Washington Post: Our System Selects Tyrants, So What?

[mifune]

I had a jaw-on-the-floor moment today as I was reading this article (http(colon)(slash)(slash)www(dot)washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/25/AR2007122501199.html?hpid=topnews) from the Washington Post:

They have become a useful, though very tricky, class of images in this roller-coaster ride of a presidential campaign. Call them the "hangdog" candidate photographs: They capture the politician with eyes downcast, looking tired, stressed. When the headline is about poll numbers dropping, fundraising tanking or verbal gaffes from soon-to-be-cashiered campaign advisers, the hangdog candidate image is sure to make its appearance.

No matter that the candidate is saying he or she isn't concerned about the bad news. No matter that they're still smiling, they still feel confident, they can still point to positive poll numbers in this state or that. The grim-faced photograph confirms the suggestion, in the story it illustrates, that the campaign is imploding.

Given how many ups and downs there have been in the race so far, most candidates have been subject, at one point or another, to seeing themselves look like losers. The popular Drudge Report Web site recently ran a particularly notorious picture of Hillary Clinton, showing her face riven with deep furrows and wrinkles. She looked so awful that even some conservative commentators noted the unfairness of using such a manifestly unflattering image.

But the hangdog photograph isn't just unflattering. It is distinct from photographs that show the candidate looking out of the corner of his or her eyes, in a way that suggests shiftiness. It is distinct from the image of the candidate bored senseless, chin on hand, eyes unfocused. It is distinct from photographs that underscore some perceived character flaw -- vanity, laziness, lack of discipline -- through some iconic gesture or pose (hair combing, slouching, sloppiness). The hangdog image conveys a single, tight visual message: fatigue, sadness, impotence.

When the news is about your son actually hanging a dog -- one of the stranger moments of Mike Huckabee's campaign, which struggled with the rehash of an old story about the Arkansas governor's number one son killing a dog when he was a camp counselor in 1998 -- there isn't necessarily any need for the standard hangdog image. Because when you're riding an updraft of polling numbers, minor details like your son's torturing and killing of man's best friend don't lead to images of fatigue, sadness and impotence. A little sweat on the brow, perhaps.
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Watching this year's extraordinarily competitive campaign reminds one again how much the process of choosing a president parallels the process whereby the ancient Romans received new emperors. One major qualification for the job is how well the candidate stands up to the long and public bloodbath that narrows the field. Weakness is fatal. You may end up with a perfect tyrant running the joint, but at least you can be certain he's a survivor. Emperors and presidents should not be subject to fatigue, sadness or impotence.

The hangdog candidate photograph is a weapon in the war of attrition. They are easily gathered, because no politician can be completely upbeat every day of every week for two years of solid campaigning. All it takes is one tired moment, one puffy-eyed, early-morning, haven't-had-the-coffee-yet photograph, and the image is in the arsenal. Even better is if the candidate lets down his or her guard momentarily in the presence of another candidate, so that, say, Barack Obama can be seen looking happy and confident as Hillary Clinton looks tired and depressed in the same frame.

In the partisan media (much of the blogosphere, the tabloids and several cable channels), these images are used freely and gleefully. In media that strive for objectivity, the hangdog shot raises difficult issues. In an earlier age of newspapering, sorting through the archives for an image that confirmed your headline was acceptable practice. Today, serious newspapers try to use images from the most recent campaign events rather than something a few months old, even if it fits the story line better. But it's difficult to make a solid rule of relying on the most recent images, especially if the recent images are wildly dissonant with that story line. "Candidate's Mother Dies" obviously can't be illustrated with a beaming picture of the politician taken just before he or she got the bad news, not without sending an unintended message about his or her character.

The hangdog image -- and its opposite, the smiling, confident, top-dog image -- also suggests a seamlessness between the news of the campaign trail and the candidate's emotional state. In many ways, it reduces politicians to cartoons who seem to be dancing mindlessly to the tune of the polls, now frowning and moping, now giddy and upbeat. It also suggests that the media play an intimate role in this dance, piping the tune. In fact, the one thing the media almost never gain access to is the real emotional life of politicians, and when newspapers or magazines or television suggest otherwise, they run the risk of seeming self-aggrandizing.

And yet, the hangdog image is almost irresistible. All the hard-edged questioning in the world, all the grilling at news conferences and televised debates may fail to knock the candidate off message. But a single image of a sad, powerless, depressed politician is enough to break through the kabuki makeup and get at the Shakespearean psychic meltdown that is supposedly just underneath the surface. Which, through the miracle of the short attention span, disappears just as soon as the poll numbers go up again.

