Spero Consulting

Archive for October 4th, 2008

Will it have teeth? Let’s hope.

No, not the bailout. (Fooled you, dear reg­u­lar reader, didn’t we?)

How­ever, the bailout did inform of a new mon­ster, but we don’t really mean a bad monster.

Aside: that bailout mon­ster, while gar­gan­tuan and ugly, will have all the con­trol of the ter­mi­nally incon­ti­nent. It will wet itself, repeat­edly, in many embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tions. It will have many arms and legs and pus­tules and will be hideous, but for all that, it will fail at its pur­pose. (See any­thing we wrote dur­ing the past two weeks.)

It will be revolt­ing and will defe­cate every­where mak­ing many mat­ters worse, and it will likely never truly die; instead, it will just linger. While lin­ger­ing, it may mutate and become the “Strate­gic Mort­gage Reserve,” and be an intan­gi­ble, sub­stan­tially gassier ver­sion of our strate­gic helium reserve. It may stran­gle the econ­omy or crush it, but only by acci­dent. Such an effete beast could only cause harm by acci­dent, e.g., trip­ping and falling on some­thing. It is, how­ever, a symp­tom of very seri­ous prob­lems, but that’s for another day.

No, dear reader, we’re writ­ing about new mon­ster that might be much more dan­ger­ous to its intended vic­tims and has much longer in its incu­ba­tion, and actu­ally much big­ger than the $700 bil­lion bailout. Have no fear, though, we are not its prey and most likely, you are not, either. In fact, you may be part of the mon­ster. We think that we are, too.

No, we think that if it lives, it will be a pat­ri­ci­dal and mat­ri­ci­dal mon­ster that preys on its cre­ators and turns on them in an instance. In that respect, we wouldn’t be sur­prised to see sev­eral incum­bents lose next month. Why? Just for the hell of it because vot­ers feel priv­i­leged to be as fickle and feck­less as their elected politicians.

Our hunch, which the chair­man shares, began to grow last week, last week­end, and espe­cially on Mon­day. It was rein­forced by other recent obser­va­tions, par­tic­u­larly the after-​debate cov­er­age on FOX News last night, and it was fur­ther sup­ported by read­ing Peggy Noonan’s col­umn, Palin and Pop­ulism. (Ms. Noo­nan is as keen of observer as we’ve ever read regard­ing our nation and its peo­ple and politicians.)

The pos­si­bly ter­ri­fy­ing mon­ster that will devour the national polit­i­cal class is the populace’s new­found cyn­i­cism. No, wait. We think it is much big­ger than in the past. See if we are convincing.

It is a deep, well-​honed cyn­i­cism devel­oped over many, many years – nur­tured by manip­u­la­tion and strength­ened by fric­tion like an excel­lent phys­i­cal ther­a­pist. That cyn­i­cism means that none of the polit­i­cal class, on any side, can be trusted – ever, or for at least a long time. Many have said that in the past, but it seems dif­fer­ent now – as if it has actu­ally been inter­nal­ized and accepted, i.e., politi­cians first, party affil­i­a­tions sec­ond. That is why Pres­i­dent Bush has such low approval rat­ings and why Congress’s is even lower and why few think the bailout will work or gov­ern­ment is effective.

Now, some may say that what we observed this week is noth­ing new. Many cit­i­zens – gen­er­a­tions of cit­i­zens, in fact – have long shared a dis­trust of power and pol­i­tics and politi­cians. In fact, some crit­ics will point to the Found­ing Fathers as evi­dence that our obser­va­tions are a bit late – by more than two cen­turies. We beg to dif­fer. The foun­da­tional assump­tion of this nation’s fore­fa­thers was the fallen nature of man. That sen­ti­ment along with that con­tin­ued skep­ti­cism of many Amer­i­cans about the nature of power are inher­ent and endur­ing strengths of our coun­try, but we are talk­ing about some­thing slightly different.

No. This week we didn’t see that skep­ti­cism. We saw a deep and resent­ful and mus­cu­lar cynicism.

We think that it stems from the fact that for about fifty years, politi­cians, work­ing in con­cert with tele­vi­sion news edi­tors and pro­duc­ers and advertisers, have been attempt­ing to manip­u­late the Amer­i­can peo­ple via the tube. Noth­ing new there. But, it may finally come back to bite them in the butt.

In the past, most folks were so indif­fer­ent to pol­i­tics that if they noticed, they didn’t care, but as we see it, times have changed. Pos­si­bly, it’s the annoy­ance with the seem­ingly infi­nite and rep­e­ti­tious com­mer­cials or impa­tience with the year-​round cam­paign and scare­mon­ger­ing. Per­haps it is the sat­u­ra­tion of the video cul­ture and dis­per­sion of tech­ni­cal knowl­edge of about edit­ing and broad­cast­ing, etc. Maybe its Youtube.

