The Hypocrisy of the Etch a Sketch Moment

The hypocrisy of Mitt Romney being boiled alive over a statement one of his campaign managers made last week is another example of the low intellect of the political discourse in this country.

While his Republican rivals moaned about his lack of Conservative compass and the Democrats just enjoyed in him having one more day of discomfort on his way to the nomination there is one unspoken truth to what he said.

Everyone talking about this issue, on both sides, know that it was a rare moment of unvarnished truth. Now we can bemoan the fact that it is true. We can say it fits into a narrative that particularly haunts Romney as he tries to prove his merit as a true Conservative but what no one can deny is the truth of the statement.

Therefore those using it for political gain are the worst kind of politicians. They are using something said in a moment of candor that happens to be true, and that they know is true, and that they themselves will replicate are they fortunate enough to gain the nomination, against the truth telling party.

Richard Nixon himself, the devil to many on the left, was in most ways the first modern political candidate. This has all the positive and negative ramifications that one can take from that statement. Nixon stated truthfully that both parties have to run to their bases to get the nominations and then move to the center to win the national election. This is true because eighty percent of the electorate is always spoken for by the right and the left. Elections are won in the center with the Independents. Therefore if one does not come back to the center they will not win. Now perhaps some candidates would rather run a race of principles and lose, Barry Goldwater comes to mind as does George McGovern is another, but as those two names will tell you those candidates tend to be defeated and not just defeated but to be defeated spectacuraly. None of our modern candidates seem to be willing to go that road.

It should be noted that both Goldwater and McGovern in defeat are often credited for the beginning of the rebith of their respective parties that brought about much of their parties later successes. Sometimes you have to lose to win, to take one for the team. Does anyone really see any of the leading political figures on either side of the aisle having the spine to stand for something which might cost them a vote.

And that is the problem. Not with Romney's aide telling us that Romney will wipe the slate clean like an etch a sketch and come back to the center. The problem is that any political candidate that tries to treat the American people like adults will gain a strong, dedicated, following. He also, however, will lose by a large margin. We do not want the truth. We want every program to be cut except those that benefit us. We want no single payer health care system ( I know that is my personal bugaboo, I am a passionate believer in single payer) until we lose our jobs and our insurance and then are without insurance and realize that for most of us employer based health care coverage is a disaster waiting to happen.

In a study of election year news clips on the nightly news in 1964 and 1968 the average clip shown of the candidates speaking was fifty seconds. That does not sound like anything extraordinary until one realizes that in the last election it was 14 seconds. In short, a soundbite, usually one that can be taken out of context and exploited in a way that is if not untruthful at least not in the spirit of the statement.


Mitt Romney by the way may be the victim of this etch a sketch moment. He is, however, far from innocent. About ten days ago Rick Santorum in a moment of passion said that " he did not care about the unemployment rate. " That was the statement you saw on the news and that his rivals pounced on. What you did not hear, unless you really sought it out, was the rest of the sentence. Namely that Santorum was not concerned with the unemployment rate, he was concerned with the whole long list of problems that this country faced, many of them in Santorum's opinion being of a cultural and spiritual divide, that we have become a country of niches with no shared opinion, no shared values, and perhaps no shared future.

As with many things Santorum I find myself not disagreeing with his general premise. I find it hard to believe that most Americans would. Unfortunately most Americans will not hear the whole statement.

We get the government we deserve when we reward candidates and campaigns that mislead us and manufactures truths that our not truths. That is without context nothing is true. If you have children and they run in the house after hearing half of a statement the neighbor says and they tell you something outlandish you tell them they must have misheard. When you find out the whole statement it makes sense, you do not call the police on your neighbor, you have waited, got the whole story, in the interim given them the benefit of the doubt, not made any rash judgements and now have the whole truth.


Should we not do the same thing in choosing our President and leaders. We need to reward the candidates that treat us like adults. Trust me if telling the truth and treating us like an adult will get them elected two things will happen. The clowns in office will start doing these things, and the chance of actually honorable, admirable men running for office will increase.

They are all hypocrites. How does that make you feel about your leaders and our future.