The phoney in American politics: How voters turn into losers
History tells us that the skeptical American people are easily conned when confronted with the promises of politicians. In 2016, the hairstyles may have changed but the schtick remains the same
Ben Fountain
For most of history we had an excuse. Emperors, pharaohs, czars, kings, queens, sultans, sheiks, they descended on us via peremptory power structures and the vagaries of genetics. If the king was a warmongering dolt or half-mad egomaniac, it wasnt our, the peoples, fault. The best we could do was keep our heads down and suffer as God almighty seemed to want us to. Occasionally there would be regime change, a new family of dolts and psychotics in charge, but for the mud-dwellers of the 99%, life was largely a cowering slog through the nether regions of obedience.
Analysis Donald Trump recycles the hits in arena gig to the Tampa thousands
The attendance figures arent true, classic rock is turned up to 11, policies come in call and response. This is less Triumph of the Will than politics by Ticketmaster
Read more
American democracy was supposed to change all that. No more twits or hysterics ruling over us, no more beef-fed murderers in ermine robes; we would choose for ourselves, a system that assumes some skill for discernment on the part of the chooser. Rare is the candidate for high office who announces he intends to screw the common folk. Policy is always put forth in the name of the greater good, to be judged as better or worse, sound or flawed based on reasoned analysis and experience, but beyond policy a more instinctive, earthier judgment is taking place about truth, character, authenticity, all in search of the straight talker who means what he says and intends to carry through. Americans care a lot about authenticity, rightly so. Every election is a quest for the genuine article. This is precisely what makes the long con of American politics such a rich and mystifying study.
As Trump, Cruz, Clinton, Sanders, and the rest of the 2016 crew tackle the snows and insults of February in pursuit of votes, all the theatrics of authenticity are on display. The furrowed brows. The throbbing voices. The feel-your-pain hugs. Then they get on their campaign buses and move on to the next town. Americans are a famously skeptical people, but in the gyms of Iowa, the Rotary Clubs of South Carolina and all the coffee shops and civic halls to come, our perennial gullibility is there for the plucking.
Let the record reflect: the American people are a bunch of suckers. Weapons of mass destruction. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Read my lips. I am not a crook. We still seek no wider war. And these whoppers are merely a sampling from a handful of recent presidents. To strike the broad pure vein of American credulity one need dig only a bit to turn up such gems as Wilbert Lee Pappy ODaniel of Fort Worth, Texas, a Depression-era salesman for the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company, producer of Light Crust Flour. In the early 30s, ODaniel began hosting a radio show featuring the soon-to-be famous Bob Wills and the Light Crust Doughboys, though ODaniels soothing, fatherly voice and easily digestible patter quickly became the real draw of the show. At 12.30 each weekday the broadcast opened with a country matrons request to please pass the biscuits, Pappy. For the next 15 minutes, listeners many of them housewives taking a midday break were treated to twangy renditions of gospel and hillbilly tunes, interspersed with Pappy reading scripture, ad copy for Light Crust Flour, sentimental poems, and tributes to motherhood, Texas heroes, and good Christian living. His popularity grew to the point that he left Burrus Mill and started his own company, Hillbilly Flour, and began blasting his show over the 100,000 watts of XEPN, a pirate radio station across the border in Mexico.
Flour sales boomed, and Pappy himself was a star, the biggest mass-media celebrity in the south-west and a man with his eye on the next big thing. On the regular Hillbilly Flour program of 1 May 1938, he announced that as the result of a letter-writing campaign from thousands of listeners, he would bow to popular demand and run for governor. His platform consisted of the Ten Commandments, tax reform and a guaranteed pension of $30 a month to every Texan over the age of 65. His campaign theme was Pass the Biscuits, Pappy, his motto the Golden Rule. He avowed that his business experience would enable him to manage state government in a businesslike manner, and with his wife, three kids, and the Hillbilly Band (Wills had left years ago, disgusted with Pappys skinflint ways), the radio star began a barnstorming tour across Texas. The effect was electric. ODaniel had what would later be known as name recognition; everyone had heard, or at least heard of, Pappy. Crowds of 20,000 or more turned out for his rallies, and more than once mobs of fans forced his caravan to an unscheduled stop so they could hear the common citizens candidate rail on professional politicians, recite scripture, and plug Hillbilly Flour. An evangelical fervor was present from the start, fanned by the candidates Christian oratory and old-timey gospel music. The prominent Baptist minister J Frank Norris compared Pappy to Moses, predicting he would lead the country back to its Christian roots. As one historian wrote:
The ODaniel rallies appealed to the same deep human instinct and provided the same emotional outlets which the camp meeting formerly offered. Here again was the chance to enjoy the thrill and glory of a martial movement without risking any physical bloodshed. Christ was still the hero and Satan still the enemy, but Christs good, which had previously radiated from the camp-meeting preacher, was now represented by the flour-salesman. Satans evil, previously attached to that abhorred aristocracy which had been the pioneers European superior, was now found to reside in the professional politician.
