With summer still in full swing, no one is thinking about going back to the routine. And that is how it should be – for now. Yet, we’re almost there. Back to school, of course but also back to politics.
U.S. voters go back to the polls Nov. 2012. Photo by apalapala, Flickr
Yes, it’s true that it’s been almost four years since Barack Obama was elected to office and the U.S. is once again entering the last leg of another presidential campaign. There will be a final sprint towards the finish line, slated for Nov. 6. And so, July is the traditional month for presidential campaigners to pause and take stock of the state of affairs.
The great American electoral circus will resume after a final caucus. The Republican Party will be holding its convention at the end of August while the Democrats will reconvene a few days later, on Sept. 3.
And that is when an orgy of expenditures, in order to win over the heart of the American electorate, will explode. There is something sadly ironic in this picture. While the country is showing an anemic economic growth, record sums will probably be gathered and spent in order to convince people of the exceptional presidential qualities of both candidates.
While reports show that the 2008 campaign was the most expensive campaign in American history – a bit over a mind-boggling 5 billion (yes, billion) dollars – observers are already betting that the 2012 campaign will exceed that sum. It’s nothing to be proud about. Money aside, in the American political landscape, some things never seem to change.
For example: I was recently reading an editorial in Life magazine, dated July 13, 1962. Fifty years ago, the prestigious magazine was covering the GOP, the Grand Old Party as the Republican Party is known. The editorialist was looking into the party’s doctrine as it was interpreted by Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. President at the time.
According to him, the party’s approach had to be guided by two fundamental principles: individual liberties would be best served by a strong central government with limited powers, and free market capitalism is a force of “good” across the world. Today, this is what we would consider, here in Canada, progressive conservatism .
Fifty years later, it is reasonable to say that the Republicain presidential standard bearer, presumably Mitt Romney, is probably aligned with this kind of ideology. But this is a real yoke considering the Republican Party’s present context.
He is like a good actor in a poorly directed movie with a dubious scenario. Romney doesn’t quite look like himself and it shows. The party’s script, heavily influenced by its most extreme wing, the Tea Party, has already exposed, in the standard bearer, a certain malaise. We saw an example of this unease in Romney’s response to the Health Care Bill, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.
But this doesn’t matter. The campaign will play itself out through well aimed campaign ads in key states. In this type of operation, money is the sinews of war. The upcoming campaign, south of the border, will see a veritable deluge of ads aimed at steering the focus away from the real problems facing that country.
I’ll get the opportunity to look at this later. Meanwhile, enjoy the sunshine.
Translation Monique Kroeger
