Rough and tumble

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, said H.L. Mencken. Joe Klein recently dressed up the same point in Time magazine, arguing that election winnability in the United States depends on 8220;low-information signalling8221; 8212; how the candidate rolls a ball, downs a beer or wears a flagpin 8212; how convincingly he or she mimics 8220;average American8221; rituals, no matter how transparent the motives. Barack Obama, by that logic, has gone about it all wrong 8212; audaciously choosing the more complex, less palatable truths, believing that what America needs is to confront itself in a 8220;big8221; election. At a time when his black pastor Jeremiah Wright8217;s incendiary 8220;God damn America8221; sermons were being played on infinite loop on Youtube and cable to discredit him, Obama shunned the obvious solution of dissociating himself from Wright and, instead, gently steered the country around to look beyond the black and white, and examine its own deeply held, irrational race-anxieties.

But what a difference a few weeks made. Now, at the lowest point in his campaign so far, Obama has been forced to sever his association with Wright after the trash-talking preacher8217;s statements on 9/11 being a case of America8217;s 8220;chickens come home to roost8221; and HIV-AIDS being a giant conspiracy against blacks. But is Obama8217;s U-turn a genuine reassessment based on fresh evidence or is it a final falling down to earth, his capitulation to the sorry rules of the political machine, as his detractors gleefully claim? Hillary Clinton has been accused of her own share of dissembling 8212; but then again, no one seems to have expected much better from her so she actually stands to gain in this coarsened fray.

Either way, one thing is obvious. This election has gripped the rest of the world, in ways nobody expected. The primaries process was aimed at generating the core issues bottom up, state-by-state, and testing candidates across all kinds of voter expectations. It was supposed to be an example in grassroots referendum. Instead, it has turned in on itself, freakishly grinding on. We have watched with horrid fascination as it beatifies and then tears down Barack Obama, destroys and resurrects Clinton over and over again, seizes upon every gaffe of campaigns under constant surveillance, and distorts every issue of significance through the funhouse mirrors of different media outlets. Obama isn8217;t the only thing that8217;s shrunk in this wash.