I just read this article on Media Matters about a interview between Glenn Beck of CNN and Ben Stein. Ben Stein has been kinda on the crazy side recently, with the whole Expelled (documentary) thing.
In the interview, Beck and Stein are talking about Obama’s acceptance speech for the democratic nomination. About 75,000 people attended (according to the interview – I didn’t actually check to see if that number was accurate).
The two chief quotes of the article, in no particular order or relation to each other, are:
GLENN BECK: “Well, yeah, you know what? I’ve been — I’ve been saying that we’re headed towards a Mussolini-style presidency forever.”
BEN STEIN: “I don’t like the idea of Senator Obama giving his acceptance speech in front of 75,000 wildly cheering people. That is not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America. We have a contained number of people in an arena. Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that’s something the Fuehrer would have done.“
I vomited a little, in my mouth, when I read this.
For the few presidents that have been in office during my lifetime, the problem of out political system has always been that of apathy. Nobody votes, because nobody thinks that it matters. For the few that do vote, presidents get elected with less than a majority of the country actually voting for them. As K. C. Cole explains in The Universe and The Teacup:
Mathematicians have been studying the flaws of voting systems for two hundred years. They don’t agree on which system is best, but they do agree on which is the worst: It’s our hallowed tradition that says those with the most votes get to decide for everyone.
(If you’ve never read the book, go pick up a copy. The subject matter is diverse and the narrative is entertaining and enlightening. You’ll thank me later.)
The important thing is that our system allows for the largest amount of “unfairness” of most democratic systems, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be unfair. Just because presidents get elected by an obscenely small percentage of eligable voters in America. Judging by this page on the turnout of eligible voters in 2004 (around 55% for highest office) and the fact that Bush “officially” won about 50% of the vote in that election year, it means that only 27.5% of eligible voters in America chose our current president (and about the same number voted for a different guy). Also, don’t ever buy the crap about “more people voted for blahblah than for anyone else in history!” – percentages are the only statistics I’ll buy in this space. I wrote about this in my old, old blog about political things. I only wrote two posts in it (back in 2004), but I started it because I was fed up with meaningless statistics being slung around. Anyways, back to the point (where was that point?)
So we live in a system where it is common for a tiny fraction of the population to choose the leader for the entire population. But what if it wasn’t like that?
What if, in this election period, we get something like 70% turnout? What if Obama gets something like 75% of the vote? I doubt there would be that much change in a single election period, but if there was, that would net Obama more than 50% of eligible voters. And while that still means that 50% of the country either voted against him or just didn’t vote at all, it certainly feels better than 25% of the country.
My point is that we should all be ecstatic that more people are participating in politics. I don’t care which side you are on, and I don’t care who you thought should have been the Democratic nominee. As I said to various people before Obama clinched the democratic nomination, I would really, really prefer that it wasn’t Clinton, but even if it was, and I didn’t care about this next president, it feels like something is different in this election cycle than the few others I’ve witnessed. While the current popular thing on the Republican side is still to sling crap over to the left, I’m not seeing that from the democrats. Maybe it is just my young optimism, but it really feels like we are raising the level of debate in this country (stolen from Aaron Sorkin).
In fact, here’s the whole quote (from the West Wing):
Listen up. Our ground game isn’t working. We’re going to put the ball in the air. If we’re going to walk into walls, I want us running into ‘em full speed. We’re going to lose some of these battles. We might even lose the White House. But we’re not going to be threatened by issues. We’re going to put them front and center. We’re going to raise the level of public debate in this country. And let that be our legacy.
Anyways, for these asshats to equate being popular in an election with being Hitler is just ridicu-fucking-lus. They are lowering the level of public debate in this country, and it makes me nauseous just watching it. At the most important level, how someone is elected is paramount to who is elected.