How Have Journalists Investigated Issues in the US Presidential Elections - Essay Example

How have journalists and academics investigated current themes and issues in the US presidential elections? The Presidential elections in the United States generate plenty of interest both within and outside the country. Ascending into the role of a superpower at the culmination of the Second World War, the US foreign policies have had significant impact in determining the political and economic success of nations all across the globe. In this context, the scholarship, reportage and opinion editorials published in the lead up to the elections can reveal the contentious issues and underlying themes. Such a study will help assess the merits and drawbacks of the American democratic enterprise, which the rest of this essay endeavours to. An issue that is always at the forefront of American politics is domestic economic policy and more importantly the issues of taxes and their expenditure. In spite of political rhetoric about America being a “class-less society” (as opposed to a “class-based” one like in Britain) the statistics doesn’t measure up to this claim. As noted economist (a Nobel Laureate now) Paul Krugman points out, “Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant. Now they're back” (Krugman, 2004). The above passage neatly captures the wealth distribution conundrum of the American polity, wherein the ideological conflict between free market capitalism and social welfare has yet to find resolution. Other commentators have pointed out the historical similarities between the Franklin Roosevelt campaign during the Great Depression and the recently concluded successful election campaign of Barack Obama. While Roosevelt’s New Deal economic and social reforms met with outstanding success, it remains to be seen how the new President would cope with the Wall Street collapse of late. The historical similarities between the two don’t end there. They both come from the Democratic Party and as Lichtman points out, piggybacked on a message of “change”. And change is all the more imperative now than ever before in the post Second World War American history. For, irrespective of the fact that the country is the richest in the world, the extreme disparities in standard of living among its demography is a symbol of failed economic policies of previous presidents. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, based on statistics released by the Congressional Budget Office, “between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artefact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality” (Lichtman, 2008). While these statistics represent the systemic injustices of the American economic system, which all Democratic Party candidates point to in their campaigns, there is also a dedicated conservative press and its team of scholars, who attempt to discredit blatant realities with ideological rationale. A case in point is the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation, which has published articles supporting the reactionary policies of the Republican Party even as the American economy was heading into a harsh recessionary period. This situation was precipitated by the “social welfare for the rich” theme of the incumbent George W. Bush’s policies. Hence, while the underlying themes and issues are objectively scrutinized by a minority of political analysts in the lead up to the elections, most others churn out biased and slanted assessments by pandering to the corporate and Wall Street elite (Lichtman, 2008). Just as taxation and public expenditure policies generate public interest ahead of an election, so are other contentious cultural issues. As American popular culture has evolved more tolerance for sexual minorities, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-genders, their appeals for legal recognition has also gained momentum. While conservative think tanks are hard at work conjuring up “feel-good” statistics on the state of the economy, their efforts at curbing free sexual expression among citizens is relatively muted. It is a well documented fact that American citizens are more religious than their European counterparts, the most notorious manifestation of which are the Christian Evangelists, whose tax-exempted funds and missionary zeal have attracted criticism from the liberal quarters of the American intelligentsia. All denominations of American church continue to portray homosexuality as a deviance from normal behaviour (Mccullom, 2007). Yet, the sexual minorities in the country have started to assert their rights. The print and electronic media has also not shied away from the controversial issue of gay-marriage in the lead up to the 2008 elections. That these issues are debated even in the inner-party primary elections is an indication of the prominence gay-voters have gained. In the instance of the Democratic primaries of 2007, “Although the two senators, not to mention the Republican slate of contenders, will be squaring off on many issues, foremost among them Iraq, gay people and their issues could be as meaningful as any other factor when electoral margins of victory are sometimes measured in the thousands of votes or less. After all, who could forget how expertly the Republicans exploited homophobia in 2004 to narrowly defeat John Kerry? The candidates also support adding sexual orientation to federal hate-crimes law and back the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which has been languishing in various incarnations on Capitol Hill for decades but might finally pass in this Congress.” (Mccullom, 2007) And, finally, no discussion of the US elections would be complete without including the issues surrounding the US foreign policy. The reputation of the United States among the international community is at its lowest following the Iraq War fiasco. Ever since America rose to the superpower status with the defeat of Nazi Germany, its interventions abroad – both military and diplomatic – have drawn more criticism than applause. Through this sixty year dominance of the rearranged world order, the American military-industrial complex was ruthless in promoting its own perpetuation. In the election campaign literature leading up to last month’s squaring off of John McCain and Barack Obama, the journalists have alluded to this flawed foreign policy record. The grievances against such high-handed approach to world dominance had even percolated to its own citizens, for, as scholarship points out, the incumbent President George Bush’s approval ratings have fallen drastically from close to seventy percent (at the onset of the war on terror) to an abysmal thirty percent as he leaves White House (Janowski, 2008). Journalists on the campaign trail of Barack Obama have even indicated that the election is for Barack Obama to lose, meaning that if he just manages to run a gaffe-free campaign, the results would inevitable be in his favour. Moreover, Obama had also promised a swift recall of American troops from Iraq, as part of his election manifesto. The following excerpt from one of Obama’s campaign speeches highlights the top issues in the minds of the candidates, journalists and citizens alike: "We are in a defining moment in our history. Our nation is at war. The planet is in peril. The dream that so many generations fought for feels as if it's slowly slipping away. We are working harder for less. We've never paid more for healthcare or for college. It's harder to save, and it's harder to retire. And it is because of these failures that we not only have a moment of great challenge but also a moment of great opportunity. We have a chance to bring the country together in a new majority, to finally tackle problems that George Bush made far worse but that had festered long before George Bush ever took office" (Alexander, et. al., 2008) Hence, in conclusion, it can be asserted that the themes and issues journalists and scholars have investigated most in the US presidential elections can be broadly classified under three heads, namely foreign policy, domestic economic policy and cultural issues. The quality of these investigations range from objective, balanced analyses to biased and ideologically motivated presentations, the latter being a regular feature of American journalism. Bibliography: Alexander, G., Dingle, D. T., & Richardson, N. M. (2008, January). Why Barack Obama Should Be President: Six Reasons America Will Elect Him to the Whitehouse., Black Enterprise, 38, 74+. Janowski, L. (2008). Neo-Imperialism and American Foreign Policy: Louis Janowski Criticizes the United States' Foreign Policy Approach and Calls for a Reduction in Its International Commitments., New Zealand International Review, 29(5), 14+. Krugman, P. (2004, January 5). The Death of Horatio Alger: Our Political Leaders Are Doing Everything They Can to Fortify Class Inequality., The Nation, 278, 16. Lichtman, A. (2008). The Keys to the White House: Prediction for 2008., Social Education, 72(1), 10+. Mccullom, R. (2007, April 10). Behind the Gay-Friendly Faces: No, They're Not for Same-Sex Marriage, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama-The 2008 Democratic Presidential Front-Runners-Are Good for Gags in General, Right? or Are They? an Insiders View., The Advocate 40+. Wattenberg, M. P. (2004). Elections: Personal Popularity in U.S. Presidential Elections., Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34(1), 143+. Read More