While I’ve been away, I’ve missed the chance to comment on some notable news in high-stakes electoral politics. Where to begin? Mosques in Manhattan! Stealth Muslim presidents! Koran-burning pastors! A Rove vs. Palin fight!
Speaking of fights, here’s a Herb Block political cartoon from the 1946 mid-term elections (hat tip: the Library of Congress). The big fellow, “the campaign,” is knocking the sense out of the scrawny fellow, “voter’s intelligence.” The play-by-play, which is the caption on the cartoon, is that: “He’s taking an awful beating.”
Here is the description offered by the LOC: “Herb Block believed that voters were the real losers in the 1946 off-year election in which Republicans accused Democrats of being Communists and the Democrats equated their Republican counterparts with Hitler. Voter discontent with rising food prices and shortages of such staples as meat and sugar, as well as the growing fear of the spread of communism from Europe, led to a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate.”
Sound at all familiar?
Unfortunately, it is a mistake to think that a low-quality discourse is foisted by politicians on an unwilling populace. If only it were so! The problem would practically fix itself! This “take” ignores the demand-side of the problem. The supply follows the demand. Politicians are barometers; they ain’t the weather. We get low-quality discourse because that is what voters respond to.
At first pass, this seems like a rather condescending position to take. But it’s not. More to come…
