Dr. Forbush Thinks

Watergate was about the abuse of presidential power for political gains. Richard Nixon used his power to have his thugs break into the Democrat's offices and steal political information that could be used to preempt the Democrats political strategy. And, the information was used and Richard Nixon won the 1972 presidential election. People have argued that the crime didn’t matter, because he would have won anyway. But, because of his paranoia Nixon thought that it would be better safe than sorry and every tool possible should be used for his success.

The point is that political advertising can influence people, and when you know what the other guy is about to spring on you their advertising can be nullified rather quickly. So, when a political party shows its hand and makes its strategy known the opposition needs to react to these tactics. In the real world this is a fact of politics as usual. This fact of politics doesn’t always produce the best results for the country. For example, Hamas, a known terrorist organization, won a democratic election in Palistine earlier this year. The result of their win resulted in cuts to funding in Palistine from nations who have pledged not to fund terrorist organizations. Was this issue even debated in the elections? People voted against the Fatah, because of corruption, not for Hamas. Political choices are sometimes difficult.

We have similar problems in our democracy. We are moving closer and closer to a one party system where the Republicans are increasingly able to control the wheels of political power. For example, if the Republicans were able to get a super majority in the Senate they could pass any law they wanted without public debate, if they chose to. With the basement level popularity of the president it doesn’t seem likely that they could win six more seats, but who knows what events could happen to change the view of the average American over the next three months.

In the past the Republican Party has been able to win the few extra votes needed by using fear. They used fear to get voters to the polls and vote against same sex marriage. They didn’t need to know what the Democrats were going to do, because the Democrats do the same thing year after year. They tell their base that they can make their lives better, by increasing benefits to them. Americans know what the benefits are, and if times are tough this is an easy sell. But, when times get easy this is a much more difficult sell. If everyone is doing well, who wants to mess with success? As a result, Democrats will stay home and watch TV on that Tuesday in November.

Democracy works when the voters know the truth and decide which path into the future is best for them personally. If the path into the future benefits the majority, then it benefits the country on average. In the modern age of politics however, politicians have increasingly applied Orwellian language to describe what they mean. In practice they are technically accurate in what they say, but the meanings of the words are no longer the generally understood meanings, or combination of words is used to describe something that we have a traditionally negative or positive word commonly used in association with the concept. Using a rarely used word to replace a commonly used word changes the emotional meaning from understood, to not quite understood words. Then the politicians give a new definition to describe an old idea. This “magic” has been used over and over again to convince Americans that they didn’t really understand a concept and then the concept is redefined.

The distortion of the facts is not legally cheating in politics. The distortion of the facts is known as persuasion. And, persuasion is known as a form of debate. When I was growing up the debate team was trained to argue two different styles of debate. There was the fact based debate and the persuasion style debate.

The fact based debate took quite an effort in gathering facts and spitting them out as quickly as possible. Then the second team was required to counter every argument made by the first team. When I was older and I actually judged debate, this style of debate taxed my mental ability to keep up with every argument and make sure that every argument was countered with something. In rebuttal the first team needed to make sure that the facts that weren’t countered were brought forward and rebuttal arguments were made. This type of argument was certainly a tough mental exercise on everyone involved. The solution to the argument was based on the ability to find the proper facts and present them at the proper time. Speed in delivery counted, because the faster you spoke the more facts could be presented. Every fact presented produced an obstacle for the opposition.

In persuasion style debate facts were needed, but not required. The “what my opponent says is not common sense” argument could be used on anything presented. Citing a source detracts from the flow of an argument and isn’t as persuasive as a friendly voice that sounds like it is speaking “common sense.” Persuasive debate is more often the style employed in political campaigns. And, because this style of debate is less dependent on citing the facts it is also most susceptible to distortion of the facts to suit the needs of the speaker. This means that the speaker bears the responsibility to keep the needs of the people above his personal desires. Unfortunately politicians are human and are continually being tempted to take what they have been hired to guard, the common wealth of the people.

What this inevitably means is that facts exist all around us, but the general public does not often access these facts. Instead a few people gifted in creating persuasive arguments from facts are trusted to translate the mountains of facts into common language for the masses. On issues that most people agree with these persuasive arguments are simply read as news or history and eventually become absorbed into American culture. However, when these people disagree these persuasive arguments become the foundation for campaigns and political strategy. The facts don’t always point in only one direction.

An example of this is the Watergate scandal. In the early days of the Watergate scandal little bits and pieces were reported in the news on page three, four or five. These were the facts as they were known, and as they were discovered. Walter Cronkite realized that putting these facts together in a persuasive argument about the corruption of the Nixon administration was an important story. All of the information he presented was part of the public record, but hardly known or understood by the general public. This information about Watergate had been trickling out over several months, but the public had no idea what it meant until Cronkite synthesized it into one major story. Putting it all together in front of 20 million people that gave the go ahead to the rest of the media to dig into the affair and put it on the front page. Cronkite made a persuasive argument that this was an important story and the media should investigate it.

Of course, we have the same situation today. There have been so many things revealed about the Republicans and the Bush administration, that the general public can't see the forest for the trees. The American people know about a corruption scandal, and they know that George W Bush is an oilman. They know that gas prices are higher than they have been in the past. But, no moderate American with credibility is willing to put their reputation on the line and make the persuasive argument that there is a major problem in the Republican Party. But that seems to be the remedy for the extreme polarization that our country is currently suffering from. It seems that it will take someone from right of center to do what Cronkite did with Watergate before the public will be outraged and the media will dig deeper.


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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


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