[Vision2020] Pizzas and Pessimism

[Art Deco]

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October 29, 2011
Pizzas and Pessimism
By FRANK BRUNI
BEING surprised by something nutty from Herman Cain's presidential campaign is like balking at an autopsy in a "CSI" episode: certain things go with the territory. Still, you had to pause and peel your jaw off the ground after watching an Internet ad for Cain that prompted considerable conversation last week. 

In it Cain's chief of staff, who comes across mostly as an untidy salt-and-pepper mustache with a rumpled politico attached, delivers the needless reminder that Cain has "run a campaign like nobody's ever seen." To prove the point he glowers meaningfully at the camera while sucking manfully on a cigarette. Alligators as border-patrol agents and nicotine for all: that's the Cain agenda. The candidate appears in close-up at the end of the commercial, flashing a grin that's two parts demented to one part demonic. Were there a thought bubble attached, it would say, "In my wildest dreams I never thought you people would actually buy this pizza." 

Meanwhile Rick Perry, who would trade his five best pairs of custom-made cowboy boots for just one of Cain's percentage points in the polls, tried to steal the dubious thunder of the Herminator's 9-9-9 tax hallucination by announcing an either-or, multiple-choice tax phantasm of his own. It would compel you to hire an accountant to figure out whether you're best served by the existing code or by a 20 percent flat tax designed to spare you the accountant. If you go the 20 percent route, Perry said, you can file your returns on a postcard. I think he should add a deduction for taxpayers whose postcards promote national pride. I'll pick one with the Statue of Liberty. You can do Mount Rushmore or the Washington Monument. 

In the midst of all this, two attention-commanding sets of numbers were released. One, from the Congressional Budget Office, confirmed an increasingly uneven distribution of wealth in this country, noting that the inflation-adjusted incomes of the most affluent Americans had grown much, much faster over the last three decades than the incomes of the middle class. The other, from a New York Times/CBS News poll, showed that 74 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track and 89 percent do not trust that government will do the right thing. 

That's a chilling and extraordinary pessimism, grafted onto a 9.1 percent unemployment rate and projections of a grim economy for some time to come. And it makes the kookiness of the Republican primaries all the more disquieting. As the (later disputed) story goes, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Cain's chief of staff smokes while the citizenry smolders. 

The disconnect between the seriousness of our angst and the silliness of our politics - between how big our problems are and how hopeless or just plain stuck the people who are supposed to address them seem - defies belief. Right now the system isn't working, and a recognition of that is one of the ties that bind Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. They don't identify the same villains or promote the same solutions. But they're flowers of a shared frustration. 

And neither movement is a marginal, renegade phenomenon. A recent Time magazine poll found that 54 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Occupy Wall Street, while 27 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party. Even assuming some overlap, that translates into a great many people supportive of movements railing against the status quo. These Americans have lost faith in business as usual and government as usual. Small wonder, then, that the Times/CBS poll showed an approval rating for Congress now at 9 percent. Nine percent. I bet a higher percentage of Americans believe that Elvis and Michael Jackson are still alive and honeymooning on Lake Como after a wedding - to each other - in upstate New York. 

REGARD for Congress isn't likely to rise over the 12 months until the election, given that Republicans and Democrats have largely slipped into campaign mode. For a while, over the summer, President Obama seemed to resist that, and came across as cool-headed and big-minded, his desire to legislate keener than his itch to agitate. But his newly frequent trips outside Washington and newly fiery rhetoric suggest that he has partly given up. In terms of real progress on jobs creation, infrastructure and other matters central to our economic predicament, we could be looking at a solid year of nothingness, and therein lies another of the moment's disconnects. Our need is urgent, but the possibility that it will be meaningfully addressed is remote. 

The Congressional supercommittee charged with whittling down the national debt will hold a public hearing Tuesday. The heart beats faster. Already there are reports of a Democratic insistence on significant new taxes and a Republican opposition to same, which basically brings us back to where Obama and John Boehner left off. We're looking at an interminable November. 

At least we'll have the Republican presidential candidates to marvel at. And Perry had a marvelous week, in the strict sense of the word. He revived questions about Obama's birth certificate. He also blamed his wretched debate performances on formats that denied candidates adequate time to "lay out your ideas and concepts." 

Was it your impression that all he needed was a few more acres of oratorical stamping grounds and eloquence would be his? It was my impression that short-form or long-, Perry is to oratory what Weird Al Yankovic is to balladry. Only the humor isn't intentional. 

Elsewhere in the Republican field, Jon Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, told a Chinese-food joke of questionable taste; Michele Bachmann started peddling Bachmann-campaign fleeces in exchange for $75 donations; and the Cain campaign announced that even without promises of commemorative clothing, it had raised $3 million this month. Cain was in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney, according to the Times/CBS News poll. 

Some observers say that the absurdity of that is indeed a mirror of our distress - that Americans are grasping at simplistic straws. But Cain's support won't last or turn out to have been all that meaningful. The poll's more consequential findings were that 6 in 10 Republican primary voters weren't paying close attention yet and 8 in 10 said it was too early to decide on a candidate. 

What worries me isn't the Cain surge or the Bachmann boomlet before it, but the likelihood that when Americans do focus, more and more will see nothing hopeful happening and a motley crew of politicians who are merely blowing smoke. 

What happens then? 




__________________________________
Wayne A. Fox
wayne.a.fox at gmail.com
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