Pander-Fest '08

The following definitions come to us from the Oxford English Dictionary:

pander v.
1. trans. To act as a pander to: to minister to the gratification of (another's lust).
2. To lay the pander, to sub-serve or minister to base passions, tendencies, or designs.

For another dimension of just what it means to "pander," we might also consult a thesaurus and look up the word "politics." Yes, political campaigns are, by definition, all about ministering to the gratification of another's lusts. Paid political consultants are hired to locate our basest desires, so that each candidate can exploit them. It sometimes seems as though the electorate is just one big focus group; A mountain of statistical clay from which each candidate will interpret and repackage so as to formulate his or her road-map leading to higher office. We are sliced and diced. Weighed and measured. Used and often discarded. Yes, we know perfectly well what pandering is.

This year's presidential candidates were not the first to pander, nor will they be the last. But there have been some classic moments in Pander-Fest '08. Here, then, a brief round-up.

John McCain, like other GOP hopefuls, executed a dizzying display of pandering to the Religious Right at the start of the campaign. Knowing that he couldn't win the nomination without the support of at least a portion of those he once termed "agents of intolerance" he set about courting the votes of the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberston and John Hagee. These ministers three have all, as Frank Rich detailed in Sunday's NY Times, each repeatedly made remarks glaringly similar to those of Jeremiah Wright. If it is conspiratorial to say that the US prompted 9/11 with what Wright sees as our own "terrorist" foreign policy, then surely it is equally dubious to claim that God was punishing New York on 9/11 and New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina for those two cities' permissiveness toward homosexuality. McCain has refused to renounce the support offered him by Hagee, recently saying he was proud to have Hagee's endorsement.


McCain is also guilty of that most popular form of pandering: Tax cuts. His solution to just about everything is that he promises to cut your taxes. Why bother reading his lips, this tired GOP ventriloquist act has become McCain's personal cure-all remedy, even when he's simultaneously applauding a government-funded bailout to taxpayers duped by bad mortgages. Yes, McCain beats the tax-cut drum like it was a toy just out of the box on Christmas morning. Gas tax holiday! Lower corporate taxes! Lower income taxes across the board! Hooray, the federal government is bankrupt!

Hillary Clinton is also in on the gas tax scheme. Her dangling of a fragrant twenty-dollar bill before the noses of a struggling American electorate has been soundly panned, but who trusts economists with something as pander-inducing as the economy? As Tommy Christopher details, Clinton's refusal to come clean on what even she knows is a bad idea that will never in a million years become law shows just how hard she's working to gratify the lust for lower gas prices.

Other pander highlights from HRC include the anti-trade agreement rhetoric that helped bolster her appeal in the rust belt. To hear her tell it, she has never met a trade-deal that she liked. NAFTA? Problems with it from day one. And if she's elected, the whole lot of them are up for renegotiation. Never mind that doing so would spell disaster for the deals themselves, and bring upon a worse economic downturn than we're currently suffering.

Barack Obama is also guilty on the trade-deal question, and both candidates stand accused of offering assurances to the Canadian Government that their bluster on the subject is nothing more than hot air. And, just as with Clinton, it's one thing for Obama to say he had reservations about NAFTA, and another to detail what you're actually going to do about those qualms once you're elected president. Again, the signatories of these treaties are going to go ballistic if the United States tries to assert unilateral revisions. Seriously, the chance that CAFTA or NAFTA will be re-worked is slim to none. But that doesn't mean Obama or Clinton can't keep talking up that populist fantasy-land where jobs come rushing back to the Middle West on a dashing steed.

Another of Obama's panderific proposal is the windfall-profits tax on oil companies. While this idea gives aid and comfort to so many middle class listeners, the truth is it, too, has almost no chance of making it into law. The principle that we should arbitrarily set a limit on how much profit a company can make is shaky at best. The truth is that we're caught over a barrel with the oil companies because we haven't insisted that our government do more to spur innovation in fuel standards and alternative energy sources. But now we want to blame the oil companies for our own failures.

So why do politicians pander so much? Quite simply, it works. Just ask McCain, Clinton, and Obama if you don't believe me.