Political Fluff Hurts

The Republican presidential hopefuls parade around New Hampshire like little kids lusting after candy. As if they thought there was nothing greater about the presidency than jelly beans. How sweet it seems in our common childhood fantasies to run the U.S. government. We value it like a precious jewel before coming to the understanding that the state is simply an organization defined by a geographical area that claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence and is respected for its power.

What kid wouldn't like to be president? Like many on this campus, I saw the presidency as the ultimate credential when I was younger. Precocious youngsters develop the need for affirmation; someone telling them that they are somehow the best and brightest. And for the now-mature over-achievers that we all know and love as friends here, the presidency seemed to offer that. Besides being confirmed as among the top of their class, what little kid wouldn't want to plop his or her feet up on the desk of the Oval Office and smoke a nice wooden pipe?

The mental block that plagued us in the imaginative quest for higher office was the delusion that politics is an end in itself. After all, it is very easy to equate it to gaming and make a sport of it. The farcical nature of Washington life, combined with personalities galore and the definite win-lose scoreboard on every bill and election, do much to lighten the serious business of government. Seen in this light, politics is only nominally different from baseball. The front page news holds little greater levity than that on the back page.

Such is the opinion of John F. Kennedy Jr., whose new magazine George covers politics with a sense of rock-and-roll idolatry. Now, George is an extremely readable, interesting publication. The February/March 1996 issue interviews Larry King about interviewing and tackles the plagiarism put forth by The New Republic's Ruth Shalit. But the reporting, if one can call it that, has as its basis a thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach based on nothing more than style.

Perhaps we shouldn't expect anything greater than such image-making from the son of Camelot. In the current issue we have plenty of it-a shirtless and bewigged Charles Barkley dressed as our first president; a puff piece titled "Jesus in '96," and presidential candidate makeovers. George reads as if nothing more were at stake in the election than the aesthetics of the face behind that nice blue podium.

But this substance abuse problem is not limited to second-rate magazines. As James M. Fallows '70 noted in last Sunday's New York Times, the mainstream media "missed the message" in its election coverage so far by focusing on politics as a game. He writes, "Sizing up Lamar Alexander against Bob Dole is like having a preseason argument about whether the Yankees or the Dodgers might go all the way this year." Isn't the difference that something greater is at stake? And doesn't the media, as independent power holders, have a responsibility to present politics as such?

The presidency is a seat of power. Unlike the red-and-black trademarked Alexander, we shouldn't care whether it is covered in plaid. In terms of substance, the public has heard very little. CNN's sound bite from NBC's "Meet the Press" with Alexander has the candidate saying that he was chock full of new ideas, yet he didn't mention one. He comes across as just another hollow option.

So Steve Forbes' flat tax has become about the best idea going, since it is just about the only idea around. We are almost willing to sacrifice the presidency to a single-issue candidate because there are no multiple-issue ones. The substance vacuum that is plaguing America distorts the political process. The voters of New Hampshire go to the polls today aware of the presidential horse-race but ignorant about what those horses will do once in the winner's circle.

Joshua A. Kaufman's column appears on alternate Tuesdays.