On Monday we witnessed the beginning of two
campaigns to shape the direction of the
nation's future. President Obama declared
that he would seek re-election in 2012,
kicking off his pursuit of a second term
with a web ad geared toward recruiting
grassroots workers who would try to keep him
in the White House.
In Congress, a much different campaign was
launched by the Republicans, with Chairman
of the Budget Committee Paul Ryan's release
of the 2012 Republican budget. Comparing
these two opening salvos for next year's
election, America's choice can be boiled
down to a simple choice between the
emotional ploys of the left, and the
comprehensive solutions of the right.
The difference between the two is best shown
through the videos each side made when they
initially launched their respective
campaigns. Though each broadly discusses
the future of the United States in a clip
lasting just a few minutes, only one
connects policy proposed today with
America's future tomorrow by discussing
actual plans that will affect the nation.
The president's
video
starts with a woman describing how nervous
she is about the upcoming election.
She is then followed by a second woman who
explains what the 2012 election means to her
(and apparently for the Obama campaign).
She says, "I think the election needs to
reflect the change we've seen over the last
two and a half years." What is the change
she's talking about? Perhaps a successful
stimulus and economic recovery? Health care
reform? Or, maybe she is referencing the
president's other policies that he's
implemented over the past two years?
None of the above. In its opening video,
the Obama campaign's definition of the
successful change that occurred during his
first term is that "an underdog senator
became the president." This is immediately
followed by a young man who supports the
president because of his "energy and hope he
had for this country." The reason for
supporting the president is not because of
what he's done; instead, it's because of who
Obama intrinsically is.
The closest the president's video comes to
discussing real issues is when they show a
man who says, "I can't not be involved.
There's too much that's fundamentally
important right now" and a woman follows him
who states, "we want people to have
education, we want people to have homes, and
we want people to have opportunity." This
is immediately followed with a return to the
man explaining that he "does not agree with
Obama on everything, but he respects him and
trusts him."
Obama's campaign thus appears to be based on
making America feel good by telling nice
stories and using emotional language. Even
if you disagree with him, you should still
trust him.
The president's video clearly made at least
one intellectually honest liberal
cringe.
Jon Stewart, a staunch supporter of the
president, mocked the video's lack of
ideas. The comedian said he was thrilled
that Obama did not want to break up with the
voters despite "our poor record on
post-recession job creation" or "our
incessant demands to be talked to every time
we go to war." After watching the video,
Time Magazine's Swampland Blog could only
point out the
difficulty
of rallying the liberal base without a clear
enemy to attack as they did in 2008 with
George W. Bush. Giving someone a reason to
vote for you, it turns out, is far
more difficult than giving them a reason to
vote against someone else.
In complete contrast to the president, the
House GOP introduced a plan on Monday to cut
spending now and years to come. In their
video
introducing their budget proposal for next
year, they showed the stark difference
between conservatives and liberals.
While emotion served as the foundation for
the Obama video, Paul Ryan's video
emphasized the power of actual solutions
built upon strong ideals to provide a better
future for the country. The 2012 budget
from the GOP cuts spending by $6.2 trillion
over the next ten years in comparison to the
president's budget.
Without resorting to emotional pleas, the
congressman from Wisconsin starts by saying,
"The facts are very clear. The United
States is heading towards a debt crisis.
The only solutions will be truly painful for
us all, but that doesn't have to be our
future." In ten seconds the Republican
video already pinpointed the major issue of
our generation and said more than the entire
Obama ad. The next two minutes explain how
the conservative plan works and why it saves
the education, the homes, and the
opportunity that the woman from Obama's
video says she wants. The closest that Ryan
gets to an emotional ploy is when he
correctly states that not cutting spending
will hurt our children's future, something
that is fairly
obvious.
The Republican budget elevates the national
conversation above a futile debate over who
can pull America's heartstrings the most.
Ryan and the Republicans know, however, that
Democrats will try to lower the conversation
again. When asked on Sunday if the budget
would give their opponents the ability to
emotionally attack their plan, Ryan
replied,
"We are giving them a political weapon to go
against us, but they will have to lie and
demagogue to make that a political weapon."
Ryan's prediction will most likely prove
prophetic if the battle over just a few cuts
at the price of billions of dollars in the
2011 budget serves as any precursor to the
debate that will occur in 2012 when we
debate trillions of dollars. One Democratic
congresswoman claimed that budget cuts would
hurt
people
with HIV/AIDS. Another used the
tsunami
in Japan to attack the GOP. An
administration official said that the
Republicans wanted to kill
thousands
of children, and one famous liberal activist
has gone on a
hunger
strike to protest the "cruel" cuts. The
leader of the congressional Democrats, Nancy
Pelosi, said that the
elderly
would starve if the GOP gets its way. This
reaction comes from a cut of 66 billion
dollars from a 3.83 trillion dollar budget
that runs a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit.
Most of the "cuts" the Democrats point to
are not even cuts, but a continuation of
last year's funding levels to government
programs that would otherwise increase.
By raising the debate to revolve around
facts instead of feelings, conservatives
have seized the opportunity to create real
and lasting solutions that Americans will
listen to. Thoughtful and well-reasoned
solutions will trump emotion-laced rhetoric
and policies in the minds of the American
public. Even the man who once said he
thought Barack Obama would be a good
president because of the crease in his pants
is now
worried
about the Democrats demagoguing the
Republican budget.
Using numbers and facts, Congressman Ryan's
video ends with a choice "between two
futures": the "path we're on right now"
proposed by the president or "the other
path" that shrinks the scope of government
and fixes the nation's debt problem. In
other words, the nation will be given two
options in the upcoming election: the
liberal one that offers stories about
underdogs, hope, evil Republicans, using any
emotional codeword to convince Americans to
vote for Obama; and the conservative one
that treats Americans like adults, explains
the nation's problems, and offers solutions
to fix them without revolving the discussion
simply around how much to expand the
government.
While the latter choice might be harder to
make, it is up to conservatives to
understand the problems the nation faces and
the solutions we can realistically offer.
We must teach and explain to our neighbors
why it is so important to solve these
problems while we still can, and at the same
time show that the emotion-based public
policy of liberalism is not the legacy we
wish to leave behind. The president's
campaign slogan is "It begins with us." He
could not be more right.
Carl
Paulus
is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Rice
University and studies racism and politics
in the 19th-century
U.S.
Quote of the Day
"The most pathetic
person in the world is someone who has sight but
has no vision." Helen Keller
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