I’m looking forward to attending your rally this Saturday, but like many, I’m not sure whether you are intending to simply produce a Daily Show-esque send-up of the whole rally-on-the-Mall concept, or whether this is the moment when you give the genuine rallying cry of “moderate!”
I know a lot of your fans are hoping you don’t undermine your hip satire with the mawkishness of actually caring. But I, for one, sincerely hope that you are actually serious here, and that you have every intention of giving voice to “the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat,” as you call them.
We need you Jon. You may be our last best hope.
As you know and well understand, political debate in this country is actually nothing at all like debate. The two parties and their loyal acolytes keep yelling right past each other. They effectively inhabit two separate unbridgeable worlds, drifting further and further apart.
The activist bases of both parties have been spending the last 30 or so years trying create a black-and-white world where you are either with us or against us. Increasingly, they hold the key to elected offices, especially on the Republican side, by being the source of campaign resources and energy. Meanwhile, a media culture drawn to sharp conflicts always zooms in on angry yelling over possible consensus for a simple reason: the schoolyard knife fight makes better TV than the debating society, and every attention-seeking pundit and politico now knows this.
And yes, this has excited and energized the most extreme elements on both sides, who by dint of personality are attracted to moral clarity these Manichean struggles offer. But it has turned off those who are prefer compromise and open-mindedness, who don’t see the world in such stark terms, who, as you put it: “who feel that the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones that get heard.” Fewer and fewer Americans choose to identify themselves with either of the two major parties, and the plurality of Americans now think that neither party has “a clear plan for solving the country’s problems.”
The problem for political moderates is that there are so few leaders to turn to for inspiration.
But Jon, you know all this. It’s the basis for your satire. It’s why millions of viewers, especially those supposed disaffected young people who vote at significantly lower rates than their forebears, watch your show. You are the one who they trust.
I suspect that you are slightly uncomfortable with this power. You are, after all, a comedian at heart, the funny man who sits on the sidelines and says: you silly politicians, how you contradict and contort yourselves and say ridiculous things. Let us find the laughter in tragedy and thusly ease our sorrow over the sad fact that while we endlessly debate Christine O’Donnell’s latest gaffe, China is building a new city every sixteen seconds.
But sitting on the sidelines must also be frustrating. How can you curate the modern tragedy of American politics, day after day, and not think: why, the more I call attention to the idiocy, the more it metastasizes?
You have at your disposal the goodwill of millions of Americans. If you throw yourself into the political fray (as you may be about to, if this rally is indeed serious), you have the potential to make a major and I think quite positive impact on American political discourse. You are poised to be the leader of new moderate movement, one that rests on the premise of civil discourse, openness to reason, and an eagerness to actually solve problems.
I say, go for it. Make the most full-throated, heart-felt, call-to-reasonableness you can. Set up the moderate majority, or whatever you want to call it. Use your show and your brand to mobilize the millions of citizens who would pledge to support candidates who will adhere a platform of civility and open-mindedness and a spirit of pragmatic problem-solving – and who might even make it cool once more to solve problems instead of simply firing up the base. Be an explicit force for counter-polarization.
I know it’s a big task. But look around you. Glenn Beck and his merry band of truth-benders at Fox News are mobilizing the armies of cranky crazies to the right, and the loudest voices on the left are those complaining that Obama is a sell-out. This country faces major, generational challenges of transitioning to a 21st-century economy and solving a looming deficit and entitlement crisis. We’re not going to solve them by shouting slogans past each other.