*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED ***
When Ideas Were King - By Jon Eekhoff
May 24, 2004
When the Democratic convention wraps up, the chairs are folded and the floors have been swept, John Kerry might be the Democratic Party's nominee for president, or he might not be. The Kerry camp is floating an idea; an idea that is pure politics in 2004. Kerry is considering whether he should accept the nomination and therefore limit his spending to $75 million in the run-up to election, or whether he should put off his acceptance for a few weeks to take advantage of the money he has raised.
As ideas become less and less important in politics, money becomes more and more significant. Kerry's decision will come down to one between ideas and money. I have a feeling money is going to win.
Money in politics today means access to the American public through America's favorite past-time, the television. Television ads are expensive and persuasive; they are also short in order to fit America's ever shrinking attention span. Bush and Kerry are already approving so many messages it is hard to find a channel where they aren't spinning their life into a Hallmark family movie or spinning their opponent's life into the latest end-of-the-world made for TV mini-series. These 30 second ads are designed to appeal to our emotions (pathos as the Greeks would say) and not to our intellect (logos). So when Kerry approves of his message about being a war hero, we are supposed to feel safe. When Bush approves his message about Kerry voting against weapon's systems we are supposed to feel fear.
The problem with pathos is that emotional arguments do not really inform and yet those arguments have been proven winners in presidential campaigns. The American voter has set a pattern of voting with the heart and not with the head and therefore will get more and more persuasion through pathos. This pattern of voting breeds more and more politicians without ideas.
Kerry could simply state, "I don't need the extra money, my ideas are winners and therefore I will win," but he won't. His ideas are the same ideas Bush has, or shall I say, his ideas are the ideas the pollsters tell him he should have. They are the same pollsters that tell Bush to mention his personal savior and to speak against gay marriage. These are not ideas; these are statements that have nothing to do ideas. Our politics are a desert wasteland of new ideas.
When was the last time you heard a presidential politician come up with a new idea? Oh you might hear an idea out of one of the candidates with no hope of winning, but the front runners are full of empty, left-over ideas that say nothing and will change nothing.
President Bush's new No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ads are a perfect example of the nothingness of politics today. If you knew nothing about the NCLB policy before the ad, you would be just as ignorant following the viewing. In fact, unless you are in the field of education you probably know little or nothing about this widely publicized policy. What does NCLB do? Well what happened in Texas? Test scores soared, teachers taught, children learned, bad schools were closed, good schools prospered. It was the Texas education miracle.
The State of Washington is on its way with NCLB, in fact 4th grade and 7th grade WASL scores are going to soar this year. How do I know? Well the scores are going to soar the same way they did in Texas; the standards are being lowered. What used to be a failing score in 4th and 7th grade will be passing this year. Wow! The Washington education miracle is on its way. So much progress is going to be made that I am sure eventually the standards will be lowered for the 10th grade test. If everything goes smoothly maybe the test will be as easy as the one in Texas in a few years. This is how we create political miracles in the US today, the same way Arthur Anderson created profit for Enron. Instead of making education a priority, we look for a way to make it look like we are making progress. Instead of coming up with ideas that will fundamentally change education in the US, we repackage the box and put "New and Improved" on the cover.
You know how Japan turns out such great students? Their formula for success is small class sizes, teachers who spend more time planning than teaching and support at home. There is no secret formula that they feed the students. They simply make education a priority.
Problems with education, social security, foreign policy and any other political issue, don't need pathos, they need logos. We need politicians who rely on their ideas not on their ability to make you feel fear or comfort with a 30 second ad.
What we need in America and what we want in America are two different things. What we want is a polished politician, and as long as politicians care more about elections than their electorates, we will get meaningless talk, meaningless policy and meaningless progress. What we need in America is someone to stand up and express a vision for America that is firmly founded in logic, not emotion. John Kerry could still do it with a rousing, thoughtful acceptance speech, but he will probably stick to the Hallmark ads.
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Jon Eekhoff is a teacher in Western Washington, and one of the 5 greatest basketball players to hail from Lemoore, California.