The author is basically saying, "Yeah, this process selects tyrants/psychopaths, so what?"

Further reinforcing the famous quote, "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -- Douglas Adams

 

[Laura]

Yup, looking for psychopaths. I wrote in another thread some time ago:

After thinking about so-called democracy for some time, I have come to the realization that the whole "election process" is a big sham. It's all based on "electability." Consider what Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book "Blink."

The Warren Harding Error: Why We Fall For Tall, Dark, and Handsome Men

Early one morning in 1899, in the back garden of the Globe
Hotel in Richwood, Ohio, two men met while having their
shoes shined. One was a lawyer and lobbyist from the state
capital of Columbus. His name was Harry Daugherty. He
was a thick-set, red-faced man with straight black hair, and
he was brilliant. He was the Machiavelli of Ohio politics, the
classic behind-the-scenes fixer, a shrewd and insightful
judge of character or, at least, political opportunity. The
second man was a newspaper editor from the small town of
Marion, Ohio, who was at that moment a week away from
winning election to the Ohio state senate. His name was
Warren Harding. Daugherty looked over at Harding and was
instantly overwhelmed by what he saw. As the journalist
Mark Sullivan wrote, of that moment in the garden:

Harding was worth looking at. He was at the time about
35 years old. His head, features, shoulders and torso had
a size that attracted attention; their proportions to each other
made an effect which in any male at any place would justify
more than the term handsome - in later years when he came
to be known beyond the local world, the word "Roman" was
occasionally used in description of him. As he stepped down
from the stand, his legs bore out the striking and agreeable
proportions of his body; and his lightness on his feet, his erectness,
his easy bearing, added to the impression of physical grace and
virility. His suppleness combined with his bigness of frame, and
his large, wide-set, rather glowing, eyes, heavy black hair and
rather markedly bronzed complexions gave him some of the
handsomeness of an Indian. His courtesy as he surrendered his
seat to the other customer suggested genuine friendliness toward
all mankind. His voice was noticeably resonant, masculine, warm.
His pleasure in the attention of the bootblack's whisk reflected a
consciousness about clothes unusual in a small-town man. His
manner as he bestowed a tip suggested generous good-nature,
a wish to give pleasure, based on physical well-being and sincere
kindliness of heart.

In that instant, as Daugherty sized up Harding, an idea came
to him that would alter American history: Wouldn't that man
make a great President?

Warren Harding was not a particularly intelligent man. He
liked to play poker and golf and to drink and, most of all, to
chase women; in fact, his sexual appetites were the stuff of
legend. As he rose from one political office to another, he
never once distinguished himself. He was vague and
ambivalent on matters of policy. His speeches were once
described as "an army of pompous phrases moving
over the landscape in search of an idea." After being
elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914, he was absent for the de-
bates on women's suffrage and Prohibition - two of the
biggest political issues of his time. He advanced steadily
from local Ohio politics only because he was pushed by his
wife, Florence, and stage-managed by the scheming Harry
Daugherty and because, as he grew older, he grew more
and more irresistibly distinguished-looking. Once, at a
banquet, a supporter cried out, "Why, the son of a bitch
looks like a senator," and so he did. By early middle age,
Harding's biographer Francis Russell writes, his "lusty
black eyebrows contrasted with his steel-gray hair to give
the effect of force, his massive shoulders and bronzed com-
plexion gave the effect of health." Harding, according to
Russell, could have put on a toga and stepped onstage in a
production of Julius Caesar. Daugherty arranged for Hard-
ing to address the 1916 Republican presidential convention
because he knew that people only had to see Harding and
hear that magnificent rumbling voice to be convinced of
his worthiness for higher office. In 1920, Daugherty
convinced Harding, against Harding's better judgment, to
run for the White House. Daugherty wasn't being facetious.
He was serious.

"Daugherty, ever since the two had met, had carried in
the back of his mind the idea that Harding would make a
`great President,' Sullivan writes. "Sometimes, uncon-
sciously, Daugherty expressed it, with more fidelity to
exactness, `a great-looking President." Harding entered the
Republican convention that summer sixth among a field of
six. Daugherty was unconcerned. The convention was
deadlocked between the two leading candidates, so,
Daugherty predicted, the delegates would be forced to
look for an alternative. To whom else would they turn, in
that desperate moment, if not to the man who radiated
common sense and dignity and all that was presidential?

