The Most Entertaining Day of the Year

As my preference for Obama isn’t nearly as strong as Scott’s, I have no problem conceptualizing this evening as almost pure entertainment. It’s so much better than the actual election, in that even if my candidate loses I’m unlikely to be subjected to days of crushing depression, ameliorated only by heavy drinking and repeated viewings of the Godfather Part II.

Like Publius, I love a good primary:

But what’s less obvious is how interesting they are from a purely aesthetic perspective. The horse race we’re witnessing is drama of the highest order – pure political theater. And while emotions will surely run high in the weeks to come, political junkies in particular should take a step back and enjoy the beauty of it. Not beauty in the sense of flowers and butterflies, but in a higher, more human, aesthetic sense…..

Aesthetically, it reminded me of boxing at its best. The classic boxing fights (e.g., Ali’s classics) pit two freakishly talented athletes against each other to fight it out in mankind’s oldest sport. Some think it’s barbaric, and they may be right. But from an amoral aesthetic perspective, it’s a thing of beauty. And the better the athletes, and the higher the stakes, the more true this becomes. And that’s how I felt about the debate. I watched two freakishly gifted candidates with professional, efficient, hardened campaign organizations fighting it out one-on-one for the most powerful prize in the world (and maybe in world history).

At this point, I suspect some of you are annoyed that I’m focusing more on surface than substance. What we should be doing is focusing on policy, and ignoring these silly horse race/schoolyard fight dimensions. At the very least, we shouldn’t be romanticizing them the way I’ve done – i.e., reducing important political fights into narcissistic entertainment.

My response, though, is that I’m not ignoring substance when I admire the aesthetics. I completely agree that the stakes are high and that substantive policy disputes are at issue. But to me, the substance feeds the aesthetic. On some level, this is a fight. Try as we may, we can’t avoid conceptualizing it (at least partially) in those terms. But if it’s a fight, it’s a fight with enormous, world-historical consequences. And it’s the underlying significance of the fight that makes the aesthetic so powerful.

Quite.