Television Killed the American President

If you look at the state of governmental leadership in this country and wonder What The Hell Happened to Us?, look no futher than the 1960 debates between Kennedy and Nixon. That was the beginning of the end for constructive debate between presidential candidates. From that moment on, the American people saw the president as more of an entertainment icon than the leader of a democratic nation. Men and women alike swooned over suave Kennedy and uncomfortably laughed at the awkward sweatiness of Nixon (a slight that, one could argue, started him down the future path of Watergate, which in turn spawned the Machiavellian dictatorship of Cheney/Bush et al.). Now, I believe that Kennedy was a hell of a President and a damned good man. Could Nixon have guided us to safety through the tumultuous thirteen days of the Cuban Missle Crisis? Who knows? Would Nixon have allowed hack-job shows of might like the Bay of Pigs or Vietnam to occur? Maybe not, we really won't know. But you can be assured that under his watch we would never have gone to the moon in 1969 (or, maybe ever), and there would have been no Civil Rights movement, or at least none that would have made as much noise as the movement of the early-late 60's. These were the achievements of an idealist like Kennedy. Americans have always loved their symbols, but with the Television boom invading the political arena, symbols, images and icons quickly became more important than truth. It gave rise to presidents like Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Dubya (if you can even consider him president). Reagan and Clinton, though different in their approach, are regarded today as presidents worthy of the same recognition as Lincoln and Roosevelt. This is regardless of the fact that Reagan was a racist who talked in soundbites and Clinton, though eloquent, was always walking a thin line between Orator and Huckster. And then you have Bush Senior (who won because Dukakis looked like an idiot in a television ad). And Dubya (who won because Gore appeared stiff on TV) seemed like a "guy you could drink a beer with" (the most idiotic and downright insulting criteria one could ask for in a Presidential candidate).
Now of course, we have the battle of Christmas ads in the Republican party. Rudy Giuliani and Santa vs. Mike Huckabee and Jesus. Who fucking cares? Rudy can't talk about anything more than 9/11, and even then he's stretching the truth, and Mike Huckabee is a fundamentalist facist masquerading as a patriotic christian who wants to change everything that is fundamentally American until only the name remains the same. But that's not what we SEE. And that's what really matters, isn't it? If all these debates happened on radio or in print, we could hear the truth or read between the lines, but TV allows us to turn off our brains and let people tell us what to think. And all that is apparently more important than actually leading this country. And don't think the Democrats are angels, either. When frontrunners like Hillary, Barack, and John Edwards are politicizing, campaigning, and coming up with their holiday ads, Chris Dodd (who, we're told by the TV people, has no chance of being president) is showing true leadership by actually doing his job and protecting Americans from a FISA bill that would allow retro-active immunity for telecom companies. But is this what we see on TV? Fuck no, unless you're an actual, intelligent American who reads the paper (or maybe watches Countdown). Or, maybe, you're like me and you're fed up with the crap that we're being force-fed from TV, and you get your news from the internet. God bless the internet, the only thing that could save our country from the depths of TV hell. But there's a catch there too, because the internet isn't regulated (thank god and cross your fingers) so you also have to be careful to screen what you're reading to make sure they've got their facts straight. Alot of political blogs are biased as well, so it's hard to find objective journalism in the blogosphere (but it's out there).
But it's so much better than TV, that multi-headed monster that allowed an Orwellian travesty like Fox News to dupe viewers into believing it was a "fair and balanced" "news organization". A number of sane people in this country have seen the light and cried "Bullshit!" on Fox News, but it's still too little, and 2 wars and thousands of American deaths too late. So let's leave Television to what it's good for, and what it was originally intended: Entertainment. And let's take the politics out of it before our love for Michael Bay symbolism destroys us all.