10 million reasons say Obama will continue to serve?

 

“When I got on to the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney.”

President Obama, Denver, 4th October.

 

This was President Obama’s review of events during last Wednesday’s presidential debate. For the last week or so the informed commentariat has been in its usual lather of excitement over both the debate and the then perceived slow drift of events the campaign towards the president.

But Governor Romney has surely halted the President’s bandwagon with a punchy performance whilst President Obama was uncharacteristically off message and inarticulate on air . He had we are now told rejected his own pre-debate plan at the last minute and went for something entirely different.

This being the case; this being an attempt to do something different; this being a live debate all one can say is this clearly a case of vive la difference …and poor tactics have revived the GOP spirits. How badly damaged the president’s campaign will be won’t show for a least three or four days and may still play against him for a week or more. given there are only 4 more weeks to secure 4 more years the President’s strategy isn’t without its risks.

No matter how well or badly you might have judged Mitt or Barak did – if you could be bothered to watch as sadly I did –  once the Media hakes-up its collective mind that becomes the received wisdom.

Like the famous judgment of Paris this is less a juridical process of  sifting evidence; more an expression of subjective self interest. After all it better serves the commercial interests of the Media to keep this race as close as possible as long as possible particularly as it enters its final phase when there will be an avalanche of specials and special reports and such to analyse the election.

Nevertheless this Media judgement – as we’ve seen this week over Mr Ed Milliband’s speech to the Labour Party Conference – sets the tone and that it turn pushes polling numbers around.

Early signs from the UK – though it is yet very early to measure- seem to show that Ed Milliband’s negative ratings have dropped and positives have risen. Everyone now accepts he’s a serious contender. Ed Milliband had already in fact had shown us two qualities that any successful politician must –  own unqualified personal ambition and a sense of pitching the tone of the public mood. The former skill he demonstrated in running for the top job and seizing the crown from his brother’s brow. The latter skill he has demonstrated repeatedly since the Murdoch affair led to Leveson; over banking and bankers; over tax-rate changes; & over the NHS.

Yet the Media has been cool towards the younger Milliband preferring to see him as the pygmy by comparison to his older brother David. That may or may not be fair on Ed but a fact shouldn’t be ignored simply because it is not convenient. And Ed clearly didn’t ignore the inconvenient fact and his speech was designed to face his critics down. He has done so and that wins him a second hearing in the court of public opinion. Mr Romney’s performance in the first debate has earned him the same retrial in the US. In both cases however, this may not in the end change the public’s initial judgement. Such is trial by Media – the modern equivalent of medieval trial by ordeal.

Churlishness in general and towards the Media in particular seldom serves to garner many plaudits either in print or on line in the blogo-sphere. We gurus are so wedded to the wisdom of our words we rarely have time to listen to those of others. And we like Cassandra must endure popular disdain –  casting our pearls of wisdom upon the winds.

Meanwhile the polling data from the USA has seen one after another of the closely contested toss-up states move gingerly into the Romney column: North Carolina Florida, Virginia & Ohio on Friday and, Colorado yesterday; Obama’s lead in Wisconsin dropping to a mere 2% –  validating at last Romney’s choice of Rep Paul Ryan as his VP. Still however, the Governor is short of votes in the Electoral College where the math remains stubbornly out of favour to the GOP as I’ve commented upon more than one occasion and upon whose arcania this election will be decided –  rather than by the total popular vote cast for each candidate.

But just as Governor Romney has bounced back he was hit by a powerful counter-punch. On Friday jobless figures fell for the first time in 4 years below the psychologically important 8% mark and the economy put on 118,000 new jobs last month with another 100,000 jobs being added by revisions to the poor June, July and August figures. Ever restrained Rep Ryan has accused the administration of fiddling the figures and the Governor has strayed dangerously near to calling the President a liar.

Meanwhile the President is now making much of the fact that Governor Romney said one thing in the TV debate and entirely another thing on the stump and at the GOP convention. And it is clear that Obama will not allow Romney another easy pass in the second debate scheduled for next week. In the meantime we will have Vice President Biden and Rep Paul Ryan to entertain us this Wednesday. The GOP has high hopes for Ryan but Biden – like our own beloved John Prescott – may not always speak clearly but often manages to get his punch in first. That often means more in TV debate than words alone may mean.

Whatever the result of the classroom debates the electoral math remains unchanged. It leans in Obama’s favour. moreover, the President may well come out fighting in the next TV debate which is in the so called town-Hall format in which like Bill Clinton the President’s easy going manner shines to best effect. This is far from over. And if Obama scores a few direct hits on the old ground of Romney’s shuffling opinions Obama may well yet hit the famous home run or two that will undo the damage dealt to him last week.

This US election has been a battle of facts –  whether it is about abortion; or a woman’s right to choose; gay marriage or minority rights; special interests or freedom of speech; health care or Obamacare and on down the list of subjects from education to the environment –  where statistics are used to misrepresent the arguments of one side or the other. And the Super Pacs with their deep pockets filled with lobbyist cash make for Super facts – a half-truths or entire fictions that repetition allows to pass for a fact.

This corruption of evidence only reinforces the extent to which money has corrupted the politics and the political class. The saturation of the airwaves with a barrage of misinformation passing itself off as analysis has turned news channels into channels opinion masquerading as news. It is little wonder the electorate is punch drunk with politics.

In politics facts are meant to provide the basis for dialogue. In practice facts are used rhetorically to trump an opponent’s figures. Empirical facts and their sets and relationships one to another were intended to provide a basis against which to measure argument. But the science of statistics has afforded polemicists with an arsenal of rhetorical weapons to wield in a war of words. Scantily clad as facts, lies are used by belligerents as a means of softening-up public opinion.

This sordid business is what these days passes for a battle of ideas. Statistics are routinely debased to mean what the proponent of a particular cause wishes them to mean. This pseudo-science distorts truth. Its poisons philosophical discourse. It substitutes for argument. It has parlayed scholarship for academic celebrity. It taints science with polemic. It is a by-product of the market-led philosophy that has willy-nilly has over-run our societies and – to quote the ever quotable Oscar Wilde –  knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

A political culture that distracts the polis from its civic duties with debates over which colour of spade is used to dig the ditch substitutes the soft choices of consumerism for real choices over political values. An individual continuously presented with an endless catalogue of the trivial choices eventually becomes indifferent. An electorate continuously distracted by triviality becomes indifferent to civic discourse.

One final fact which may be of particular interest. Ten million is the number of individual donors to president Obama’s re-election campaign. The Obama campaign has announced that it raised the eye-popping sum of $181 million in September alone. This is the largest monthly haul of either campaign this year. A total of 1.8 million people donated, so the average donation was $100.

Romney’s campaign has not released its total for September yet, but observers expect it to be lower. The Republicans have more money. Their superPACS have raised much more than the Democratic ones. But the campaigns actually get a lower advertising rate from television stations than others do, so an Obama campaign dollar is worth more than a Romney superPAC dollar – and vice-versa. Moreover, the campaigns retain greater control of advertising content when spending their own money.

 

For example, a campaign might decide that spending money on the get-out-the-vote operation is more important than advertising. It is against the law for the campaign to tell for example a SuperPAC to follow their campaign priority (although proving there was coordination would probably prove to be virtually impossible).

Nevertheless the 10 million donations means that whatever the flaws of his campaign and the failures of his administration the President has successfully tapped into a major source of campaign funding twice in succession. This simple fact may in fact turn out to be the decisive one in the long running battle over facts and figures; truths and lies that has long disfigured American political discourse – as it  indeed poisoned our own.