The national website for Unity '08: A People's Movement to Take Our Country Back claims a lot and says quite little. It would move American governing politics back to 'the middle' by holding an online convention to nominate a bipartisan ticket of one Republican and one Democrat. Online discussion groups would create a consensus platform; in the meantime, Unity '08 limits its specific concerns to denouncing "special interest money" and drawing a line between "crucial issues" (terrorism, nuclear proliferation, national debt, education, health care, etc) and "important issues" (abortion, gun control, and gay marriage). The main problem in national politics, it believes, is the shouting of voices at the far ends of the spectrum.
The practical outlook for this sort of organization notwithstanding (i predict ... 38,000 voting online, after the Glenn Reynolds provides a quadrasyllabic link, with John McCain taking home the $200,000 in small-donor contributions), this kind of return-to-wholesome-politics spiel is particularly silly. All government is an ugly struggle between interested actors (see: legislation and sausages, making of). Sure, procedural safeguards are important. Healthy arguments are important. But ultimately, a group like Unity '08 smacks of intellectual laziness: a certainty that the correct answer lies in the happy middle ground between left and right, rather than with any particular set of ideas or values. Smarter people than I could explore this further, but I'm tired and have other things to do -- and in any case I posted this simply because the site reminded me or Hal Philip Walker's Replacement Party in the movie Nashville, a call to meaningless consensus through non sequiturs, cliches, and platitudes:
Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify - that's one. And to confuse - that's the other. He does whichever is to his client's advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn't he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones' house in the country? You got lost, didn't you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what's wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don't know the time of day.
