By Nile Bowie
After months of rhetoric and political
campaigning, the smoke has finally cleared on the media frenzy that is the US
Presidential Election. Once the winner of the race was announced, supporters at
the Obama Campaign headquarters in Chicago jubilantly celebrated. The haze of
American flags, pop music, and confetti worked wonders to mask the absence of
any real political substance throughout the election process. Cheering
supporters shouted “four more years”
as President Obama took to the stage to deliver his victory speech – complete
with highly emotional grandiloquence, two mentions of the US military being the
strongest in the world, and of course – a joke about the family dog. After an
exorbitant $6 billion spent by campaigns and outside groups in the primary,
congressional and presidential races, Americans have reelected a president
better suited for Hollywood than Washington. A 2010 ruling by the US Supreme
Court that swept away limits on corporate contributions to political campaigns
has paved the way for the most expensive election in American history, in the
midst of an economic crisis nonetheless. [1]
In the nation that gave birth to the marketing
concept of branding, it is to be assumed that politicians would eventually adopt
the same techniques used to promote consumer products – enter Obama. After
eight years under the Bush administration, America desperately needed change.
Instead of any meaningful structural reform, America ushered in a global super
star whose charm and charisma not only resuscitated American prestige, but also
masked the continued dominance of deregulators, financiers, and war-profiteers.
Obama’s most valuable asset is his brand, and his ability to channel the
nostalgia of transformative social movements of the past, while serving as a tabula rasa of sorts to his supporters –
an icon of hope who is capable of inspiring the masses and coaxing them into
action – despite the Obama administration expanding the disturbing militaristic
and domestic surveillance policies so characteristic of the Bush years, and
channeling never before seen authority to the executive branch.
The American public at large is captivated by
Barack’s contrived media personality and the grandeur of his political poetry
and performance, and is therefore reluctant to acknowledge his enthusiastic continuation
of the deeply unethical policies of his predecessor. Obama is indeed a leader
suited for a new age, one of post-intellectualism and televised spectacle – a
time when huge demographics of voters are more influenced by Jay-Z and Katy
Perry’s endorsement of Obama over anything of political substance he preaches. [2]
While the US has historically exported
“democracy promotion” through institutions like the National Endowment for
Democracy (trends that have accelerated under the Obama administration), so few
see the American electoral process for what it is – unacceptably expensive,
filled with contrived debates, and subject to the kind of meticulous controls that
America’s foreign adversaries are accused of presiding over.
A leaked ‘Memorandum
of Understanding,’ signed by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, provides
unique insight into the nature of the three televised debates, and the extent
to which organizers went to prevent the occurrence of any form of unplanned
spontaneity. [3]
The document outlines how no members of the audience would be allowed to ask
follow-up questions to the candidates, how microphones will be cut off right
after questions were asked, and how any opportunities for follow-up questions
from the crowd would be disregarded. In what was billed as a series of
town-hall style debates where members of the community can come together and ask questions
that reflect their concerns – in actuality, the two candidates dished out
pre-planned responses to pre-approved questions, asked by pre-selected individuals.
The political domination of the Republican and Democratic parties over the
debates is nowhere more apparent than in the arrest of Green Party Presidential
candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, as the two attempted
to enter the site of the second presidential debate. [4]
Despite the obscurity and almost non-existent
media presence of third party candidates, former New Mexico Governor Gary
Johnson of the Libertarian Party received 1% of the popular vote in the general
election, amounting to over 1.1 million votes, the best in the history of the
Libertarian Party. [5]
In contrast to the choreographed exchanges offered by the televised debates
between Obama and Romney, Moscow’s state-funded Russia Today news service offered third-party candidates an
opportunity to voice their political programs in two debates aired on the channel.
[6]
Throughout these debates, third-party candidates spoke of repealing Obama’s
authorization of indefinite detention through the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA), the need for coherent environmental legislation, the gross misdirection of American foreign policy, the necessity of deep economic
restructuring, and the illogicality of marijuana prohibition. In her closing
statement at the debate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein brought up a
significant point:
“They’re 90 million voters who are not coming
out to vote in this election, that’s one out of every two voters – that’s twice
as many as those who will come out for Barack Obama, and twice the number that
will come out for Mitt Romney. Those are voters who are saying ‘No’ to politics
as usual, and ‘No’ to the Democratic and Republican parties. Imagine if we got
out word to those 90 millions voters, that they actually have a variety of
choices and voices in this election.”
American presidential politics are not devoid
of progressive voices, but in reality, America doesn’t need a third-party – it needs a second party. The
overwhelming lack of choice offered by this election can only be attributable
to the political duopoly of the Republican and Democratic parties. As President
Obama begins his second term and final term, some feel that this could be a
chance for the White House to pursue more progressive ends – an opportunity for
Obama to act on his own campaign rhetoric and roll back militarism and the
influence of Wall St. financers. While such optimism may prevail in the minds
of many, the fact that President Obama issued a drone strike that killed three
people in Yemen just hours after being reelected is a telling sign of things to
come from the Obama administration. [7]
As the United States continues to project itself around the world as the
definitive model of “freedom and democracy,” it is apparent that the central
bankers, corporate financiers, and crony capitalists who control America’s
electoral system did indeed learn and thing or two from communism:
“The best way to control the opposition is to
lead it ourselves.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Notes
[1] US
presidential election: Obama vs the Super PACs - How the incumbent prevailed,
The Economic Times, November 8, 2012
[2] Katy
Perry, Beyonce and Jay-Z lead stars voting for Barack Obama, Metro,
November 6, 2012
[3] Obama and
Romney agree to cowardly debates, Russia Today, October 16, 2012
[4] Police arrest US
presidential candidate Jill Stein at debate site, Russia Today, October 17,
2012
[5] Gary
Johnson Pulls One Million Votes, One Percent, Reason Foundation, November
7, 2012
[6] RT presents
third-party presidential debate, Russia Today, October 19, 2012
[7] Yemen
drone strike kills 'al-Qaeda members', Al-Jazeera, November 09, 2012
Nile Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-based American writer and
photographer for the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, Canada.
He explores issues of terrorism, economics and geopolitics.
