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.

We live in difficult times, but the political capacity to address the difficulties may be emerging in America, none too soon and in the right place.

The Republican presidential nomination debates reveal how far the GOP is from addressing the concerns of the American public. It seems, as a consequence, that President Obama’s re-election is likely, even with the persistent tough economic situation. He makes sense. The Republicans don’t. They offer the 999 plan and other fantasies as economic policy. Obama proposes sensible realistic programs, the jobs bill and the like. The re-election, further, may very well have very significant consequences. The Obama transformation, which I have reflected upon in an earlier post, may proceed and deepen.  I have this hope because of Occupy Wall Street.

OWS is already a resounding success, and it has the potential to extend the success for months, indeed, probably for years ahead. We at Deliberately Considered have been discussing the occupation. Scott and Michael Corey, like observers elsewhere, are concerned that the occupiers don’t have a clear program. They seem to be a hodgepodge of disparate misfits, anarchists, druggies, vegans, feminists, trade unionists, environmentalists and veterans of left-wing battles past, with no clear unified goals. The political causes they espouse seem to be as varied as they are as a group. They express a sentiment and sensibility, but they do not propose any policy. Yet, I think it is crucial to note that there is a simple and telling coherence in the protest and that there is a discernable achievement already that is being deepened as the occupation persists.

The occupiers are telling a simple truth. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The rich are getting rich and the poor (and working people) are getting poorer, especially the young and people of color. The occupiers call upon the media, the political class and the population at large to take notice, and notice is being taken as the occupations spread around the country and the world.

In the U.S., popular discontent is no longer identified with a tax revolt and with people who think the primary task of government is to do as little as possible. The rich can no longer hide behind the title, “job creators.” Public opinion polls point to the popularity of taxing the super rich to fund public services and jobs development for the vast majority. And as the occupation persists, this simple message will be underscored.

Persistence through the winter is likely, building on the achievements already linked to the special power of the ground zero occupation. Cost versus benefit balance applies. Something approaching sacred space has been occupied, down the road from the “Ground Zero Mosque,” across the street from Ground Zero of 9/11. Whispers there are heard around the world.  What frustrated the local Muslim community is the great resource of today’s occupiers. The police forbid bullhorns, but the park itself has become a global microphone, enabling the people now occupying it and occupiers to come, to be heard, to show their concerns to the world. The power of showing, the power of monstration as Daniel Dayan puts it, is a great resource. The costs of staying for a few hundred people are relatively low. And the benefits of staying are great. Occupying provides a life time experience of what Hannah Arendt calls the lost treasure of the revolutionary tradition, making a difference in public, public freedom, acting with great consequence in a world that provides few chances to do so. As this treasure is mined, American politicians, Republicans and Democrats, will have to respond, as they have had to respond to the Tea Party. There is a new and qualitatively different popular pressure. And this I think will help Obama succeed where he hasn’t thus far.

He sought to demonstrate that a democratic government is a way that Americans can address their pressing problems. He has tried to rebalance the relationship between state and market in the American political economy. A moderate Democrat, he has been denounced as a socialist by Republicans. With the Tea Party active and progressives complaining in the blogosphere but not much more, the political center moved right.

Now with the winds blowing from Zuccotti Park, a new popular pressure is emerging. The President will be criticized to be sure. But the pressure to pass a serious jobs bill will either yield results before the Presidential election or shape it. There will be serious popular demands for taxing the super rich and pressure to develop healthcare reform, to escalate the disengagement from Afghanistan and Iraq, to enact serious immigration reform, to work to de-militarize American foreign policy.

There will be pressure on the President to fulfill his promise, which will enable him to do so.

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 emotions will affect political choice will play a big role in the coming elections. How is it that public personalities that I find so repulsive are actually attractive to my fellow citizens? I can more easily accept my policy differences with Tim Pawlenty than I can listen to Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry. I hope the majority of my compatriots feel the same way, but I worry about this arena of feelings. It is one thing to recognize that feelings matter. Its quite another for them to run wild, as in the xenophobic birther movement.

Mine is not always a reasonable response, I admit, and I try to fight against this. I have been looking for conservative thinkers and public figures to respect, without much success. I have sought out conservative contributors to our discussions and hope for more success in this regard. I think that there is an underlying serious debate about the public good occurring in American politics, but I am perplexed how ideological certainty and willful ignorance of facts seems to be the price of admission into Republican presidential politics. Not one of the Republican presidential hopefuls would agree to reduce the deficit if it included minimal tax cuts. This indicates that they are either ignoring hard budgetary realities or that their ideological project is to radically reduce the role of the state, far beyond the expectations of the general public.

The Republicans have included the extreme right into their mainstream ranks. As a committed partisan, I believe that this will lead to Obama’s reelection and a more Democratic Congress. I also hope that as a result a more reasonable opposition emerges. As an analyst of politics and the human comedy, I fear that my partisan self may be mistaken. Fictoids have power. True belief can be convincing. Calm deliberate leadership can look weak, and the economy is stagnating, thanks to global forces, but also to American politics gone wild. Reason, imagination and feelings may be destructively interacting.