Elections for Dummies

I'm not the smartest person in the world. Yeah, perhaps this is false modesty from someone who has ranked in the 99th percentile on almost every national standardized test he's ever taken, but man, when I read Harper's or The Economist, I just feel as though that last 1 percent are operating on a magnitude of brain power that makes me just want to fart and eat paste.

After Sept. 11, 2001, I had faith that Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld and maybe even Dick Cheney belonged in that group of super-thinkers. Or, at the very least, they had access to better information than I did to help steer our president on the right course.

All this, of course, was before it became clear that Bush's cabal only used information to support their pre-determined course of action. Iraq was on the menu not long after The Supreme Republican Court handed Bush the presidency. And even if they made the wrong decisions based on good intentions, it would be damn hard to congratulate them for flawless execution of the plan. (Or for bothering to create a plan to begin with) Even brilliant conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan made this argument in his reluctant, tepid endorsement of John Kerry before the election.

Maybe this last statement doesn't jive with your take on things. Maybe you didn't read Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, (advertised proudly on the White House web site) in which Cheney and friends were revealed by their own words on 9/12/01 as Iraq hawks flying in the face of the logical winds that blew toward Afghanistan and Al Qaida. Maybe you think you can't make an omelet without breaking a few hundred thousand Arab skulls--er, eggs.

But some things should be indisputable. Which makes this election all the more disturbing. In his Nov. 8 NY Times column, Bob Herbert wrote:

I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the
election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International
Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of
President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion. [boldface mine]

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.

The survey, and an accompanying report, showed that there's a fair amount of cluelessness in the ranks of the values crowd. The report said, "It is clear that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions than those who oppose him."

So my question is this: When so many people are clearly not in possession of the facts, who is to blame? President Bush, who is still making rosy statements about the democratic wonderland that is Iraq and smearing any dissent as anti-American propaganda that provides aid and comfort to the enemy? The Democrats, led by John Kerry (remember him?) who have been ineffectual in forging a coherent message of opposition? The media, that treat politics like a game of strategy and zingers to be parrotted back to the people--with complete disregard for the concept that facts are by their nature, subject to empirical evidence and that lies can actually be called lies?

Nah. I blame stupid Americans. The kind that made Home Improvement the number one TV show for, like five years. The kind that weren't convinced that an NFL Hall of Famer who bleeds all over a double-murder site and his car and his home amounts to substantial evidence of his guilt. The kind that don't think invading Muslim countries might, just might, make a few more desperate religious folks a wee bit more homicidally angry at us.

Here's hoping they don't get what they deserve.