Acting the Part

What Politicians Say vs. What They Deliver

During a recent conversation with a friend of a decidedly different political bent from my own I had an epiphany of a sort. What I realized during our exchange is that there are striking similarities between politics and acting.

Acting trades in fiction. There are, of course, significant differences between politics and acting, the most obvious of which is that most people are unaware that in “doing” politics they are pseudo-acting: politics, they are convinced, pertains to “the real world.” Conversely, actors, unlike those interested in politics, do not try to convince anyone that the characters they portray or the stories these characters compose are “real.”

Still, politics and acting approximate one another.

Most importantly, politics, like any good story, relies on heroes and villains (unlike remotely intriguing artworks, however, the heroes and villains of contemporary American politics are painfully one-dimensional, cardboard cut-outs reflecting the most impoverished of imaginations.). This explains why the notion of “war” figures so prominently in our politics.

“The War on Terror,” “the War on ‘Racism’,” and “the War on Poverty,” are Manichean schemes in which the agents of all that is Beautiful, True, and Good wage an eternal battle against the forces of undifferentiated Evil, whether the latter are “Islamo-fascists,” “racists,” or “greedy Capitalists.” In fact, supposedly there is even a “War on Christmas”!

I mention all this because in the discussion I had with my friend, it became obvious to me that the individual politicians and parties of which he spoke were fictions, not real entities. In this regard, he was representative of most people, I suspect, whether on the Left, Right, or “Center.”

For example, he referred to George W. Bush and “Bush” Republicans as “the far Right,” and even implied that McCain lost support because he moved to “the far Right.”

A question to my friends and all who insist on characterizing the difference(s) between America’s two national political parties in terms of a perpetual conflict between two extreme ideologies: how are Republicans like Bush (and his supporters) “far Right” while Democrats like Obama and (his supporters) are “far Left?” In other words, on what grounds do you claim that there is such a vast chasm separating these two parties?

Let’s look at some of the most “controversial” issues of the day, and for simplicity’s sake, the positions taken by the standard bearers of the two parties.

The War in Iraq
George W. Bush and John McCain are obviously both in favor of the war. Even though Obama ran against it, he is, to use Bush’s worn out expression, “staying the course,” and he expresses just as much determination to defeat terrorism as does his Republican predecessor and former Republican rival.

Immigration
Like Bush and McCain, Obama is enthusiastically supportive of “comprehensive immigration reform”—i.e., de facto amnesty. And neither Republicans nor Democrats, least of all these Republicans and Democrats, breathe a word against legal immigration.

“Same Sex Marriage.”
Bush, McCain, and Obama all oppose, or claim to oppose, so-called “gay marriage,” yet each supports “civil unions” for homosexuals, and none has commented one way or the other on the passage of Proposition 8 in California and its fall-out.

Abortion
Bush and McCain claim to be “pro-life” and Obama claims to be “pro-choice.” Yet it is far from obvious that the “pro-life” commitments of either of these Republicans, to say nothing of the scores of other Republicans who claim to be “pro-life,” have done much if anything to alter popular perceptions of abortion, much less its legal standing. In fact, not unlike Obama, Bush and McCain both support federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and Bush was the first president in American history to extend federal funds for this research.

The Size of Government
While a Republican talking point has it that the GOP is for “limited government,” under a Republican controlled Congress and eight years of President Bush, the federal government has grown to an extent paralleling and possibly surpassing that to which it grew under Democratic president LBJ and his “Great Society.”

Capitalism v. Socialism
Bush, McCain, and Obama are equally supportive of the nationalization of the banking and automobile industries that we see unfolding before our eyes. If this isn’t a form of “socialism,” I don’t know what is. That Bush has a Democratic controlled Congress is no excuse, for he has passionately promoted these “bailouts,” and during the presidential campaign, McCain came out in favor of the federal government’s buying up bad home mortgages!

There are many other issues with respect to which it is with extreme difficulty, if at all, that Republicans and Democrats can be distinguished. Yet in spite of this, both politicians and fans of politics continue speaking as if the two parties pose stark alternatives.

That is, they continue speaking as if they are acting.