When attacked by establishment candidates, ODaniel responded with scripture: Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and shall say all manner of evil falsely against you for My sake. He countered objections to his Yankee origins (he was born in Ohio, reared in Kansas) with a touching story about his name: one of his uncles, a Union soldier in the civil war, had been mortally wounded, but was nursed so tenderly on his deathbed by a southern family that he sent word to his sister saying if she should ever have a son, he should be named after the great Confederate general Robert E Lee. In answer to charges of being secretly backed by big business, he replied: How can you say Im against the working man when I buried my daddy in overalls?
Donald Trump rails against Chamber of Commerce as it happened
According to data, Clinton and her supporters spent $26m on ads in eight battleground states in June, while Donald Trump spent nothing
Read more
If youre looking for the phony in American politics, you could do worse than follow the money. In fact ODaniel was being backed by a cabal of Texass richest oilmen and bankers, ultraconservatives all, and his campaign was directed by a sharp PR man out of Dallas. ODaniel himself had grown wealthy in business and real estate, which didnt keep him from sending his pretty daughter out at rallies with a small barrel labeled Flour Not Pork, appealing for desperately needed campaign funds. Sales of Hillbilly Flour doubled over the course of the campaign, and ODaniel swept the election with more than twice the number of votes of his nearest competitor. Once in office, he began broadcasting directly from the Governors Mansion, pledging: This administration is going to be me, God, and the people, thanks to the radio.
Listening to ODaniels broadcasts today is to be treated to the rankest sort of huckster charm, along with a primer in the shamelessly pandering arts of political suasion. Christian homilies, dogtrot poetry, and treacly moralizing are delivered in a smooth, slightly formal country voice that goes down like lemonade with all the tang sugared out of it. Did he believe his own schtick? He was, one longtime acquaintance said, a born actor. He may not believe it, but he feels it at the time. Once, his eyes tearing up as the band played The Old Rugged Cross, Pappy leaned over to a visitor and whispered: Thats what brings em in, boy. Thats what really brings em in! In person he was aloof and awkward, reluctant to engage the legislators with whom he had to work, even avoiding constituents who journeyed to Austin to meet their hero and tell him their troubles. But with a microphone to his lips, ODaniel, as they say in showbiz, killed. Son, one longtime listener explained to her bewildered offspring, Ive been having breakfast with Lee ODaniel on the radio for the past eight years, and I know hes a good man.
A man who delivered pretty much zilch to the working people who adored him. In the span of four years he won four statewide elections for high office, including a 1941 special election for the US Senate in which he beat a young congressman named Lyndon Johnson. Even as his allegiance to big business and special interests became increasingly clear, Pappys rural and blue-collar base kept the faith. Just because hes a Christian man. Because hes honest, mister, and because he aint no politician. Hes almost a preacher. He knows how to catch up with them congressmen and tell us about them.
In the arsenal of the phony, the politics of God is one of the deadliest punches to the sweet spot of the American mind. Citizens capable of the most acute analysis in other areas of their lives regarding finance, say, or electronics, or the infinitely complex variables of fantasy sports leagues are reduced to blithering dupes when exposed to the Christian pitch. Something spooky happens to that excellent American mind that brought us moon landings and the silicon chip and the wonderful stuff that saves our kids from polio. No matter if the candidate has had three or four wives or fired thousands of workers or dropped biblical plagues of bombs on rice farmers and sheep herders, merely saying the magic words makes it so. Christian values. Strong for Jesus. In God we trust, and all the rest. Incantations that render large chunks of the electorate as dazed and vulnerable as pre-contact tribesmen from the deepest Amazon hearing a transistor radio for the first time.
https://www.theguardian.com
