“It’s the economy, stupid!”
That was the winning pitch of Bill Clinton in election year 1992. The line actually belonged to his campaign strategist James Carville, and it worked marvelously against re-electionist George Herbert Walker Bush.
Bush was riding high on a 90-percent approval rating after leading the United States to victory in the first war against Saddam Hussein. His campaigners had earlier packaged him as the candidate with “the best resumé in America”: Yale baseball team captain, son of Sen. Prescott Bush, World War II pilot whose plane was shot down in the Pacific, millionaire oil entrepreneur, congressman, US ambassador to Beijing and to the United Nations, CIA director, vice president. In contrast, his opponent, Clinton, suffered from “character issues”: draft-dodger during the Vietnam War, marijuana smoker (“but I didn’t inhale”), and a serial philanderer. And yet Carville framed the campaign in terms of the economic recession, and all of Bush’s strengths were all but lost to the voter.
Fast forward to 2009, and transport yourself to Manila. The initial skirmishes among the declared presidential aspirants already show attempts to frame the debate.
The ruling party has anointed Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro. A party in power that casts its lot with a candidate at the bottom of the surveys is a party confident that it can use that power. Lakas-Kampi is counting on machine politics to deliver the votes. That’s why Malacañang has cracked the whip on its underlings after Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo publicly endorsed Sen. Benigno Aquino III. If machine politics is their game, the machine must be kept intact.
But wasn’t that the same braggadocio that undid Speaker Ramon Mitra during the 1992 presidential elections? Until the election results validated the exit polls, how many of us believed the Social Weather Stations’ reports that the machine votes weren’t morphing into actual votes? Mitra the tradpol kingpin placed third behind Fidel Ramos and Miriam Defensor-Santiago who was then still a political outsider. Sure there was the Cory factor; the incumbent President endorsed Ramos, not Mitra. But Arroyo is no Cory Aquino. She can offer only the bounties of incumbency but not Cory’s halo.
Already, Malacañang has dared Noynoy to debate with Gibo—in the words of former Surigao del Sur Rep. Prospero Pichay Jr., Lakas-Kampi vice president, “so that the people will know who’s the better man.” Compare Noynoy’s and Gibo’s responses when hard-line clergy threatened to blacklist candidates who wouldn’t toe the line on reproductive health. They both supported the bill. Gibo’s reply was proper, even cerebral as he explained in pedestrian terms the concept of church-state separation. Noynoy’s was plain-spoken but no less persuasive about the common sense of letting parents decide for themselves how many children they can raise in dignity. But to borrow from MacLuhan, in Noynoy’s case, the speaker was the message, loyal son of the Church’s ever loyal daughter Cory, who now dares to speak on his own.
The only fly in the ointment was when Noynoy a day or two later began to waffle. He maintained his support for RH but had reservations about the teaching of family planning methods that will, naturally, include condoms and similar stuff. Such slippery hairsplitting is not conducive for building trust, and trust is the strongest thing going for Noynoy right now. In contrast, Arroyo’s betrayal of the people’s trust is the biggest challenge to anyone who will run under her banner—and that is Gibo’s handicap.
Conversely, the “let’s debate” strategy should give only false confidence to Gibo’s camp. The US presidential debates are useful because the voters purport at least to vote on the issues and the platforms. The Filipino voter doesn’t, and when we went opposition for the 2007 senatorial elections, it was out of a visceral rejection of anything stained with the curse of Gloria. That is why it was really smart of Sen. Manny Villar to have shied away from the various presidential hopefuls’ fora. Why waste time in debates where you might blunder into a killer gaffe, when the “Akala mo coño ’yun pala’y laking Tondo” ad works wonders, and Manny is poster-perfect for it?
All these aside, Malacañang’s taunt would have made more sense if Gibo were running against Mar Roxas, since both candidates would be making the same pitch to the voters, as in: “Vote for me. I’m smarter.” Noynoy’s pitch, I imagine, will focus on other virtues.
When we choose among the candidates in 2010, the issue is not who is smarter, but who can be trusted more. The Filipino public has had enough of bright guys who use their genius to cheat and manipulate. The central issue in 2010 should be corruption. It’s not just about Gloria’s lying, stealing and thieving, it’s also about a government that cannot govern. There’s no point having fancy economic projections and strategies, if we know that half the budget will be diverted into the pockets of presidential relatives and their ilk. Corruption perverts our institutions, and shows a lack of R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the Filipino people.
For Noynoy, the message should be “It’s all about trust.” Arroyo’s trust deficit is staggering. Gibo can save his campaign only by disowning her, and in turn risk being called a cad by the unworthy “honorables” hovering around him now.
What we will decide in 2010 is what virtue we want most in our public life. Noynoy offers tiwala. Gibo offers talino. Manny offers sipag at tiyaga. I am not saying that each candidate embodies only one virtue or that each virtue is monopolized by only one candidate. It’s just that, providentially, the 2010 polls are shaping up as an ideological contest, and whoever connects with the Filipino soul most faithfully wins the prize.
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