Writing up the previous entry about New Zealand history and politics made me think of one of the most pertinent differences in the two country's politics, and that is that the U.S. has 290 million people and about 180 million potential voters, whereas New Zealand has 4 million people and about 2.7 million potential voters.
Politics in New Zealand still has an intimate, conversational, retail feeling to it. Your chances of meeting the Prime Minister, or more to the point for Helen Clark, her chances of meeting you, are much greater with those ratios of people to politicians.
The notion that this kind of politics is genuinely possible in United States presidential elections is insane. It is still [just] possible at the Senatorial level, but even there mass, impersonal and non-reciprocal forms of communication between politician and voter dominate (TV principally).
But at the presidential level it's well nigh on impossible. In a given year the President doesn't make it to many states, and within those states the President (whoever he is) makes it to select places -- generally the largest cities.
In other words, your chances of meeting the President and having a meaningful interaction with him are vanishingly small.
Yet, the campaigns place a lot of emphasis on selling the idea that their candidate is accessible and a regular guy, and able to relate to people like you. In both cases this is absurd. Bush and Kerry both hail from relatively elite East Coast origins, and their wealth (however gained) is towards the top of the distribution.
It is, I think, another example of how class-based voting patterns have broken down in the United States. It is also an example of how voters take a non-transactional approach to voting for President. I have no doubt that this interest in the personalities of the Presidents is real and genuine, if not universal; the media give the public what they want to some extent. If there was no interest in this stuff, we wouldn't get it printed or broadcast.
But an individual voters chances of evaluating the candidates personalities is so small; your chances of meeting them are limited, and the image you see of them on TV is to a large extent, a crafted public one.
Bush, for example, has a reputation as being a laid-back kind of guy. But then he makes all the men in the White House keep their suit jackets on. Kerry has been given a reputation as stiff and dull, but his quip about Bush losing his training wheels when Bush came off his mountain bike probably shows a sharp wit.
But again, how relevant is all this? It's the conceit of every age that we face important issues at the next election, but it might be true in 2004. And whether Kerry is a sharp wit, or Bush relaxed is largely irrelevant.
Whatever you think about the Swift Boat Veterans and whether John Kerry deserved his medals, whatever you think about George Bush's committed defence of Texas against Oklahoma in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, one thing is true.
All of this is much more relevant to being President than who your wife is and what she does; it's all much more relevant to being President than whether the President is a personally likeable guy who would be good to have a barbecue with.
Some people have tried to convince me that this emphasis on personability is all due to Clinton; after all Poppa Bush got elected and he was not Mr. Personality. As much as this is true, it is probably also true that the element of the presidency that is the monarch is reflected in the expectation of personality. A popularly supported monarch was not supported because of the office he held, but his personal qualities embodying the quality of the nation. Americans have the same expectations of the presidency.
Posted by robe0419 at August 23, 2004 9:20 PM