Jon Stewart’s final episode of The Daily Show closed with a meditation on “bullshit”: The methods politicians and corporations use to conceal reality and further their own interests against the interests of the public. He struck a hopeful note, noting that the bullshitters have gotten lazier, making the lies easier to spot, and called vigilance “the best defense against bullshit.”
But the Republican Presidential primary debate that took place minutes earlier undercut his argument. Even friendly conservative assessments of the debate accepted it as a given that the whole thing was theater, that policy would have no role in this election. Candidates were mostly eager to take up space, to project confidence and hatred of the things conservatives are supposed to hate right now (Iran, taxes, abortion), and to never ever answer a question about what exactly they would do as president.
The candidates got away with talking about Iran and Iraq sans substance. All agreed the Iran deal was bad, because Obama wasn’t tough enough, and that they’d be tougher, turn down the bad deal, and get a better deal. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s only proposals for dealing with ISIS in Iraq were to stop the Iran nuclear deal and to “take out ISIS with every tool at our disposal.”
One of the most common responses to a question about how a candidate would fix a specific problem was to spend the allotted time restating the problem and how serious it is, then state their firm resolve to fix the problem in the vaguest terms possible.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich responded to a question about “police and the difficulty in communities,” saying “we’ve got to listen to other people’s voices, respect them,” with no mention of race, which is the heart of the issue, or any specifics at all. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker also managed to answer a question about the Black Lives Matter movement without making a single mention of the existence of race in America.
Kasich laid out a very clear vision for how to combat poverty, and it made no sense. “Economic growth is key,” he said (it isn’t). He said that balancing budgets and cutting taxes (two objectives that are opposed to each other) would achieve economic growth (nope). Only after all that’s accomplished, Kasich said, we can start thinking about people “who don’t seem to ever think they get a fair deal,” like minorities. He offered no solutions for them besides lip service.
Bush was asked what specific policies would bring about four percent growth if he was president, something that he has promised despite the fact that it’s considered virtually impossible by economists. His proposal: “Fix a convoluted tax code, you get in and change every aspect of regulations that are job-killers, you get rid of Obamacare and replace it with something that doesn’t suppress wages and kill jobs,” plus embracing fossil fuels and “fixing” the immigration system. No one who is being honest would say that this plan has any hope of achieving four percent growth. That doesn’t seem to affect his argument.
Some conservatives, desperate to anoint someone to take the reins from Trump, decided on former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Byron York’s reasoning? He argues it’s because she said all the same things the others did, “she is the only one tough enough” to beat Hillary Clinton in the general election, and “her fellow candidates don’t have the stuff to fight 24/7.” It is hazy reasoning that’s impossible to pin down in any way.
It is a sign of democracy in total crisis that any of the candidates on stage Thursday have a real chance of becoming president. They are experts at posturing, encouraging unfounded fears, and yes, bullshit. For nearly every problem they identify, their proposed policy to fix it either doesn’t exist, has nothing to do with the problem, or will make the problem worse. It is no coincidence that the most specific policies the candidates do propose would help the wealthy people and corporations who fund their campaigns at the expense of lower and middle-class people. These policies unsurprisingly receive nearly uniform support from all the GOP candidates, and are even sold as aid to working people.
As former President Jimmy Carter said last week, the United States is an oligarchy, not a democracy. And like Jon Stewart said, the oligarchs seem increasingly willing to drop the pretense and mislead us openly even as they are repeatedly called out for their bullshit. Without democracy, even the most scathing, righteous condemnation of elite manipulation has little effect.