All Politics is Now National
Tip O'Neill used to say that "all politics is local." Yet, Conservatives seem to achieve their greatest victories when they nationalize elections.
It was said that one of the favorite phrases of the late, longtime, and lovable Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, was that "All politics is local." In O'Neill's day, that was no doubt true. But O'Neill died in January of 1994 at age 81 -- a time when words like "cell phones" and "email" were barely within the American lexicon, and when Google, YouTube, and Twitter were not even glimmers in Bill Gates or Steve Jobs' eyeglasses.
This week, probably every other news article -- right or left -- will be on the "Two Americas" meme, as the Republicans almost equaled their 1994 triumphs across the board -- while California, New York, and Massachusetts became bluer than ever, with every single notable statewide position taken by a Democrat. But that tired (if true) cliché is not the most important story of Election 2010 by a long shot, to this longtime movie and TV critic's glassed-over eyes. To me, this election is proof more than anything else that while we may well live in two Americas -- if you'll forgive my grammar, we are a nation under one media. And that all politics has effectively become nationalized.
One media? In an age of MSNBC versus Fox News, of the Daily Kos vs. RedState.com? How ridiculous is that? Obviously, there are far more venues and platforms today than ever before. But the one thing they all have in common is that, with the Internet and social/viral media having taken over completely, there are virtually no LOCAL media anymore.
Amazon, Borders, and Barnes & Noble killed the local bookstore. Clear Channel and Sirius satellite sent locally tailored and formatted radio to the dustbin. And most of the under-40 set only use local newspapers to line their cat boxes or bird cages. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton ended the era of the locally-owned TV station or movie theatre, repealing virtually all the old antitrust restrictions on ownership and distribution from the '40s through the '70s. And while there are more networks and venues than ever before, there is also so very much media consolidation than ever before.
Viacom owns Paramount Pictures (including indie imprints like Paramount Vantage and Rysher), CBS Television, much of Clear Channel radio, MTV cable networks (including Nick and TVLand), King World syndication, National Amusements movie theatres, and Simon & Schuster book publishing -- and that's just for openers. Mickey Mouse's "magic kingdom" includes ABC-TV, Disney studios (including what's left of Miramax and Touchstone), Buena Vista syndication, Hyperion publishing, and the Disneyland amusement parks. And do we even need to discuss Rupert Murdoch?
Moreover, the 24-7 media spin cycle and the worldwide reach of the World Wide Web completely altered the priority list of covering people in elected office and those who would aspire to it. In 1990, 1980, and 1970, the antics of some senator or governor wannabe in Anchorage or Alabama would have had virtually no relevance or interest to newspapers and TV stations in Anaheim or Albany. Unless they were standing in a schoolhouse door or siccing pit bulls and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators or antiwar college students, a "colorful" first-time local yokel like Rand Paul or Christine O'Donnell would've been lucky to get a 30-second "human interest" blurb on the back page of The New York Times or the tag end of Walter Cronkite -- especially minus the decades of experience in politics of a Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond (or a William Fulbright or Pat Brown.)
But today, it's the Pauls and O'Donnells and Angles -- the more outrageous and inappropriate the better -- that completely dominate the antics of the cable chat shows and the internet blogosphere and tweet-tweets. While it's true that Carl Palladino and Meg Whitman may have been less-than-stellar candidates for office, that can only explain half of why in such an intensely Republican year, it was Democratic voters who were stoked and psyched to hit the polls in the multi-ethnic, socially liberal powerhouse states. California and New York may have been voting against Palladino or Carly Fiorina -- but many were also surely voting against the cartoon conservatives from other states, who dominated national news coverage.
Not only that, but the last 20 or so years have seen a complete remaking of the warp and woof of local elections and offices. David Frum correctly noted in How We Got Here that in the '70s and early '80s, federal courts and the Congress began insinuating themselves into local, close-to-home affairs in a big way, for reasons both well-intentioned and sometimes not-so. Enter busing and affirmative action, and laws about the Ten Commandments and nativity scenes, plus court-ordered "equalization" of local tax funds from rich districts to ghettos and barrios. And far from calling a halt to the trend, the Republican leadership afterward only put their feet more on the federal accelerator. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush ended President Nixon's "revenue sharing" gravy train to local city halls, libraries, police/fire stations, hospitals, and schools -- largely replacing it with the "unfunded federal mandate." Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton ordered top-down welfare reform, and George W. Bush mounted a sequel called No Child Left Behind.
Robbed of their power to solve their own problems for themselves, it was perhaps inevitable that many local government officials decided to reboot local elections into referendums on national culture-war themes. By the 1990s, in large swaths of Red America, mayoral and city council elections hinged on abortion policy, affirmative action quotas, and income taxes. School board elections became about evolution vs. creation and whether to force 12-year-olds to put condoms on bananas or 8-year-olds to read about Heather's Two Mommies. This trend was actively encouraged by conservative activists like Randall Terry and Tim Golba, as local governments were transformed into a sort of dinner-theatre training ground-zero for new right-wing firebrands to test out their acts before taking them on the road. And Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle are only a few who got their start on local school boards and suburban city halls.
While there is certainly a national aspect to all off-year elections, until 1994, one can count on one hand the postwar ones that were decided as national referendums first, and on local issues and personalities second. There was the 1974 Watergate election, the crippling 1982 recession, and perhaps Proposition 13 in 1978 -- exceptions that almost proved the rule. But in a marketing masterstroke, Newt Gingrich effectively nationalized the 1994 election with his Contract with America -- and from then on, both parties learned the lesson. 1998 was about Impeachment, 2002 was the War on Terror, 2006 was the "thumping" of Bush/Cheney, and 2010 was about healthcare and the stimulus/bailout.
This massive change presents an equal-opportunity dilemma for both conservatives and liberals alike. Conservatives in theory want to turn power back to localities to solve problems for themselves, yet they achieve their greatest victories when they nationalize elections around a common, top-down theme. Liberals suffered huge losses in backlash to frustrations over healthcare, bailouts, and the economy, yet leaders like Joan Walsh at Salon.com and Markos Moulitsas strongly urged President Obama to "nationalize" the election as a referendum on him, even if it cost the Democrats a slaughterhouse in the Congress and Senate. "That's what a real leader does."
At one time, a time when local big-frog-little-pond businessmen and Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls- type widows and grandmothers volunteered at city halls and school districts, a time of three networks and newspapers actually written on paper, of handout-giving aldermen and ice-cream-social running school boards, all politics was indeed local. But today, the tsunami of change in how we receive information and what information we pay attention to has changed the game completely. All politics (and almost all political personalities for any but the lowliest office) are now national. And it is the challenge of both parties to be able to find a way to "brand" themselves across an ever-more-diversified and polarized country, and to communicate in a brave new world where, as the late Marshall McLuhan would say, "the media is the message."