Voices
presidency—or the pursuit of it—
that attacks the character of men
and women under its spell?
I ask because this has not been
an uplifting, inspirational campaign year—unlike, say, 1984,
when the voters genuinely agreed
with President Ronald Reagan
that it was “morning in America
again”; or 2008, when Obama’s
victory was an epic affirmation of
the ideal, if not always the reality,
of racial justice in America.
Not this year. It has been a joyless slog of accusations and recriminations in a dreary time,
when not enough is going as we
had hoped, but voters are wary
of alternatives and disdainful of
politics itself.
The 2012 combatants claimed
to have cared about big ideas, but
really didn’t; claimed to have traveled the high road, but mostly
worked the down low; claimed to
be talking about the future when
they were mostly arguing about
the past. This was supposed to be
about letting the people speak, but
often seemed like a top-down propaganda war among behemoth billionaires, their “independent” TV
ads, social media and brute cash.
As for honesty, there is no
false equivalency. The president
HOWARD
FINEMAN
HUFFINGTON
11.04.12
trimmed, but Mitt was by far the
more mendacious of the two. Once
a moderate governor, he claimed
this year in the GOP primaries to
have been a “severely conservative” one. Then, in the national
debates against the president,
Romney tried to tack to port again.
The ideological twists required
him to become (or reveal himself
as) a guy with no compunction
about ignoring—or
rewriting—the facts
of his political and
This was
business career,
supposed to be
whether it was what
about letting
he did and did not
the people
support as governor;
speak, but
what he did and did
often seemed
not do at Bain; and
like a top-down
what he had or had
propaganda
not said in public.
war among
The president is
behemoth
hardly blameless in
billionaires.”
this dismal season.
He ran on fear, not
hope; he ran essentially without a new agenda and
spent most of his time and campaign dollars in a vicious—and
ultimately unsuccessful—attempt
to make Romney out to be a Mephistophelian combination of
Gordon Gecko, Daddy Warbucks,
Donald Trump and the man in