Applause and Effect: Republican Debates and the Brent Spence Bridge

Approval can be registered in various ways. It can be applause, it can be laughter, or it can be something silent, registered in the soul.

First, clapping. The clapping over Herman Cain's cancer survival at the Fox Republican debate on Monday evening felt mandatory. Herman Cain said he had survived colon cancer but that Obamacare would have killed him. The Republicans burst into applause. The audience stood and clapped. All the candidates clapped. This was wrong on many levels, I think, because although the Republicans did try to show they have hearts -- Cain had nothing to do with his own survival (his doctors may have saved him, but he didn't really do anything himself to survive cancer, so there is no reason HE should have been applauded -- although maybe his immune system should be applauded).

On the other hand, when Gary Johnson told the joke about how the neighbor's dog makes more shovel-ready jobs in a weekend than Obama has made in his entire regime, the laughter was spontaneous. Johnson triumphed insofar as he had made a joke. A joke is a correct judgment. However, it is still unlikely that the dogs are creating the kind of good well-paying jobs that we should look to as models for the American economy.

After the debate, pollster Frank Luntz talked to various audience members. No one liked Perry giving illegal aliens huge handouts to attend the University of Texas. This was silent disapproval. It may have meant that as many as half of the voters would never vote for Perry and instead will vote for Romney. I am now against Perry.

Underneath the louder emotions are moments in which logic and emotion click, and an audience sees something clearly.

What audiences are looking for is a symbol that clarifies their logic. Hitler was able to do this. The Jews stole your money, he said. Kill them, and you'll be rich. It hurt the German people to accept the scapegoating of the Jews (and others), but it was effective in terms of promoting hope for change.

Reagan was good at this, too. Communism is the evil empire. Unlike Hitler, Reagan had a point. Communism withered away, and Eastern Europe was free.

I don't know if Obama is better than Hitler and Reagan. He certainly did more with less in the last election. He had no specifics in his first election. His election slogan was YES WE CAN! Is that even an entire sentence? Didn't he have to say DO WHAT? Now he's got this whole thing going with the Brent Spence bridge over the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Kentucky. It's a giant image, and it's somewhat specific. He wants his new jobs bill to pay for the bridge. He's trying to argue that the Republicans want to deny the citizens of Ohio and Kentucky this bridge. He has incredible imagery of himself shaking hands with construction workers. Obama doesn't tell us how we're going to pay for this, since we have no money. (The country is 14 trillion dollars in debt, or 16 trillion, and sinking.) At present a foreign conglomerate has the contract to rebuild the bridge. There is no money set aside to pay for the job. So are WE going to pay foreign workers to rebuild the Brent Spence?

Obama can play poker. All the others at the table are amateurs. I expect him to rake in huge numbers of votes with his bridge, even though I have no way of knowing where he's going to get the money, or who's going to get the money. Still, I applaud Obama. He's effective in building bridges to the voters. YES WE CAN!

Do what? Should anybody ask him to finish the sentence? Here's some possibilities: destroy the economy? print lots of money? get elected without much of a legislative background? Write an incomplete sentence, like a blank check, and let the voters fill it in with their own hungry hopes? All of the above?