Some facts of life

Byline

Some facts of life

M.J.Akbar

Which of these stories will determine the fate of Washington this November?

On 3 October I read a Bloomsberg story, based from data just released by

the American government, that the top 1% constituting 1.1 million

households, took 93%  of income growth in the last year. It was the widest

gap in four decades. Bloomsberg, a very thoroughly capitalist news service,

noted that income disparity in America had surpassed Uganda, which must be

a milestone of sorts.

That Wednesday evening Mitt Romney, a somersault artiste who believes that

the 47% of America which does not pay tax deserves its poverty, creamed

Barack Obama in a televised presidential debate that delighted Republicans,

devastated Democrats and probably left the undecided cheering for more.

Luckily for Obama elections were still a month away, which leaves a lot of

time for questions.

The most obvious question surely is: why didn’t Obama use such data to

smother Romney? This one can be answered quickly. Obama and his team have

been laid low by a malignant virus called complacency. They were too busy

sniggering in private to worry about what might happen in public.

Newspapers can place a statistic in print, but it does not become a

political fact until it is bounced into play. The past week saw an

illustration of this reality in Delhi.  The transformation of  Mrs Sonia

Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra  into a business genius after the

Congress’ 2009 victory, thanks to some fiscal sleight of hand by a business

house, has been the subject of much conversation for a while. Very little

remains secret in Delhi, least of all property purchases. One newspaper,

the Economic Times, even published an investigation. But this brewing

scandal remained on the edges of consciousness until anti-corruption

crusaders Arvind Kejriwal and Shashi Bhushan, armed with relevant

documents, shoved it into the limelight. It is now voters’ property.

There is a more subtle equivalence. While surely tempted during the first

UPA term, Vadra and his businessmen friends played a restrained hand,

because both UPA and its presiding family were careful. The top heavy

victory of 2009 made them careless.

Spin doctors are hired to bowl  googlies  in a crisis. So far, those who

have stepped out to defend Vadra, largely from the second tier of

loyalists,  have chosen  bluster  for the media and threats against the

whistle-blowers.  One  legal eagle argued that since the documents were in

the public domain they did not amount to much. Alas, this does not make the

documents untrue. A second loyalist charged that Vadra had been targeted

because he was Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law. That is a bit of a non-starter.

After all, Vadra got these favours only because he was a member of the

Gandhi family. There was little chance of him becoming a property prince if

he had married his neighbour’s daughter in Moradabad.

Obama’s spin doctors, in comparison, justified their salary. They picked up

at least one sentimental nugget from the trash can of despair. They sold

the story that their man had been distraught because his wife Michelle was

upset that he had chosen to debate Romney on their 20th wedding

anniversary. She was expecting a romantic dinner instead. If you believe

that story, then your library hasn’t progressed beyond Mills and Boon. But

if every American wife whose husband has forgotten an anniversary goes out,

possibly with a small lump in the throat, to vote for Obama he will win by

a landslide. Women are his core constituency.

Television, for selfish reasons, has promoted a myth that it can determine

the fate of elections. The dark stubble of Richard Nixon, during the first

televised debate in 1960, has been turned into an iconic reason for his

surprise defeat. John Kennedy won not because Nixon forgot to shave, but

because he represented the young America which would go on to shape the

Sixties. Since television also claims to have determined the course of the

Vietnam war, it is pertinent to note that it  was lost in the rice fields

of Indo-China, not the studios of CBS. Television brought the bad news back

in technicolour and widened the dismay; but if the Pentagon had been

winning battles, it would have also led the hysteria for greater violence,

since hysteria contributes to higher ratings. Media tells the story, but

only very  rarely can it change the ending.

How will the Obama-Romney election end? Will that half of America which

believes that Romney is the candidate of 1% change its mind because Obama

was asleep at the microphone? Will women who know the punitive and invasive

Republican agenda for abortion turn away from Obama because he lost his

lines?

In the Indian general elections of 2004, BJP-led NDA had the better

argument, but Congress-led UPA had the better facts. In 2009 Dr Manmohan

Singh was in control of both facts and argument. Since then his arguments

have been waylaid by the corruption of colleagues, and facts have lost

touch with daily life.