Personalities and institutions

Publius, at Legal Fiction, writes

The gist of it was that we tend to fetishize individuals in presidential elections by making the whole thing a personality contest. The truth is that we’re selecting between two alternate executive branches – branches in which the President has practically nothing to do with 99.9999% of what goes on any given day. Although the individual personalities of Bush and Kerry got a lot of attention, the were essentially irrelevant to the operation of the executive branch in the 21st century. If you want to be coldly rational about it, you shouldn’t base your vote on who you like or dislike, but on the sorts of people you want running the executive branch.

Pub's a smart guy and all, but I have to say, "No shit, Sherlock." Al Gore repeatedly tried to get that point across in 2000.

And then Publius continues,

In some ways, it’s unfortunate that liberals – and for that matter the American people as a whole – get so hung up on the personalities of Cheney and Bush. It blinds them to the fact that the executive branch is being run by people who are, at best, incompetent and, at worst, actively hostile to our widely shared values.

Um. Whaaaa? No group have better understood that in recent years than liberals. There was much about Clinton/Gore that was distressing, depressing, and self-defenestrating for liberals, but for the most part we swallowed our progressive pride, knowing that some things we cherish were simply political no-goes, and that for as much as Clinton's "Third Way" often pandered to big business and was too pollyanish about global trade, in balance better that administration than the alternatives. And in 2000 we sucked it up and forgot about the Clinton/Gore campaign for NAFTA knowing that the environment would be better off, the economy fairer, and the world safer with Gore than with Bush.

And, certainly, in 2004, only the cynical and the stupid (and yes, I met a number that matched that description) could say with a straight face that it didn't matter who was elected...same diff. Because, obviously, the Bush administration was effecting significant changes that would take years to repair. As this commentor to a Talk Left post wrote,

One is not electing personalities. One is electing an entire administration that the president and the vice president and their advisors ultimately put in place. At least one has a good idea of the current administration and what many voters do not want to continue. "Boot Bush" is dedicated not only to ridding the country of this president but it is also dedicated to "regime change" through peaceful means, not through war. The place to begin is at home, in the U.S.; that would lead to real "homeland security."

Personalities obviously matter, but if they are so important to voters, explain Nixon.

If there is any single group that obsesses on the personalities, rather than the proposed policies, of presidential candidates, its the Boys and Girls on the campaign planes. For them, where the candidate spends his vacation is more important than, for instance, what each candidate would do about energy dependence. It is that kind of reporting that promotes the fetish of personality, the recurring theme that "voters are just more comfortable with Bush" than with Gore (never mind Gore won the popular vote) or Kerry.

But that's the way the contemporary political and journalistic machine works. Access to the powerful is all-important. Judy Miller discredited the Times and Bob Woodward discredited his career because they didn't think protecting a senior source was such a big deal. The source was protecting the image of his boss and the price was to take part in discrediting a critic. The front page focuses on these clashes of personality and image, while the true bigger stories, like the changed DoJ stance on Georgia voter registration reequirements that is the focus of Publius's post, get lost in the back pages.

So don't blame this on "liberals."