In the early morning hours, as they gathered in the smoke-
filled back rooms of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, the
Republican Party bosses threw up their hands and asked,
wasn't there a candidate they could all agree on? And one
name came immediately to mind: Harding! Didn't he look
just like a presidential candidate? So Senator Harding be-
came candidate Harding, and later that fall, after a cam-
paign conducted from his front porch in Marion, Ohio,
candidate Harding became President Harding. Harding
served two years before dying unexpectedly of a stroke.
He was, most historians agree, one of the worst presidents
in American history.

At age 57, Harding died from a heart attack in San Francisco, California. He was 29 months into his term and the sixth U.S. president to die in office.

Harding is often ranked as one of the least successful U.S. presidents, despite his immense popularity while in office. Indeed, Harding himself is quoted as saying "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here."

This typifies the election process: a show run by careful choreographers, put out by the media.

So, of course, to fix what is wrong with democracy, the media would first have to be dealt with.

I think that all public media should be publicly owned and overseen by public commissions that are not in any way related to politics - neither elected nor appointed, but selected by random lottery from pools of qualified citizens. Only in this way can we guarantee to ourselves the support that is needed to accomplish everything else that must be done to clean up the mess that Ruthless, Greedy Men have made of our planet.

Once I thought about that, I realized that this was also the perfect solution for government: pools of individuals that have been vetted as psychologically healthy, from every profession, selected by lottery to serve specified terms - like 5 to 7 years - and provided with standard housing and reasonable salaries while serving in government.

All lobbying should be outlawed. Any issue under consideration should be turned over to a committee of researchers that are experts in the field and who work in conjunction with a panel of citizens selected as described above: from a pool of candidates, and preferably from the various professions that might be impacted by the subject at hand.

Serving in government should not be, in any way, rewarded by accrual of power and money, it should, instead, be rewarded by honor and esteem. In this way, it would attract an entirely different kind of person.

Anyway, those are just some of my imperfectly formed thoughts about democracy and how it COULD work.

 

[Laura]

A bit more on Harding's untimely death from Wikipedia:

In June 1923, Harding set out on a cross-country "Voyage of Understanding," planning to meet ordinary people and explain his policies. During this trip, he became the first president to visit Alaska.[5] Rumors of corruption in his administration were beginning to circulate in Washington by this time, and Harding was profoundly shocked by a long message he received while in Alaska, apparently detailing illegal activities previously unknown to him. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska through British Columbia, he developed what was thought to be a severe case of food poisoning. He gave the final speech of his life to a large crowd at the University of Washington Stadium (now Husky Stadium) at the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. He then took the train south. Arriving at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, he developed pneumonia. Harding died of either a heart attack or a stroke at 7:35 p.m. on August 2, 1923. The formal announcement, printed in the New York Times of that day, stated that "A stroke of apoplexy was the cause of death." He had been ill exactly one week.[6]

Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a heart attack; however, this diagnosis was not made by Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, the Surgeon General, who was traveling with the presidential party. Mrs. Harding refused permission for an autopsy, which soon led to speculation that the President had been the victim of a plot, possibly carried out by his wife. Gaston B. Means, an amateur historian and gadfly, noted in his book The Strange Death of President Harding (1930) that the circumstances surrounding his death lent themselves to some suspecting he had been poisoned. Several individuals attached to him, personally, and politically, would have welcomed Harding's death, as they would have been disgraced in association by Means' assertion of Harding's "imminent impeachment". Although Means was later discredited for publically accusing Mrs. Harding of the murder, enough doubts surround the President's death to keep reputable scholars open to the possibility of murder.

[...]

The extent to which Harding engaged in extra-marital affairs is somewhat controversial. It has been recorded in primary documents that Harding had an affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips; Nan Britton wrote The President's Daughter in 1927, documenting her affair and the alleged child (Elizabeth Ann) with Harding.

