It's time for another era of bad feelings, which in this country happens with the regularity of the calendar. Only this fit of distemper comes every two years and in two stages, which are called primary and general elections. That's how we do things in this mass democracy that the old, original federal republic has become. Just as the quill pen now has given way to Twitter and iPads and foto ops and apps of all confusing kinds.
How describe an American election season? No one has done it better than a foreigner named de Tocqueville, who described just about every facet of Democracy in America, which is the title of his magisterial work. It combines sociology, history, political and cultural analysis, ethnology, religion and any number of other facets of the always changing yet remarkably continuous American experiment.
Written in the heat of Jacksonian America, and amid the embers of revolutionary France, the author's masterwork describes not just the America of his 1830ish time, but the America to come, and does so with an uncanny prescience. Which any truly great work of scholarship and observation tends to do. And which these two insightful volumes of de Tocqueville's certainly do.
If the Roman empire had its Gibbon, we Americans have our Tocqueville. And both produced not just elegant, comprehensive, discursive and absorbing works of scholarship but literature.
Credit our French visitor with perhaps the best metaphor for an American election season: a great river overflowing its banks. And, just when it has carried away everything in its now unconstrained course, this river of events abruptly recedes, leaving but the calm after the storm. Later, you wonder what the purpose of such a devastating spectacle was. Amidst all the sturm und drang, it's easy to forget that it had something to do with electing the country's leaders.
Maybe that's because there are times when the principal object of an American election seems to be not to fill public offices but to tempt all the participants to sacrifice their last shred of dignity to the low pursuit of high office.
Nothing bears out the description and diagnosis of democracy attributed to Alexander Hamilton like an American election campaign with all its vagaries and eccentricities. To quote that founding father, "Your people, sir, is a great beast."
Even perfectly respectable, dignified, kind and caring people have been known to get carried away in a political campaign and, like kids on the old Art Linkletter show, say the darnedest things. Which may explain the very different approaches taken by the very different candidates for the Republican nomination for Congress in the Second District, which used to elect thoroughly respectable types like Vic Snyder and Tim Griffin, but now . . . well, just consider this year's three Republican hopefuls:
French Hill is the odd man out in this rasslin' match, because the other two candidates are much too busy attacking him to stay dignified. To quote Mr. Hill, a pillar of both the state's Republican and banking establishments: "I am here trying to talk about specific policies and areas of things I am interested in, and they are talking about innuendo and spin." If he ever decides to give up his day job, French Hill might go into political analysis because that comment sums up the Republican race in the Second Congressional District to date. (Early voting started Monday, and election day, Tuesday, May 20th, is still a couple of weeks away.)
His opponents' barbs may not reveal much about French Hill, but they reveal all too much about their own candidacies and character (or lack of same). Ann Clemmer, a state rep from Benton, has already demonstrated that she's a poor judge of character by hiring a campaign treasurer (Alex Reed) who's been little but trouble no matter which state official he's working for at the time, whether poor Ann Clemmer or Mark Martin, Arkansas' secretary of state. At least Ms. Clemmer is now well rid of him, but he was still employed by the secretary of state's office, that is, the taxpayers of Arkansas, when we checked Tuesday afternoon. Though he's been placed on administrative leave.
Ann Clemmer has her own checkered record to explain, for she keeps tripping over her votes for and against the Private Option, which is really a public option, since its major feature has been to dump tens of thousands of people into the state's now greatly expanded Medicaid program. (None of its defenders dare call it Obamacare, at least not in a Republican primary.) Just where Ms. Clemmer is, was or will be on this volatile issue tends to be elusive. Her stance on the Private Option may even elude Ms. Clemmer, who keeps changing her mind, or maybe just her explanations for being fir or agin it.
See what we mean by the purpose of American elections being to strip candidates of their simple human dignity? Letting their aye be aye and their nay nay seems quite beyond some politicians, who soon enough become just pols. Which is what is happening to Poor Ann Clemmer. (By now, Poor has become her unofficial first name.)
There's also a third candidate in this race who's sacrificed not just his dignity but the very essence of it: his name. Colonel Conrad Earl Reynolds, né Conald Earl Reynolds, formerly known as just plain Conrad Earl Reynolds, has formally adopted a new first name--for no ostensible purpose other than to advertise his military rank on this month's ballot. Sad.
At least Esau got a mess of pottage in exchange for his birthright, but Colonel Colonel Reynolds, a moniker that always brings to mind Major Major in Catch-22, seems to have done it just for transient political advantage. If his campaign wasn't a joke before he officially changed his name, he's made certain it is now.
Here's hoping that when this great river of silliness known as an American election campaign mercifully subsides, it will deposit both the Hon. Ann Clemmer and Col. Col. Reynolds safely back where they started from, and give them a chance to restore what remains of their tattered dignity. Because the more dubious tactics they adopt against a hopeless square like French Hill, the better Mr. Hill looks.
The moral of this story: In politics as in life, there's nothing better than just being true to yourself.
Editorial on 05/08/2014