Yet thanks to the advent of television and the mass media that loved it so much, we are increasingly taught to regard our favorite politicians not just as the folks who got some good things done but as role models and even "heroes."
The recent media gushing over John McCain is a dramatic example of this illusion being foisted on us. True, McCain acted in a heroic manner while a prisoner of war but that was a half century ago. Something to truly honor, to be sure, but now only a part of the story. In the words which I learned as a youth to ask politicians, "Yeah, but what have you done for us lately?"
McCain is only the latest example. The deification of politicians thanks to television began with John Kennedy and got a another boost with Ronald Reagan. Reagan had done something that would curse us evermore: blending politics with show business.
But it was really with Clinton that the media decided that the facts were subservient to the image a politician wanted to present. Ignored were the major drug trade in Arkansas, his family's connection to the mob, more than three dozen of his administration officials indicted or convicted, over 40 individuals or businesses connected with the Clinton machine convicted, and much more.
As for his wife, she was the first First Lady to come under criminal investigation,, had 9 fundraisers or major backs convicted of, or pleading no contest to, crime, not to mention three of her close business partner, and giving testimony to Congress in which he said that she didn't remember, didn't know, or something similar 250 times.
Further, the Clintons set up a resort land scam known as Whitewater in which the unwitting bought third rate property 50 miles from the nearest grocery store and, thanks to the sleazy financing, about half the purchasers, many of them seniors, lost their property. This was all information the mass media kept from the public or never bothered to look into.
Yet because I had come to view administrations as battlefields, rather than places of honor, I voted for Hillary Clinton in the race against Trump. I was choosing the least hazardous president. Virtue was not a choice. Yet thanks in no small part because the mass media treated Trump like the host of the Apprentice, it did not tell the story of his past bankruptcies, misbehavior and other other sordid sagas, and so we ended up with the candidate who had the best fake TV story.
The media's treatment of McCain is in this tradition. albeit he was far more honest than either Clinton or Trump. Only a few journalists tried to tell a broader tale such as Mehdi Hasan in Intercept:
Even if you discount the fact that McCain once publicly dismissed his wife as a “cunt.” Or that he referred to two of his fellow Republican senators as a “fucking jerk” and an “asshole.” Or that he mocked Chelsea Clinton, then a teenager, as “ugly.” Or that he refused to apologize for calling his Vietnamese captors “gooks.” Or that he slammed anti-war protesters as “low-life scum.”
Ignore all of that and you’re still left with his hate-mongering, race-baiting, Trump-precursing 2008 presidential campaign — against the first black Democratic nominee for the White House. How have the vitriol and smears of a decade ago been so easily forgotten by his eulogizers? So casually consigned to the media memory hole?
Remember: McCain introduced the loathsome Palin to the world in August 2008, when he plucked her from Alaskan obscurity and made her his running mate. In doing so, he granted prestige, influence, and credibility to a know-nothing demagogue and conspiracy theorist; a woman who thrived on racial and cultural resentment and would later become a leading figure in both the tea party and the “birther” movement. Sound familiar? Palin, as the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote in 2016, was “politically, the Mother of Trump.”
How have the vitriol and smears of a decade ago been so easily forgotten by his eulogizers? So casually consigned to the media memory hole?And as Intercept reported last year:
The former GOP presidential candidate, who proudly calls himself pro-life and a “Reagan Republican,” spent his first decade in Congress voting for tax cuts and trying to block the creation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He has earned a lifetime rating of 81.6 percent from the American Conservative Union and, according to a survey by FiveThirtyEight, has voted in line with President Donald Trump — a leader with whom he pretends to disagree — 90.7 percent of the time. (“Never Trump”? Well, I guess 9.3 percent of the time.)Yes, McCain was a war hero and often worked well with those he disagreed with him, but we can't have a decent politics if the media turns the leaders it likes into fantasy show business personalities and ignores essentials like how they actually voted.
For me, politics is one of the last places I go looking for virtue, in a class say with Las Vegas gambling centers. In fact, a Canadian poll found people ranked politicians slightly below car salesmen as the least respected trade or position.
I look for positive change and action from pols and seek virtue elsewhere. It would be helpful if the mainstream media interviewed more truly good people on television rather than just pretending that Washington politicians fit the bill.
