Proving Obama’s Point

For those who had the misfortune of watching the ABC debate tonight, you got to see everything that is wrong with politics today.

The first 51 minutes of a 90 minute debate – yes, more than half – was focused on absolutely substance-free gotcha questions about flag pins, some Weather Underground guy (hand delivered by Sean Hannity), Bosnia, Bittergate and Reverend Wright. And then when the substantive part of the debate began, the questions dealt with gun control, affirmative action, the capital gains tax and a few other side issues. One minute was spent on gas prices.

The Iraq question was posed as a gotcha question: would you override the generals? And the Iran question was framed in some inflammatory manner too.

No questions on health care. No questions on energy (other than a brief exchange on gas prices). No questions on education. No questions on FISA or torture (even though lots of constitutional references mysteriously floated through the air in commercial breaks). No questions on the environment. Nothing on trade. And no question on jobs and the recession.

You think Pennsylvania voters might have wanted to hear about jobs and the economy? Or do they really care only about God, guns and the American flag? I think it’s the former.

The whole debate reeked of Karl Rove-Lee Atwater wedge politics, with absolutely no substance. It exemplified what Barack Obama calls the “politics of the past.” Both candidates came in for the absurdities, but Obama took the vast majority of it. I’m sure some will say that’s the price of being the front runner. Maybe it’s all just theater. But it was a revelation of just how broken our political system is.

I think the pundit commentary is caught too.

The smarter ones – Chuck Todd, Andrew Sullivan, Marc Ambinder – recognized the political atrocity of this debate. But even they can’t free themselves from the old paradigms and so must argue about who was more “ashen” or on the defensive. If I were Barack Obama I would have gotten off the dais and punched Charlie Gibson in the face. That Obama didn’t assault him shows remarkable cool in my opinion.

But I guess we’ll all pass it off and say, “Hey, the Republicans will throw this at him and we need to see if he can take it.” And that’s the saddest statement of all. We’re resigned to this.

What the debate proved, more than anything else, was the urgency of changing our politics. Barack Obama has faced withering questions about a variety of associations and statements that bear little or nothing on his character, judgment or certainly his policies. And, it must be mentioned, Hillary Clinton did all she could to capitalize on this sleazefest, even though she’s faced this for 15 years. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander I suppose. She’s proving Obama’s point about what’s wrong with our politics.

So how do we get beyond this politics?

The only way is through mockery. The pundits need to be mocked the way Stephen Colbert mocks them. They need to be shamed the way Jon Stewart shamed Crossfire. The dripping condescension from the elite media needs to be called out and thrashed, both here in the blogosphere and by politicians themselves.

But most of all, voters must see through this garbage and vote on issues and real character, not on gotcha tabloid stuff. This isn’t 1988, thankfully.

Let’s bracket off the 1968-2004 years and move in a new and substantive direction with our politics.