Provokeglobal: Michael Steele Discusses Political Cynicism, Disengagement

(MENAFN- PRovoke) WASHINGTON, DC-Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and now one of the most powerful voices in the conservative“never Trump” movement, provided the audience at PRovokeGlobal today with a disturbing overview of the cynical condition of American politics-and a stark warning that things might be about to get worse.

Speaking with Omnicom Public Relations Group chief executive Chris Foster on a conversation about“Reputation Resilience in a Shifting Political Landscape,” Steele began the discussion with a frank appraisal of the current political landscape, and the party that he once led.

“I have to be honest and say It has been an enormous disappointment for me to watch my party capitulate completely on the idea of putting in front of the American people some sense of the direction we want to take the country. And to the extent that that has been the case, it has largely been through a sort of white nationalist vision with a Christo-fascist component that is antithetical to everything our founders intended.”

Discussing his role as the RNC chair, he told the audience:“My job as a chairman, as a political operator, is to move you to where I need you. So sir, if you are a registered Republican, I need to move you to where I need you. Ma'am, if you are a registered Democrat, I need to move you where I don't need you.

“And so our communication between these two are going to be the same but different. The same in that I'm moving them through my rhetoric, through the ads they see, through the reinforcement of messages by other sources, by the candidates that we put up. We move the pieces on the political chessboard to where we want them to be.”

The current political environment, he said, revolves around two critical issues.

“Probably the number one issue right now across the country is the economy. And as much as folks know that things aren't good, the Dow is over 40,000, jobs are being created, wages are going up, people are making more money, but there are still large pockets of America, where that's not translated exactly. And so the challenge for both candidates has been to sort of give a fuller expression to the moment right now.

“So economy is one, and number two is immigration. And I'm always amused a little bit by the immigration issue, because the people who are most exercised by immigration don't live anywhere near the border. And in fact, the very people that they're claiming are overrunning our country mow their lawn or are taking care of their children. So they're full of crap.”

Nevertheless, he said-making his frustration apparen-both parties have been guilty of cynicism in dealing with concerns over immigration.

“People who are living along the border do have genuine concerns about the porous nature of the border that our government, Republican and Democrats, have refused to address since 2006. And for Republicans it became something we could beat the crap out of Democrats with. And for Democrats it became a thing that they largely fantasized about, that certain things weren't happening. And it was all about birthright citizenship and DACA and all of these other sub-narratives that did not address the overarching, most important issue.”

To a certain extent, Steele's disappointment with the discussion over immigration appears to build on the frustration he felt 14 years ago, during the debate over healthcare reform. That debate appears to have been a turning point in terms of his disillusionment with the process.

“So in 2010, we engaged in a national conversation as then President Obama raised up Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act. I am a conservative. I have an issue and concern about the role of government in matters related to my health, to conversations between me and my doctor.

“And I'm sitting in the room with 14 members of the House Republican Caucus who are themselves doctors. And in the course of all of that, no one could come up with a plan. And it became very clear to me that the fight was more important than the substance of the argument to be made.”

That shocked him, he said, in part because of his background, which made him a kind of outsider, even when he held a position of immense influence within his party. Earlier in his life, he told the audience, he spent time in a monastery, having entered the Augustinian order, which fostered“a state of mind in which you give yourself over in the service to others.

“I'm outside, I've always been outside the system. I've never really played ball. I don't play well with others. You probably got that sense. I can't play that game where, in the healthcare debate, when I realized that this was not what it should be about.

“I wanted to have a conversation on something I thought was important and I wasn't going to play politics with it. Now look, that doesn't mean that as a political actor I don't get it. I know how to play the game. I can play the game. And I want to play the game on stuff that doesn't hurt you. The stuff that doesn't matter in the end. But if it harms anyone else, then we're not playing. Because then, it crosses the line for me.”

But he accompanied that assessment of the political situation with a call to action for both the people in the room and the voting public as a whole, expressing concern that Americans have lost touch with political institutions and no longer even understand how the political process works.

“So we don't know how our government functions. We don't know how our laws are made. We don't know how we elect a president. We no longer teach generation after generation the civic responsibility that's innate and given to us in other aspects.”

That has driven a broader cynicism about both politics and government, he said.

“So there's a point where you say, I don't see myself in certain things that are happening in our country. And that's fair assessment. But where you begin to place yourself in those conversations so that you can be seen is when you take your ass to the polls and vote. It is the one thing of all the things our founders left us, that is the most important thing that they gave us. We the people.

“So can we stop whining about not being represented? Because your ass is in the Constitution. the words are there and they're very clear. So the leaders you have, you put there. There was no backroom in which a president was selected, there was no backroom in which a member of congress was picked.”

Ultimately, the only people who can fix the system, he suggested, are the voters.

“We have a binary election system, so you'll have choice. You'll be able to pick your choice of who is sort of meeting the construction of ideas you have around healthcare, the economy, women's reproductive rights, et cetera.”

But to get there, he said, people have to understand the lengths to which political parties go to discourage that kind of political engagement. He described some of the ways in which engagement is undermined.

“I'm going to create a polling place in your district, sir. And I'm going to put it in a location where I know I have more of you than I have of her. I'll make it easy for you to get there. You men are going to have to catch three buses to get there. So I've sapped your will. And if you do that to an 80-year-old grandma, who used to literally walk down the block to the church basement that had a polling place in it, that's part of how they begin to sap your desire to participate in the system.”

He pointed to“what happened in 2000 in Florida, because they took brand new machines and put them in largely white communities, and they took the bad machines and put them in largely black and brown communities, and as a consequence, there were lines. And so that's how the system shapes and reshapes your attitudes about the voting process and your participation in that process.”

“My question is,” he continued,“why do you let yourself be punked as often as you do? If you know they don't want you to vote, then why do you not vote?

And he concluded the discussion with a warning. Asked by Foster about how the rise of artificial intelligence might impact the process, he provided a dystopian warning.

“It's not good! Y'all don't know what's about to hit you upside your little dumbass head! You don't know! In the Democratic primary in the state of New Hampshire in the winter of 2024, there was a robocall that was sent into selected voters' homes, cell phones, of Joe Biden telling those voters that he did not need them to vote because they had already been so successful in turning down their vote.

“So for low information voters, that was key because it was targeted to them, they heard the president's voice tell them, thank you, but we're good. And that was a movement move, to move voters away from the ballot box. And the problem was, it was an AI generated robocall.”

The future, the story suggested, will require voters to be more engaged, more vigilant, and better educated about how the political system works.

MENAFN29102024000219011063ID1108831180