Us And Them
Back in another lifetime when I was in high school, one of the memories I have is of the election held for the presidency of the student body during senior year. The eventual winner, popular as he was anyway, campaigned on a platform of student freedom. One of the ways to express this freedom was the ability to paint their school lockers any color they wished. Although eventually elected, somehow this radical proposal never got through to actual implementation. Nevertheless, his campaign was identified with this idea and he was known as the locker paint candidate to an otherwise indifferent population.
The news item linked above reminds me of this experience. As the current president has moved into his second year of office, much of the “hope and change” that was offered during the campaign has failed to live up to the hype and rhetoric offered at the time. Those in the position of paying taxes and having to live under the consequences of the administration’s policies are realizing that implementation of such would be fanciful and indeed damaging to the nation’s long term health.
As the mid term elections approach and it becomes obvious that he has lost most of the moderate base that went along with “painting the hall lockers”, the President is increasingly turning to what he feels is a friendly constituency, apparently the young, the black and the Latinos, a group he acknowledges brought him to office in the first place. This is an interesting message because the implication is that the rest of the population are no longer friendly to his message and policies and therefore does not truly represent them. So if you’re old, white and non Latino, you are now considered “them”. If the progress thus far was something to crow about, his appeal would be to the wider population, not just parts that he feels are sympathetic to his message. As it turns out, this is the exact opposite of the inclusive government promised during his messianic campaign.
We’ve had inklings of this regularly over the past year or so as the “us” and “them” tactics were usually employed to sell his policies. It turns out the “thems” happen to be the majority of the population. The party may soon be known as the “Them-ocrats”. Now the strategy appears to be to pander to those he thinks are still on his side. Far from being the uniter for the population, he is responsible for increasing divisiveness. It will be interesting to see if this gains any traction since it implies that the constituency they are now pandering to do not read and do not fully understand the policy initiatives as the larger population does. He may be surprised to find that few want painted lockers after all.