America’s Favorite Passtime
Libba Smith
Some of America’s favorite forms of entertainment are drawing closer to their inevitable conclusion. 30 Rock isn’t being renewed after this season; Jersey Shore is airing its tragically tan final year; Lupe Fiasco may be retiring from music following a nasty attack tweet; and our favorite time-consumer, the presidential race, will be decided on November 6.
As Americans, we love politics. I know many people lament the sheer pervasiveness of politics — you cannot turn on the television or open a magazine without finding some form of political theater, from a dramatic attack ad showing Romney disregarding “the 47 percent” to a picture of Sarah Palin’s “new look” in People magazine – but its ubiquity is the very thing that makes it so compelling. Politics is the original and greatest form of reality television, and has been from the second that pundits attacked Nixon for refusing to wear makeup during the first-ever televised presidential debate in 1960.
We watch political debates with the same rapture usually reserved for early American Idol fervor, and we track the movements of political candidates with the same tenacity that we usually use to follow Kim Kardashian from eyebrow appointment to shopping trip. I have no doubt that election night in most households will be treated with the same revelry as the Super Bowl. We love politics for the meme-producing gaffes (binders full of women, horses and bayonets, Big Bird), but also for the moments of complete awe; I can still remember the first time I heard Obama speak about hope and change, and how profoundly inspired I felt.
In reality, the presidential race is not very high stakes. The executive branch is the weakest of the three, with the legislative branch being in charge of most day-to-day lawmaking and the judicial branch holding the most power per person. In many ways, this election is most significant because the new president will potentially choose two new Supreme Court justices. Historically, who gets elected to the office of the president has not changed the direction of our government.
However, the president is insanely important to our self-image. Americans are represented to the rest of the world, and, more notably, to ourselves, through our president. The Commander in Chief, for better or worse, reflects the national mood; he is our figurehead, and by far the most visible member of the government. He embodies American beliefs and personifies what we imagine ourselves to be. We look to the president for how to feel about and respond to everything from terrorist attacks to “SNL” skits.
Though this column may seem cynical, I really think that it is extraordinary that we have created such a nationally unifying phenomenon for ourselves. Sure, we are entertained by politics, but we also use it as a tool for expressing opinions and creating camaraderie and excitement on a national scale. In today’s divided political climate, we need to remember that no matter the outcome, we will always have Biden’s incessant chuckling and Romney’s moderator baiting to carry us through until the next election.