It has been said that politics is war — but most of us don’t really
believe that. Yet in 1992, at least one group of people did believe it.
And because they believed it, they acted upon it. They leveled their
cannon at George Bush Sr. and fired, quite literally blowing him out of
the water in a Clinton landslide. Even the aftershock four years later
was enough to swamp the genteel candidacy of Bob Dole. While the waves
have died down with the impending departure of Bill Clinton, much of
America’s cultural landscape remains littered with the debris washed up
on its beaches following the first explosion.
Conservatives and Republicans scoffed at Bill Clinton’s 1992 election
campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Because they scoffed at the
idea, they failed to counter it. America was listening for response —
but none was given. One person who was listening, however, got the
message loud and clear. What the opposition viewed as a silly campaign
statement had traveled under the radar of millions of voters and been
accepted as a guiding principle: the debate was about the economy.
Everything else was incidental; the opposition’s plans and promises
irrelevant. The election was about the economy. Only one candidate was
addressing it: soon-to-be President Bill Clinton.
It looked like a smooth ride to the White House when suddenly the
economy crawled into the back seat, and the women and the shady
financial dealings surrounding the Clintons seemed to be driving. A new
phrase was crafted and wheeled out of the campaign bus: “Character
doesn’t matter.” The author held his breath and waited for the
opposition’s depth charge to blow the bus out of the water. All he heard
was silence. America waited for a reply to something it couldn’t quite
believe — but the opposition moved on without responding.
But as one person on that campaign bus knew — the America that moved
on was no longer the same country. What that person perhaps didn’t know
was that during the next eight years, millions of Americans would apply
their newfound principles to their personal lives, teach them to their
children, and choose their wives, husbands, and jobs accordingly: The
almighty dollar ruled, and how you got it didn’t matter.
That person on the bus had applied something he had learned a long
time ago. We live in an adversarial society. Americans are busy living
their lives; they rely upon opposing ideological armies to dig up the
facts and serve them up on a silver media platter. In an adversarial
environment, silence is consent. Thus the opposition had consented to
limit the campaign debate to the economy, and had agreed that the
character of the man who would step into the Oval Office didn’t matter.
Because of the way the human mind works, it was a debate Republicans
could no longer win. Our minds “buy” certain principles. In “buying”
some, we reject others. Thereafter, the world that we see, we see
through the principles we have bought. Like blinders on a busy horse,
our principles shield us from views that just don’t fit in. Thus before
America “bought” Bill Clinton, we bought two new principles. The debate
was about the economy, and everything else was extraneous; and the
character and integrity of a candidate’s personal life didn’t matter, as
long as he would deal with the economy. When the Republicans failed to
respond immediately, they lost the battle, and today they stand in
danger of losing the war.
It should surprise no one that once Americans bought Bill Clinton’s
new campaign principles, we were eager to try them out in our own
personal lives, and the lives of our families, our friendships, and our
workplace. After all, we live in accordance with the principles we have
bought and paid for. And so in the midst of yet another outgrowth of
living according to our newfound principles, America saw Bill Clinton on
trial in the Senate for impeachment. It was, after all, Bill Clinton’s
principles we had bought; little wonder that he was at the forefront of
the difficulties to emerge in the lives of those who live by them. He
had a head start on us, but he also had one more principle that he
hadn’t yet sold us: “It’s time to move on.”
Conservatives and Republicans have been quick to blame the media for
shutting out the evidence of Bill Clinton’s wrongdoing. What we failed
to understand was that the media mind is even more attuned to the
adversarial system than the public mind. When no opposition emerged to
the new principle — that it was time to move on from the impeachment
proceedings, even before the evidence had been presented — the media
“bought” it. The scandals disappeared from public view. What the
opposition saw as yet another silly slogan, the media and the public
bought as uncontested truth. They acted upon what they believed — what
we who disagreed had in fact assented to by our silence. We could have
made the principle real to millions of women by asking if the same
principle applied to men who fathered children and then decided it was
“time to move on.” We didn’t. And although we didn’t buy the principle
ourselves; we assented in public, letting the world believe that we,
too, lived our lives that way. What we saw as silly slogans — unworthy
of debate — were in fact stealth arrows shot by someone willing to
destroy the heart of America, to gratify his lust for power. Guard your
heart, America.
