viz.

Image Credit: storyful.com

So last week I suggested that my post on tennis, David Foster Wallace, and postmodernism might be my last for the 2011–2012 academic year. I lied. Here’s another 500–1,000 words for your delectation. While thinking over what to write about last week, I decided to take coffee at Starbucks and read the paper. This was the day that Paul Krugman wrote his column “The Amnesia Candidate” (22 April 2012), and I’ve been thinking about what’s said there ever since. The Op-Ed is a thoughtful evaluation of Mitt Romney’s most recent campaign rhetoric, and it is especially efficient in the way it attacks the former governor for blaming some of Bush’s legacy on Obama. While Krugman does concede that Obama could have handled economic matters differently, he ultimately concludes by asking “Are the American people forgetful enough for Romney’s attack to work?”. This is a complex question. You hear cynics complain all the time that American voters have a 6-month attention span, which, if true, must surely be further compromised by consumer culture’s narcotization. There’s probably some truth to this. How could there not be given technology’s onslaught of information?

Krugman’s point isn’t so much a question of whether or not voters can recall that Romney’s speech was given in a drywall warehouse which was shut down during the Bush years – to suggest as much is to blame the average American voter for not having the mind of a Princeton professor, which would be ignorant. “Work” here, it seems to me, is a question or whether or not Romney can emotionally engage his base. The more that Americans are thinking critically about their environment, the more likely they are to realize (not remember) that the president has very little to do with the economy. All of this puts into relief the image Romney was trying to project, and it might be a good measure of the state of U.S. political discourse circa 2012.

A little research suggested that Romney’s entire speech at the drywall factory was part of his new advertising aesthetic: “Obama Isn’t Working.” I found a new TV ad (above) that introduces this notion. Romney’s campaign cites a number of statistics in the ad that try to portray North Carolina’s employment situation in a bad way. As those of you who have watched the youtube clip above have surely noted by now, the TV ad has the feeling of a movie trailer for the latest action flick. Why Romney wants to suggest that 2012’s Democratic National Convention is going to be such an action-packed event is beyond me. (Maybe it’s a sign that large portions of his campaign staff didn’t watch the 2008 Democratic National Convention? And I ask this with all due respect: Grecian columns notwithstanding, the 2008 Democratic National Convention was a far cry from The Avengers.) Perhaps the slogan “Obama Isn’t Working” is meant to suggest that 44 isn’t going to work everyday? Maybe Romney’s implying that Obama’s reclining on the couch with professional football and a bag of pretzels?

Sorry if anybody out there is a Romney fan. I’ll get back to sports and postmodernism next time, I promise. The point here isn’t that I think other’s political imperatives are less important than my own, nor do I wish to imply that Obama’s practicing a rhetoric that would make Hugh Blair proud. What’s striking to me about Romney’s new advertising campaign, however, is how little it relies on logical arguments. (And again, I suspect this would probably hold true for a number of prominent Democrat politicians.) What clearly matters most these days is pathetic appeal. I suspect that the hour plus many working Americans spending commuting to and from work every day doesn’t make them happy people (the geometric variety of brake lights can only entertain for so long), and the longer that these folks are unhappy in a bubble with only a radio to kill the time, the more susceptible they’ll be to emotional rhetoric. This is all economics really – the more charged up one’s base is, the better – and I’m not sure anyone’s to blame for a systemic crisis.

That said, America was designed in a period that prized reason and logic.