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2012 Candidates Will Have To Focus On More Than ‘Jobs & The Economy’
Loading ...On September 21st, Georgia inmate Troy Davis was executed for the 1989 murder of a police officer. Davis had been sentenced to death in 1991, but each of his scheduled executions was stayed. In 2009, the Supreme Court ordered a Georgia District Court to consider new evidence, including recantations from eyewitnesses who had testified on behalf of the prosecution. Many felt the new evidence was sufficient to exonerate Davis, but the District Court upheld the conviction, and Davis was executed in spite of widespread protests. “Killing a man under this enormous cloud of doubt,” lamented Amnesty International USA director Larry Cox, “amounts to a catastrophic failure of the justice system.”
People were markedly more silent in Washington, especially everybody in, and everybody with intentions on, the White House. Throughout the proceedings, neither President Obama nor any of the Republican presidential nominees made a single remark in support or condemnation of the execution. (Comments were made, however, by a handful of presidential has-beens and never-weres – Jimmy Carter, Al Sharpton, and 2008 Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr all spoke out in Davis’ defense.) In 1988, Michael Dukakis’ presidential aspirations were dashed by – well, by any number of self- and Bush-inflicted wounds but in particular by – his opposition to capital punishment. 24 years later, it seems that the debate doesn’t warrant a peep.
Instead, the 2012 election will be about “jobs and the economy,” as the issue is always titled. Herman Cain is plugging his “9-9-9 Plan” to reform the tax code, Rick Perry is promising to replicate the “Texas Miracle” 50 times over, and Mitt Romney is giving out a pamphlet with a whopping 59 strategies to grow the economy. But Cain’s plan is untenable, Perry can’t honestly expect to duplicate Texas’ story – which is actually fairly appalling – in every state in the multivariate Union, and Romney’s plan is hilariously vague and padded – one of his 59 strategies is to “create a one-stop shop to streamline permitting processes for approval of common activities”, which conveys in 20 syllables exactly as much as he could have with zero.
Perhaps it is more precise to say that the 2012 election will be about “being about jobs and the economy.” To win votes, a candidate needs only to seize the narrative with a slick and canny pitch, not to devise genuinely useful solutions: the pitch is paramount to the plan. All of the blather these candidates unleash in every debate is only a show, bromides to effect the appearance of serious, effective leadership. Not one candidate (including President Obama) is offering real ideas to deal with the systemic rottenness spoiling the U.S. economy.
Meanwhile, while the candidates fiddle, not only does the economy continue to burn, but every other issue vanishes from the map. Abortion and reproductive issues are never addressed, gay rights are forgotten but for sporadic reactionary insults from Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich, and the immigration debate has been reduced to those who want to keep out Mexicans with a huge wall and guards on the border, and those who think the job can be done with the wall alone. Aside from Jon Huntsman’s occasional affirmation of support for same-sex civil unions and Ron Paul’s daring foreign policy prescriptions, nobody is contributing a single genuinely interesting idea to this campaign.
The U.S. economy is in dire straits, but this does not negate the significance of other issues. Whatever one’s opinion is of capital punishment, it is incontestably important. The decision to invalidate a citizen’s inalienable right to life cannot be made lightly. The protests over Troy Davis’ execution and the cheers a debate audience gave Rick Perry for Texas’ 234 executions prove that this is a topic that Americans take seriously. Our presidential candidates ought to do so as well. These are issues of life and death.
Written by Deft staffer, Luca Stein.
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