POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

By Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Every November used to be our election time patterned after Americans’. But now we have ours every May. Yet November is still politically interesting because we get to watch how the American people conduct their elections, who they vote for, for what (now there is the why they vote for this and that candiate) among so other hosts of reasons.

American presidential elections are especially interesting for me because we suffer from a deluge of things American, from Starbucks to American Idol on TV, up to Walt Disney in comics, and Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, question are they or aren’t they married yet? I mean all the gossips, rumors, and news altogether are right here on our soil. And everyday we get a dose of them, over print, radio, tv, and the movies. And who is the Filipino woman or man who does not have a glimpse or dose of these?

My particular interest in the elections hinges on how we could also strengthen our own love for our cultural products as the proliferation the above products reflects pride of Americans in them.

Today we know that there are only two contenders for the American presidency, unlike ours when we had four aspirants in the past. They are the Republican aspirants, Mitt Romney with Paul Ryan as VP candidate, versus incumbents, Pres. Barack Obama and VP Joe Biden. On Thursday evening, the Dems, Democrat for short, will be officially announcing their candidates. The Republicans did their national convention Thursday last week greatly criticized by some journalists. (But if you watch NBC, you would think Romney is winning already. The station devote 3/4 of its news images on the elections on the Reps. so better watch out for propaganda and its hidden messages. I had to surf the internet for other views in order to get a balanced picture.)

What is interesting in the American campaigns is that the candidates focus on substantial matters – what occurred during four years of the Obama administration – his policies and programs, and to the Republicans, what new things they can offer. Both also use name-recall media personalities who give the campaigns great hurrah.

If you listen or read the write-ups, they are in English, we can see the high level of debates that are occurring with subtle innuendoes on who the writers are for. But when you read their short bios, you would find out that they belong to either the Dems or the Reps, or they have had direct dealings with the candidate/s, like this professor who said that he knew a candidate personally in the university years back. In other words, they speak from experience.

How do they tackle the issues? The writers have a good grounding on facts based on history. They know when Ryan is obfuscating the issue of Medicare; when Romney is not clear, meaning specific, on what his economic goals and when he is promoting his past economic achievements, but fails to present how many jobs were lost during his heading that company.

I think we need to read up on the American elections now because as we have said, America is printed in our cultural psyche through its businesses here. We need to see how the American people vote and listen to the candidates. Now, the people no longer look at personalities but what they have to offer. I think that when Obama won, he already turned the election color upside down. Voters look beyond skin color (or majority do), but rather try to find ways of seeing something more from the individual. Is the candidate articulate, honest, truthful, empathic?

Yes, empathy is very important for a country that has suffered from the bombings of its iconic World Trade Center and the Pentagon, from the hurricanes, and are trying to be more savvy economically as they are deluged with Chinese and Japanese goods that upset the dominance of American products, especially cars and electronic gadgets,

Obama seems to offer an empathy which is very difficult to cultivate actually in a country steeped in rationalistic atmosphere and material pursuits. He comes out as more approachable than Mitt Romney. I don’t know if all the Americans would value that totally but for sure, the immigrants, like our own Filipino Americans, would find that appealing. Having had to immigrate to America in search of greener pastures, certainly they would search for an official who would give them a listening ear to their woes, and who would move to make their lives better. Reports show that Obama is winning the preferences of this particular sector. But what is their percentage in the voting population?

The Filipino-Americans have an edge over the other immigrants. We know the American psyche as our country lived through 50 years of American rule and who gave us the education (highly skewed to American ideals) and governing patterns. Thus if there is any sector that can help Obama win, it is this sector, which by the way helped him in 2008 as the National Fil-American Association headed by the departed ex-priest Ernesto Ramos, brother of Luis Ramos who is now giving many jobs to the Tondo poor through his magnetite business in Zambales. Brod Ernesto was able to swing the Fil-Am votes to Obama’s favor so much so that upon his urging, the latter signed the Filipino veterans act right away upon his assumption into Oval Office.

It might interest you to know how US presidents fared in handling the American economy by their reining or not reining in their national debt. A graph of US debts can be found at http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2010/02/since-1950-republican-presidents.html

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In our case, our economic problems stem from lack of export destinations, and possibly lack of products too that could compete with other countries’. You see we have rich soils that could possible be a good source of food crops; but our business people, instead of turning them into profitable export products, they build subdivisions which stop the fertility of the soil. It is really depressing when I see candies made from vegetables which can be found here, yet they are manufactured in Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia. It is more depressing when we see our relatives, friends and workers in general migrating to other countries just to have jobs, like Singapore and Canada.

Hence, we look at American elections and try to see if we can reverse what is happening to us economically, too, aside from being just a consumer of every product they turn out. We need the winning party to give us more liberal access to American markets.

For that, we need to study as backgrounder, the record of each party in helping us rise economically. As we say, when the Americans sneeze, the Filipino people catch the colds, and we could even suffer from pneumonia. Luckily, we have not really gone into that state, especially when recession hit the American economy. Our OFWs served as buffers to that huge problem, but come to think of it at what costs to family ties and social stability?

Changing institutions and societies can be done through the ascension of sincere, trustworthy (pro-people), and knowledgeable political officials. Let the American elections serve as one of our reference points for judging our own.

(picture from canstock 1476 376)