Assembly-line democracy of US presidential primaries

The American democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed in the middle of nineteenth century was best practiced in local town hall-style politics, where citizens directly deliberated and decided their common affairs. Today, if a foreigner came to America to learn democracy, there is likely to be quite some disappointment. In the heat of primary campaigns for party nominations – a supposedly quintessential democratic process – the quality of America’s glorious tradition is in peril of an ‘assembly-line democracy’.
The relatively small populations of Iowa and New Hampshire were so bombarded by the intense campaigns for state nominations in recent weeks that one should feel sorry for them. While the remarkably high turnouts in both states may indicate that their citizens did not resent such onslaught, the chances were that democratic deliberation and possibility of making intelligent choices would be compromised greatly, leaving most of it to the account of soundbites.
There were some parts that were more genuinely deliberative and geared to understanding, such as the question-answer sessions, especially well done by Senator John McCain, and the debates between contenders in both parties. Those were the off-the-cuff unrehearsed, live discussions of the candidates’ positions on important issues at stake. However, they have been the lesser part of the process. Most of it has been more like a sporting race, or better yet, an accelerating assembly line putting together the so-called winning strategies.
Take a few examples. Even the commendable, brawl-defying campaign by John McCain has ridden on a resounding but opportunist slogan of danger. “My friends, we live in dangerous times” says he, as he drives home his credentials as a war veteran, an experienced foreign policy leader, and notably a maverick anti-withdrawal voice in the Iraq war. If the majority of Americans gave in to the ‘dangerous world’ view deeply enough, Senator McCain should do well. There is at least the question of ethical responsibility here as the candidate tries to blow the wave of danger and to ride that wave, too.
There is a more flagrant problem in the danger compartment: the speeches of Governor Huckabee, the Republican winner in Iowa, and of Mayor Giuliani, the former leader in the Republican field in national polls, are replete with mentions of Islamic danger. In a nation witnessing more Columbines and Virginia Techs every year, no one dares to raise gun ownership as a danger – Huckabee defends it as a sacred freedom. All danger is from Them, not within Us, be it Islamic whatnots, illegal immigrants, or Middle Eastern oil producers (never mind the Amocos and Texacos).
But even beyond such substantive issues, of which the above are just a few, there are procedural ways in which the democratic process is blunted. In the height of emotional arousal of stump speech rallies, people are easily led to thinking that experience does not really matter, and somehow change and experience become opposites. Daily polls are followed and discussed like a heart patient’s pulse, even though no major poll predicted either the loss in Iowa or the victory in New Hampshire by Senator Clinton. The prize, however, would probably go to Fox News, when they had a focus group press ‘up’ or ‘down’ buttons on a gadget every second to measure approval of what a candidate was saying during the Republican Forum organized by them.
The general rhetoric of the process is both revealing and disheartening. Change and experience have become juxtaposed in a curious twist, and it has become risky for, say, McCain and Clinton to identify themselves with both of them. Nearly every day, we hear things like re-focusing the campaign, changing the strategy, revising the tactics. Having virtually won an evangelical ticket in Iowa, Huckabee barely mentions God in New Hampshire. Clinton’s alleged ‘moment of softness’, after dominating that day’s news, was then invoked to explain her ‘surprise’ victory. Frontlines are made of endorsements, be they from political honoraries, culinary union leaders or former karate champions. All of this reminds of Wall Street auction sales rather than a democratic process.
Five days after the dramatic Iowa results, New Hampshire gave no less dramatic victories to Iowa’s third-place runner-up of the Democrats and fourth-place runner-up of the Republicans, and the whirlwind blew off to Nevada and Michigan, respectively. That is, the whirlwind of assembly-line manufacturing of support in what is deemed to be democracy at work but feels much like a deeply problematic perversion of once-glorious American tradition.