions, and the tension between them and factual reality, guarantee that the serious and the responsible need not apply. The only way they can is by hiding their more sober qualities. This is Brooks’s hope for Romney.

Obama and the Democrats are not so constricted, but they have been profoundly and negatively affected by the ideological madness of the right. Given a polarized public, Obama has tried to work with Republicans and the results have been mixed at best, outraging his supporters and critics on the left, perplexing his previous supporters in the center and even on the right (e.g. Brooks and Company). The Democrats have not distinguished themselves in addressing some enduring and profound problems the American public faces. This is where I think the significance of Occupy Wall Street comes in. It helped to put forward some stark facts about the American social condition, concerning the issues of inequality, the structural restrictions on social mobility. It opened public discussion about these and other outstanding issues concerning social justice, providing the opportunity for debate and action. Thus far, it has been very successful.

But I am worried as I look around the blogosphere and as I look at some demonstrations close to home. Some attached to the OWS movement want to push it in a direction that will assure its insignificance and destruction. They would rather play at revolution than work for significant social change. While they dream of and chant slogans about “smashing capitalism,” something that makes no sense to the American public at large, and among serious economists and to most serious social and political scientists as well, they may fail to seize the day.

In the absence of Occupy Wall Street, such sloganeering is quaint and comic, a tragedy of the twentieth century repeating itself as farce in the twenty first. But because there is a real opening right now for significant change, there is the danger that we may face tragedy yet again in the form of a lost opportunity.

Now is the time when control over corporate excesses may be a real possibility. Now is the time when links among significant social forces, including labor unions, feminist movements, civil rights movements, gay and lesbian rights movements, environmental movements and the like, and indeed, the Democratic Party, could move a broad public. The unions, especially, are social organizations that have the institutionalized power to address the concerns raised by OWS. The unions need the energy and imagination of OWS, as OWS needs the power of the unions. Now is the time that Barack Obama can be pushed to be the president he promised to be. The Democratic Party is the political force that can put an end to the party of the American Tragedy, the GOP in its present configuration, so strikingly revealed by their leaders who would be President of the United States of America.

Or we could denounce liberals, Democrats and play revolution. That would be pretty funny if it weren’t so serious.

I am allergic to political gatherings. You are not likely to discover me at movement rallies, rubber-chicken circuit banquets, or victory parties (more commonly weep-in-your-drink defeatathons). I treasure the quietude of the old voting booths where one could think one’s civic thoughts while surrounded by worn fabric. I enjoyed the experience so much that I annually decided to change at least one intended vote just because that choice would mean that casting a ballot was an act of deliberation.

Still, nineteen years ago on a bright September afternoon, I made my way to the train station in Norcross, Georgia, near where I resided at the time. That day Al Gore was coming to town. I no longer recall whether Gore was riding a whistle-stop train or merely using the station as a nostalgic background. Given Atlanta’s transportation mess, I imagine it was the latter. The idea of rearranging my schedule to hear Senator Gore declaim might seem an act of perversity, or at least desperation.

But it was not. It was lovely and sweet and purposive, not only because of the flags and the band and National gemeinschaft and Southern gemutlichkeit. Without yelling, Al Gore was eloquent, passionate and true. At least true enough for campaign purposes. I left persuaded that the order of the Democrats’ 1992 ticket should be reversed. I voted standing on my head.

I tell this tale because of current discussions of Indiana’s Mitch Daniels and Minnesota’s Timothy James Pawlenty, both of whom being regarded as a bit wonkish and “Gorish.” Apparently Daniels homelife was slightly Gothic, and he decided that he could miss the attentions of Perez Hilton, Gail Collins, Larry Flynt, and Matt Drudge, but T-Paw has decided to make a go of it. It is too early to trek to a local rail station, if there are any stations left, but from what I have heard, T-Paw is, despite his nickname, a serious man.

The web is filled with accounts questioning whether one so measured can be measured as presidential timber. In competition with Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann – not to mention a certain raging rogue elephant with fire in her belly – seriousness, modesty, and respect is a virtue in the public sphere. Presidential Obama, of whom some liberals despair, seemingly unwilling to rise to the heavens or sink to the mud, also seems rhetorically appealing.

I have previously written with some warmth of a lusty, rugged, prickly political discourse which does not always observe kindly civility. But there should be a distinction between those who critique and those who wish to lead, a division between fire and nice. And even these so-called boring candidates are not above throwing a few good jabs amidst all the clarity. Certainly Gore did on that afternoon, and so too do Governor Pawlenty and President Obama. Some red meat is healthy for a rhetorical meal, just as long as one abjures the political equivalent of a Paleo-diet (all raw moose). I call for a candidate with a core of commitment to public debate and to political process. Yes, a candidate who is passionate about values and goals, but also one who recognizes that one’s opponents are similarly and properly passionate.

And so without any endorsement, I am glad that good-ol’-worn-sock Tim Pawlenty is running for president. I am glad that he has a vision, however imperfect it might be, just as the same could be said for the pre-Clintonized Al Gore. Many reasons might be adduced as to why a Vice-President will never be the President. Failures have many fathers, but I have long felt that part of what doomed the Gore candidacy was that by 2000 he lost sight of the willingness to take us seriously and to speak in themes that made us consider, not just proposing bubba-Redux.

We will be blessed, if, as the Republican nominating process heats up, it doesn’t incinerate those candidates whose quieter, clever, wiser voices we need, even if, in the end, we determine that the incumbent has the edge. Let us hope for an election in which our decision will not be certain until we close the curtain of the musty, old voting booth.