The 2008 presidential election is a "change" election. Though Obama has been the better marketer of the term, both candidates are trying to sell themselves as the right "change" agents for our time. The mass media has spent every waking hour buzzing about what each of these two individuals will do to make change happen. Both candidates are careful to avoid too many specific change promises, which inevitably lead to media criticism about their sincerity. The crazy thing is that the most significant impact of this election will be institutional and ideological, not personal. National policy making happens in a complex system within which the presidency is just one part, and not necessarily the most significant part. The character, capabilities, and cares of the occupant of the Oval Office WILL NOT dictate policy. As always, ideological partisans and public opinion will drive policy making. At the institutional level, which is FAR more determinative of public policy outcomes, the salient question has nothing to do with McCain or Obama. The most important institutional question is: will the presidency be Democratic or Republican?
If Senator Obama is elected and the congressional elections go as expected the great "change" will be that the national government will be controlled by the Democratic Party. This is not a fuzzy rhetorical "change" prediction, it's a verifiable fact! It is also clear that unified party control of national policy making would produce significantly different policy. One party control over the executive and legislative branches would indeed bring drastic reductions in legislative "gridlock" simply because the minority party would lose considerable power to hold things up. Policies on all the major issues, foreign and domestic would require fewer ideological compromises. A Democratic president could lay claim to being a "uniter" not by taking moderate stands, but rather, by overpowering the Republicans institutionally, which would force them to play nice (sometimes at least)in order to get enough table scraps to stay in office and stave off challengers.
If Senator McCain is elected President and congressional elections go as expected, the "change" will be in the magnitude of Democratic control over the legislative branch. Institutionally, the presidency would be weaker vis-a-vis the Congress, making achievement of conservative policy priorities VERY HIGHLY dependent upon the effectiveness of the White House in shaping public opinion. In other words, the change would involve tilting national policy making institutions just a bit more to the left, requiring a Republican President to use the bully pulpit to attack Congress, achieve public relations victories very frequently, and to successfully campaign for a Republican takeover of Congress in the midterm elections.
These change predictions are not partisan or even very debatable; they are basically obvious to anyone who understands how the national government works. Why aren't Americans getting this view of things? Why does the mass media pretend that presidents make decisions on their own without institutional resistance; that they can make significant changes simply by the force of their popularity? Given the degree to which the institutional reality seems to favor Senator Obama and the Democrats; why haven't they made the institutional case?
American voters rely very heavily upon the media for information about presidential elections. The media, for their part, relies very heavily upon American consumers for their continued existence. This inter-dependence (co-dependence?) produces some unintended, and in my view unfortunate, consequences. In order to attract readers, viewers, and listeners, media outlets have to personalize the news; make it meaningful, interesting and, understandable. The media does this in a VERY competitive marketplace, which leads individual media competitors to put a premium on conflict, and sensory and emotional impact. Institutional analysis does not make for a competitive news story, nor does it allow for ongoing analysis (or hype). Basically, it’s too simple, too static, and too impersonal. In an age of 24/7 news coverage, reliance on institutional analysis would be a recipe for a ratings disaster.
But why doesn't the Obama campaign push the institutional argument? Why isn't it a bigger part of his speeches, his campaign material, his ads? Probably because the news media would not be able to use it, at least not in the way Obama would want, because it’s not marketable enough. So if Obama DID push this line of argument in his campaign, what would come of it? How would the media cover it? How would the McCain camp respond? By his choice NOT to make the institutional argument, Obama has revealed that he knows the answers to these questions. The media and McCain would surely be unable to resist the temptation to spin the institutional dynamics in a way that would increase their own competitive edge.
The media and the Republicans would spend huge amounts of time discussing and pushing public fear of the Democratic Party, the classic American aversion to consolidated power, and the dangers of letting "liberals" run wild in Washington, DC. Clearly, Obama prefers the election focus on his personal strengths. Were the institutional shoe on the other foot, so to speak, the strategies would be the same. In fact, to some degree, the shoes were on the other feet in the 2006 midterm elections, and the Democratic Party DID make much of the fact that Republican control of both branches had and would be disastrous. Indeed, the Obama campaign is trying to have its cake and eat it too on this issue by making President George W. Bush a punching bag that satisfies the need to personalize(failed leadership)and the desire to make subtle institutional arguments (failed Republican Presidency).
The tricky thing about this scenario is that it seems very hard to blame either the media or the candidates for relying on tactics that intentionally obscure the most salient realities, the institutional and ideological realities. For the media, doing so is essential to its commercial survival and for candidates it is essential for the advancement of their ideas and policy agenda because of their dependence on the media. Neither motivation is inappropriate or untoward, though unfortunate.
The thing is that media stories about and campaign attacks on "liberals" and/or "right wingers" and dire predictions of "one party rule" are actually more substantive than what passes for campaign issues today. Sensationalized electoral politics is inescapable in democratic elections, but when elections are framed institutionally and ideologically, the attacks and smears and spin have the advantage of being connected to the actual practice of governance, which is highly dependent on institutional and ideological factors. A 2008 campaign about whether the country is willing to give "liberals" near complete control of the reins, no matter how distorted and divisive the rhetoric might get, would be more productive, more educational, and more predictive of what might actually get done than will the real 2008 presidential election.
Sadly, the real election will only touch on these institutional and ideological realities in scattered and acontextual ways that serve emotional tactics without the institutional and contextual information, making the election an exercise in pandering to the worst within us and to the least among us. The candidates, all candidates, have come to see personalized campaigning as safer, or at least more controllable, than institutional or ideological campaigning. This means that candidates intent on getting and keeping office rely on tactics that divorce elections from substantive policy making. If elections turned on institutional and ideological realities and promises, elected officials would have a much more difficult time avoiding blame and taking credit. Voters would have much more reliable and relevant criteria with which to judge the performance of their elected officials and elective institutions.
Institutional and ideological analysis is determinative only to those with very high degrees of civic knowledge (institutions) and clear awareness of their own political philosophies (ideology). This group of voters includes all the candidates and campaigners who will spend the next several months PRETENDING to care about the campaign performance and character of candidates as well as all the other media generated distractions used to garner votes from the middle 20% of the electorate; who are as uninformed and ignorant as they are essential to winning the election.
I strongly encourage voters who have a handle on their own philosophy of government to resist the urge to build up your guy and attack the other. Instead, build up your party and its ideology as the right institution and ideas for America at this time. Ideology and political parties ARE NOT bad. Parties are the only institutions in history to effectively organize the masses and ideology is an integrated set of ideas/assumptions about how the world works used to interpret political life. Not only are these good things, but without them we would be lost.