Gratuitous Humiliation

Charles Krauthammer has a slightly unusual column out today. I actually think many on the left as well as on the right will agree with his analysis of presidential campaigns. Not one specific campaign, but what presidential campaigns are, in  general, to this country.

First, it tests a certain kind of competence. Managing a national campaign in a country of continental dimensions requires exceptional organizational skills. A fairly narrow competence, to be sure, but of major importance in a country where the president must run the behemoth that is the federal government.

The second function of the endless campaign is to build party consensus and democratic legitimacy, both of which contribute substantially to the astonishing stability and longevity of the American system. The presidential primary season is essentially a prolonged intraparty dialogue. It re-creates the Madisonian idea of factions and interests competing against each other, applied not to the legislature or the executive but to the electoral process that produces both. The job of the parties is to create a kind of pre-legislative consensus through the competition and conversation of the various factions — ethnic, ideological, economic, geographic. The purpose of the endless presidential primary is to force the dialogue and, for all its haphazard meanderings and maddening trivialities, it does……

…..The final function of the endless campaign, and perhaps the most psychologically important, is to satisfy the American instinct for egalitarianism. We have turned the presidential campaign into a pleasingly degrading ordeal — pleasing, that is, to the electorate. The modern presidential campaign is meant to be physically exhausting and spiritually humbling almost to the point of humiliation. Candidates spend two years and more on bended knee begging for money, votes and handshakes in a diner.

I think that's about right. Personally, I would never want to put myself or my family through the grueling process that is an American presidential campaign (sorry, I won't be running for president). That the process is even more grueling this time by starting essentially an entire year earlier than it used to makes it that much worse. Krauthammer's observation that as important as the first two things the campaign does are, that the gratuitous humiliation of the candidates makes it all worthwhile sounds snarky as heck. But think about it. I think that is exactly what fascinates people.