Folks of all ages and all back­grounds seem a bit savvier and know­ing about such things, par­tic­u­larly when some­one is attempt­ing to manip­u­late them. As far as we can tell, many aren’t fooled, and most don’t like it. We think that it means they are becom­ing resent­ful, and that resent­ment will only grow. (“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”)

As we see it, that means that polit­i­cal machi­na­tions may finally fail and fail badly with us com­mon folks.

Per­haps it was our fel­low citizen’s lack of respect for the self-​serving “Chicken Lit­tle” cries for the bailout that most cit­i­zens did not accept and did not believe. One needn’t go to an expen­sive col­lege or have an advanced degree to notice that many of our national busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers came off as extreme weak­lings and whiny, scared sissies, and really, nobody in this coun­try has respect for that – not even other weak, whiny, and scared sissies.

Per­haps it was what we con­sid­ered to be a LACK of response in the stock mar­ket: 7% down on Mon­day fol­lowed by not much for the week. (With their hys­ter­i­cal per­for­mances, many must won­der whether the Trea­sury Sec­re­tary or the Chair­man of the Fed­eral Reserve fainted last month. Was it the pan­icky, overnight, intra-​bank credit mar­kets that did it, or a case of the vapours?)

Away from the bailout, per­haps it is from watch­ing the trail­ers for the nationally-​released movie that belit­tles and par­o­dies lib­eral icon, Michael Moore. Chris Farley’s brother does bear an uncanny resem­blance to Mr. Moore.

Per­haps it was what we saw after last night’s debate. We saw poll­ster Frank Luntz inter­view a focus group of St. Louisans. We saw an older women speak as if she were tired of being “played,” and we thought, hell hath no fury (or resent­ment) like the old lady who feels she’s being played. She was young once, and knows what it means and doesn’t like the lack of respect. Per­haps it was hear­ing one of Brit Hume’s pan­elists artic­u­late that cit­i­zens seem “mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it any­more.” Let’s hope.

While our fel­low cit­i­zens may pay atten­tion to polit­i­cal speech today and in the future, but it seems more likely that they may tune-​out the actual con­tent and eval­u­ate it as per­for­mance art or as a tal­ent show.

Well, not really tune-​out but observe from a more post-​modern per­spec­tive. Pos­si­bly, they’ll decon­struct it to the best of their abil­ity, but the under­ly­ing assump­tion will be that they don’t trust and don’t believe and so will ignore the con­tent. Per­haps it is their par­tic­i­pa­tion in vot­ing in nationally-​televised real­ity shows that have empow­ered to pop­u­lace to con­sider their own opin­ions equal to the experts, and per­haps they have real­ized that many experts appear naked and clueless.

In the past, folks may have viewed the oppo­si­tion that objec­tively and that harshly, and there­fore ques­tioned motives of their oppo­nents and sus­pected them of lying. Now, that cyn­i­cism seems to be pointed at much broader targets, including their own “side.” Per­haps that stems from the real­iza­tion that politi­cians, like pro­fes­sional ath­letes in the era of free-​agency, have only one, true side, and their team col­ors do not seem to be red-​white-​and-​blue.

What does this mean? At a min­i­mum, we’d sus­pect opin­ion polls to be less reliable.

Our fel­low cit­i­zens take no oath when respond­ing to such ques­tions and don’t always answer truth­fully. In the past, that may have been a defense mech­a­nism. (Today, it may still be. We could cer­tainly see peo­ple lying about their Pres­i­den­tial vote so as not to appear racist.)

We’re not refer­ring to this defen­sive type of lying, which any­one with a teenager will know and under­stand. We’re think­ing about indi­vid­u­als answer­ing in ways to pur­posely manip­u­late the results – for no other rea­son than the sport of it or as an exper­i­ment or game. “Yes, of course we’ll vote for you, dear­est. Of course, we will sweet­heart. We have your best inter­ests at heart, sun­shine – just like you have ours. No, we trust you com­pletely.” (In that regard, the reader may be inter­ested in our essay, Trust­wor­thy? No. Pre­dictable? Yes.)

We’ll have to think more about it, but it doesn’t seem that a cyn­i­cal pop­u­lace is good for politi­cians, which may make it great for the country.

Wouldn’t be great if through sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of their own cyn­i­cal efforts, they unin­ten­tion­ally cre­ated a (cyn­i­cal) mon­ster that con­se­quently devoured them? Let’s hope that the pop­u­lace stays angry and hungry.

As always, feel free to com­ment, espe­cially on such a spec­u­la­tive post.