Have Bumbling Democrats Become Blind to Optics?

In May, Pres. Barack Obama attended a fancy fundraiser at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco for Sen. Barbara Boxer instead of going to the memorial service held the same day for the oil workers who died in the BP oil well explosion.

Then First Lady Michelle Obama went all fiesta on us, enjoying a fancy Spanish holiday while millions of Americans staycationed at home-if they had one.

And yesterday, Rep. Charles "Charlie" Rangel, knee deep in a murky ethics investigation, hosted an opulent "Let Them Eat Cake" birthday party fundraiser for himself, a fancy gala which many of his Democratic colleagues attended, albeit with the enthusiasm of a husband dragged to a romantic comedy.

What's wrong with this picture?

Perhaps in a more innocent, idyllic time, when fish still swam in clear ocean waters, most Americans had jobs, and the Congress was not viewed as more corrupt than the Mafia, these three separate incidents would not have received more than a casual mention on the evening newscast. But with our hapless country going through way more chutes than ladders lately, many Americans are in a crabby mood and do not want to see their leaders leading the good life while they figure out new ways to fix spaghetti.

What is optics in politics?

In a political context, the word optics is a buzzword for how things look, according to the New York TimesOn Language column. It did not look good, for instance, to see Pres. Barack Obama telling jokes to a bunch of big wigs adjacent to a news story of people mourning dead oil workers. Nor did it look good to jobless Americans, whose unemployment checks could soon run out, to see First Lady Michelle Obama hang out with the royals in Spain when many Americans can barely afford a taco. And it did not look good - in fact it looked very, very bad - for elected Democratic leaders to attend a posh fundraiser for a colleague who had recently been charged with major ethical violations, some of which could lead to criminal charges.

Image becomes reality

Perhaps one of the least successful presidential candidates in U.S. history, former Sen. Walter Mondale, best described how important optics is in politics when he said, "Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshape it."

Democrats have long enjoyed the image of being the party of the working people, an image that has long been cast in Mondale's metaphorical cement. Even the optically challenged former presidential candidate, John Edwards, knew that riding around in an old pick up truck when he first ran for the U.S. Senate would get him more votes than pulling into small North Carolina towns in a Porsche or Cadillac, despite the fact he could afford a whole fleet of fancy cars. In fact, Democrats have cleverly used the stereotypical image of "Country Club Republicans" against their rivals to persuade voters that only Democrats have working people's best interests at heart.

Yet, as voters get bombarded with images of Democrats living as large - if not larger- than Republicans, the carefully crafted, long-held image of the Democratic Party as the party of the people will crack open and shatter like an old statue. More Americans, whether they drink tea, coffee, or pomegranate juice, are starting to view both Democrats and Republicans as privileged fat cats, a ruling class whose members have far more in common with each other than the people who pay their salaries.

Sources:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=64395
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07FOB-onlanguage-t.html