Back-to- Back GOP Debates

It probably was not wise to schedule a debate during an NFL playoff game or for early morning television. In fact, at this stage, it probably would be a good thing not to have debates at all. Basically, the conventional wisdom is that Willard withstood the attacks and therefore sort-of won. But even when he was allowed to coast he did himself no good. Polls for Romney in New Hampshire show him losing ground every day and yet he will win. The man simply doesn't wear well.

The winners of the debates are Jon Huntsman, even though I thought he was too accepting of some of the more problematic GOP points and may himself look like he was pandering more to the right than necessary. Ron Paul really doesn't like Santorum and lambasted him throughout. Newt occasionally attacked Willard but shied away like Tim Pawlenty.

One wag said that "if you gave Romney a haircut and an enema, there would be nothing left." Romney will provide Obama with trouble because he's the perfect Nowhere Man. He doesn't seem to really believe anything. His flip-flopping on issues only plays to Republican audiences and probably not in a general election. But the issue here ,as Steve Benen noted this week, is the issue of trust. If you don't know what Romney believes, how can you trust his judgment, let alone decide what his judgment is.

The debates yielded some great ideas. Rick Perry wants to re-invade Iraq. Romney wants to re-negotiate the SOFA on Iraq and return some troops there. Romney seemed genuinely baffled about whether states can outlaw birthcontrol, even though the Supreme Court ruled on this issue eons ago. Everyone wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. None of the candidates will accept a deal on 10 spending cuts for $1 in tax revenue. None as yet has mentioned anything about the eight years of George W. Bush. But at least Gingrich got in that Romney had been a greedy investor. And of course, Obama is evil and wants to bring European Socialism to the United States.

Now, I actually gave myself a mental break from all this nonsense. I even caught Talkingpointsmemo wanting to let their reporters go because of the job of live-blogging this nonsense. Instead I read William Gibson's Distrust that Particular Flavor ( Putnam, 2012), a book of essays by the creator of Cyberpunk Sci-Fi.

William Gibson is one of the greatest writers of my generation. It's hard to believe he is two years older than I am given the freshness of his prose. But reading Gibson brought a new dimension to the GOP debates. Gibson writes about the future in our present and extrapolates the affect of our new technologies on our lifestyles and how it modifies our perceptions. He has a superb essay on Levender Bush, the creator of today's military industrial complex and how omniscient he had been about the role of new forms of technology in terms of the growing power and knowledge of the state. He also writes an essay on his own Filmless Festival, talking about the digital "films" being created by the younger generation and their implication for how we view reality.

All this leads to is that no one on the stage last night or this morning has the vagueless clue or even idea about the future of this society. William Gibson writes about today's Japan, one of his favorite locales in his novels, and notes that even though economists talk about their lost decade they neglect to mention that Japan has assimilated all the new technologies into their lives and that, despite their economic woes of the last ten years, remain one of the strongest economies in the world. What's implicit is that we may be buying all the new toys but we have not mastered them and our technologies are not evenly distributed.

Gibson argues quite persuasively that technology drives change and the future. But if you represent a political party that disdains science and technology, how will you even begin to comprehend what's happening in the world?

The GOP debates drive me crazy because they keep flogging the dead horse. To whom is birth control even remotely relevant today as a controversial issue? Why do you really want to re-visit the issue of Iraq? Why again would you suggest reviving torture when thankfully it has been abandoned? Why would you argue incessently about the national debt when all GOP candidates like their predecessors would plunge us even more in debt?

Of course, there are political reasons for the GOP to consolidate their base. But almost all these are irrelevant to a real national debate about the future of this society. All of the essays y William Gibson have nuggets on the elements that will affect our future. None of them are recognized by the GOP candidates. Our Geek-in-Chief President Obama has alluded to many of these in various speeches he has made but which are rarely covered.

Do you remember Richard Nixon dancing that crazy jig in front of the space capsule with the returning astronauts? There was a time political candidates embraced the future and the rhetoric of the future. When did that leave our politics? For the Republicans,one can date it to President George H.W. Bush's disdain for that vision thing. Since the 1992 election, no GOP candidate has argued the case for the future. It has been twenty years or more since we heard a Republican even allude to the changes being made via the InterTubes (Senator Stevens) or the personal computer. None of the present candidates dare mention the United States as playing a potentially positive role in the Pacific, where the center of the world's economic gravity is moving. And the list goes on.

The slogan "Take America Back" was never used until President Obama was elected. But I am not so sure this is just a reaction to a black President being elected. It's a reflection that the GOP knows it is inadequate to handling the future reality of the country. Sure there is a racial component, an age component, and even an economic class component. But it is deeper and citizens should be deeply concerned.