By Gary Alan Fine, February 1st, 2012 
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 . . .
Read more: The Florida Primary and The ADD Electorate
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 27th, 2012 
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 . . .
Read more: The Republican Reality Show: The Rise and Fall of Not Romney
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 4th, 2012 
It’s déjà vu all over again, a nursery rhyme with a political twist.
“The Republican Party sat on the wall. The Republican Party had a great fall. All the Party horses and all the Party men couldn’t put the Party back together again.”
Last night in the Iowa caucuses, the Reagan revolution died before our eyes, and no one seems to be noticing. The fundamental components of the Republican Party, forged together by Ronald Reagan in1980, are no longer part of a whole, ripped apart by the Tea Party and its unintended consequences. The only thing that may keep the party going is hatred of Barack Obama.
“Reaganism” was never a coherent position. It involved tensions that were unified by the power of Reagan’s sunny televisual personality.
In 1991, in The Cynical Society, I observed:
“The ‘conservative mood’ was not a … natural creation. It was constructed … by Reagan himself…his package brought together a new combination of symbols and policies…Fetal rights, a balanced-budget amendment, advanced nuclear armaments, tax and social-welfare cuts, and anti-communism do not necessarily combine. Reagan combined them.
As the satirical columnist, Russell Baker glibly put it, some supported Reagan so that he could be Reagan (the ideologues – this was the well-known refrain of the New Right), others supported him so that he could be the Gipper (the nice guy) he portrayed in an old Hollywood football film. But both sorts of supporters, who were fundamentally in conflict, created the new conservative mood. They constituted the Reagan mandate. Reagan did not represent a diverse constituency. He created it as the political majority.”
Neo-conservatives concerned then about the Communist threat, now are concerned with Islamofascism. Christian moralists, libertarians and corporate conservatives conflict on many issues. Reagan minimized this through his media presentation of self in political life.
The coalition persisted through the one term presidency . . .
Read more: Iowa: The Republicans Fall Apart
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 22nd, 2011 
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, . . .
Read more: Republicans, Revolutionaries and the Human Comedy
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 15th, 2011 
On Friday, I intended to use some posts from the past to illuminate the political events of the week, but found myself writing about more private problems, about the human condition and my own incapacity in understanding it. Today, I return to more familiar terrain, thinking about the changing American political landscape.
Viewing the Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Thursday, I was reminded why the 2012 election is so important. What the Republicans propose on the economy, on American identity and principles is strikingly different from President Obama’s promise and performance. Day to day, it has seemed that Obama is losing his focus. But I am convinced that he is accomplishing a lot and that the alternative is stark. In April, I presented my guide for judging his Presidency. I think it still applies.
Trying to figure out the stakes in an election requires understanding the issues, and judgment of Obama’s leadership and the Republican alternatives, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it requires an understanding of imagination. Governor Paul LePage of Maine gave clear expression of the right-wing imagination when he ordered the removal of murals celebrating labor at the Maine department of labor – not fair and balanced. These murals are not even particularly provocative. Images of the banned murals were presented in a post by Vince Carducci.
Cultural works that don’t depict a specific worldview offend the Tea Party imagination. And work that can’t be supported through the market, following Tea Party wisdom, is without real value. The cultural and market fundamentalism present a major civilizational challenge.
While this challenge must be met rationally, politics isn’t and shouldn’t be only about reason. Feelings, along with imagination, also are of telling import, as James Jasper explored in a post last Spring.
I feel strongly about the Tea Party, as the Tea Partiers feel strongly about their commitments. I know this is important. How the . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: The American Political Landscape
By Gary Alan Fine, May 24th, 2011 
 
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 . . .
Read more: In Praise of Serious Pols
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 26th, 2011 
Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama revealed his fundamental approach to governing: centrist in orientation, pragmatic in his approach to the relationship between capitalism and the state, mindful of the long term need to address the problem of spending deficits, yet, still committed to social justice – “But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.” (link) As I have put it before, a centrist committed to transforming the center.
The speech was finely written and delivered, tactically and strategically formed to appear post partisan, while putting his Republican opposition on the defensive. As I understand his project, it was a continuation of the course he set during his campaign and has been following during his Presidency, despite the fact that many observers claim that he is now shifting to the center (if they like what has happened recently) or to the right (those on the left who see betrayal).
The contrast with the Republican response, delivered by Paul Ryan, could not have been greater. He spoke in an empty House Budget Committee meeting room bereft of notables and dignitaries, without ceremony. But he forcefully argued for significant budget cuts and warned of an impending crisis, being pretty effective under difficult conditions.
“We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency… Speaking candidly, as one citizen to another: We still have time… but not much time.”
His central principled position which he developed extensively:
“We believe, as our founders did, that the pursuit of happiness depends on individual liberty, and individual liberty requires limited government.” (link)
The virtue of limited government and a balanced budget through cuts in government programs was his major theme.
. . .
Read more: Obama vs. Ryan vs. Bachmann
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