Rumors of the Harding love letters circulated through Marion, Ohio, for many years. However, their existence was not confirmed until 1968, when author Francis Russell gained access to them during his research for his book, The Shadow of Blooming Grove. The letters were in the possession of Phillips. Phillips kept the letters in a box in a closet and was reluctant to share them. Russell persuaded her to relent, and the letters showed conclusively that Harding had a 15-year relationship with Mrs. Phillips, who was then the wife of his friend James Phillips, owner of the local department store, the Uhler-Phillips Company. Mrs. Phillips was almost eight years younger than Harding. By 1915, she began pressing Harding to leave his wife. When he refused, she left her husband and moved to Berlin with her daughter Isabel. However, as the United States became increasingly likely to be drawn into World War I, Mrs. Phillips moved back to the U.S. and the affair reignited. Harding was now a U.S. senator, and a vote was coming up on a declaration of war against Germany.[citation needed]

Mrs. Phillips threatened to go public with their affair if the Senator supported the war, but Harding defied her and voted for war, and Phillips did not reveal the scandal to the world. When Harding won the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, he did not disclose the relationship to party officials. Once they learned of the affair, it was too late to find another nominee. To reduce the likelihood of a scandal breaking, the Republican National Committee sent Phillips and her family on a trip to Japan and paid them over $50,000.[citation needed] She also received monthly payments thereafter, becoming the first and only person known to have successfully extorted money from a major political party.

The letters Harding wrote to Mrs. Phillips were confiscated at the request of the Harding heirs, who requested and received a court injunction prohibiting their inclusion in Russell's book. Russell in turn left quoted passages from the letters as blank passages in protest against the Harding heirs' actions. The Harding-Phillips love letters remain under an Ohio court protective order that expires in 2023, 100 years after Harding's death, after which the content of the letters may be published or reviewed.

 

[mifune]

What I'm seeing though, is that although Harding was hand-picked, groomed, and choreographed all the way to the Presidency, he was not a member of the "in" crowd. He was neither a psychopath nor a wannabe... rather, he was quite possibly the victim of a crowd of such people, named the Ohio Gang.

The Ohio Gang were a group of politicians and industry leaders who came to be associated with Warren G. Harding, a President of the United States of America. Harry M. Daugherty, Albert B. Fall, and Secretary of the Navy, Edwin C. Denby, were considered to have been responsible for acts of corruption and cronyism. The resulting scandals are considered to have led to the suicide of one associate, and the jailing of Fall.

The term "The Ohio Gang" was used as the title of a 1981 book by Charles Mee Jr.'s based upon the scandals.

I found a very interesting connection here:

Warren G. Harding was not, directly, personally or otherwise, aware of the scandal. At the time of his death in 1923 he was just beginning to learn of problems deriving from the actions of his appointee when he undertook his Voyage of Understanding tour of the United States in the summer of 1923, (also visiting British Columbia, Canada). Largely as a result of the Teapot Dome scandal, Harding’s administration has been remembered in history as one of the most corrupt to occupy the White House. Harding may not have acted inappropriately with regard to Teapot Dome, but he appointed people who did. This has resulted in Harding's name being forever linked to the infamous (and misnamed) Ohio Gang. It was revealed in 1923 that the FBI (then named the Bureau of Investigation) monitored the offices of members of Congress who had exposed the Teapot Dome scandal, including breaking in and wiretapping. When the agency's actions were revealed, there was a shakeup at the Bureau of Investigation, resulting in the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover, who would lead for 48 years as Director.

The action that was supposed to clean up the Bureau of Investigation only made it more corrupt.

 

[Guest]

I like your ideas on democracy, laura.

Saying that "anyone can run for office" has obviously proven WAYYY too idealistic.
I wish the field of psychology had started sooner, we could have curtailed psychopathy more easily.

People who run for office should have to go through RIGOROUS testing, and the government should be made up of a panel of strict credentials, with methods to keep manipulated elitism in check, of course.

 

[PepperFritz]

People who run for office should have to go through RIGOROUS testing, and the government should be made up of a panel of strict credentials, with methods to keep manipulated elitism in check, of course.

Ah, but in a third-density STS world, someone, or some group of individuals, are always going to scheme and manipulate to gain CONTROL of the process, and self-interested, money and power-hungry psychopaths will ALWAYS find a way of being the ultimate puppet-masters at the top of the food chain -- as long as self-interest, money, and power continue to be so highly VALUED and COVETED.

As George Carlin so eloquently expresses it in the YouTube link below, politicians are a reflection of the society that elects them. Only if human VALUES were to radically change towards an STO orientation, would third-density Earth governments no longer be such a fertile breeding ground for psychopaths. As Carlin points out, our politicians don't just fall from the sky, they are a product of their environment.



George Carlin on YouTube, on voting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u6lCBnRoHQ