The Long Halloween

Halloween the day may be last week, but Halloween the season never ends in America. Not as long as we fear what lurks in the closet of the Oval Office or what might pop out from under the bed where Lincoln once slept.

Before this year, I would lay money that very few McCain voters ever thought about, at least not often or outside of a classroom—Ayers, Wright, or any of the other bogey men that have been raised regarding Obama. But for we Obama voters, our bogey man has been dominating our waking hours (and our sleeping nightmares) for eight years.

Americans love them a good bogey man. We are excellent at looking for someone to pin blame on, to rally against. Americans love tearing down celebrities, leaders, dictators, etc. It’s practically the national past time. So it’s no surprise that this election has been dominated by the fear of the bogey man. Even after the election, as this NYT op-ed piece shows, the media as the bogey man will continue.

Tomorrow we will find out whose bogey man is the scariest. And if my guess (and my vote) is correct, we will learn that the scariest is not the unknown, but the known danger (that would be George W. Bush & Co. in case you were wondering). While Ayers (that old washed up terrorist) can be pretty scary, everyone knows he’s not exactly going to get to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom much less a cabinet position. And Jeremiah Wright (that blathering fool) is so at odds with Obama on his message that it really doesn’t raise much of a specter of fear of his influence. But Bush, well, there’s some real fear and why Obama’s bogey man is resonating more than McCain’s.

Based on the information we have, we know what the Republican Party is capable of. We stand in the ruins of it. So the fear of any repeat or continuation of it is very real. And McCain has—with only a handful of notable exceptions—stayed lockstep with the Bush Administration on almost everything that has led to where we are today. So who’s the scarier bogey man?

After the election, the media will return to its place as the national bogey man. I’ve stated already that the problem isn’t the media, it’s the people. That the American people put the media in a Catch 22 position that doesn’t allow for real objective reporting. Objectivity isn’t just fairness, i.e. making sure you have equal numbers of words on a page about either side of an issue. Objectivity also requires that information be weighted appropriately according to its accuracy and relevance. So when McCain raises the bogey man of Ayers, the media should objectively weight that with all the other information they have about Ayers AND with the information they have about the possibility of his influence on Obama. With all that, the Ayers story becomes nothing. Conversely, when Obama raises the Bush bogey man, the media needs to weigh that against the likelihood of McCain would continue Bush’s policies. That’s objectivity, and the American people aren’t interested in it. Their more interested in picking the next bogey man.

Even after tomorrow is over, it’ll still be a long Halloween in this country.