I’ve done you all a disservice, and I’d like to make amends for it.

See, I’m a politics junkie. I don’t say this sarcastically, what I mean is that I find the game of politics fascinating; the angling, campaigning, image management, backroom deals, all that. As much as straight-up policy issues, I often get tied up in the chess playing because, sadly, that often determines outcomes more than anything else. And besides that, it’s incredibly intriguing.

But, as an anonymous commenter pointed out, it’s mind-numbing and plays into the “lowest common denominator” politics that I should be fighting against, not perpetuating. So let’s take a moment to ask, “why does anyone give a damn about houses and income?”

When it comes to crafting an image of yourself and your opponent, there are primary and secondary issues or characteristics. Primary issues are the “policy” points, things like what bills you championed and how you voted on other legislation. Secondary issues are character traits and personal stories, which are intended to give some kind of indication as to what bills you’ll champion and how you’ll vote on things.

The reason questions like “who would you have a beer with?” resonate with voters is because, aside from the fact that it takes no actual research but instead a “gut feeling”, it seems to answer the implied question of “who would look out for your interests?” When a candidate gives himself the image of being just part of the common clay while his opponent is an “elitist”, the implied message is that the opponent won’t do anything to help the middle and lower class because he’s too stuck up his own ass to care about the simple peasants.

One of the bizarre ironies is that Republicans have managed to give themselves the perception of being the party of the blue-collar worker, fightin’ for the little guy and working their asses off to make sure that average Americans can live the good life, when down the line their policies have done nothing of the sort.

Republicans don’t like minimum wage, don’t like welfare or unemployment, don’t like public schooling, don’t like unions, don’t like universal health care, don’t like Social Security. Conversely, they love corporate deregulation, they love giving tax cuts to the already wealthy, and they love letting the market decide on things that one would imagine everyone should have the right to have (again, health care).

Democrats are the ones to fight for health care for families that can’t afford it, to get better public schools for the kids, and to keep minimum wage high enough that someone earning it isn’t still below the poverty line. Democrats want tax cuts to help out the majority of people, not the people who have the majority of the money. Democrats want you to have a safe retirement.

To re-hash an old issue, one only needs to look at the tax plans between McCain and Obama. Obama’s will offer a greater tax cut for in the area of 90% of American citizens, raising taxes only on the wealthiest <1%. McCain’s regresses sharply, giving gigantic tax breaks to the wealthy and giving less and less as you go down the line. When the median income in the USA is around $50,000 a year, and Obama has better tax relief up to roughly $164,000 a year and not much different until over $250,000 a year, that’s significant. McCain’s plan, unsurprisingly, gives little at the bottom but a tax break of over $400,000 to people in his own bracket.

The Republicans made the estate tax issue sound like middle class, when there was an exemption for states worth less than $675,000 in 2001 and for estates worth less than $2,000,000 in 2008. So if you die this year, if what you plan on leaving to your kids isn’t worth two million dollars, there is not a penny owed in estate taxes. Next year it goes up to $3.5million, but even that was too much for Republicans, who wanted it repealed entirely.

All at once the myth of Republicans caring about the middle class falls away with that single issue. Middle class Americans don’t pay estate taxes, even most upper class Americans don’t pay estate taxes. The Republicans were fighting in defense of the super wealthy, if not the super duper wealthy given some of the offers made (Russ Feingold offered an exemption up to $100million that was turned down). And it was packaged as a middle class issue, so at the end people who didn’t read up thought the Republicans had done them a favor.

Character issues are an attempt to reveal policies, but when we’re talking Senators it isn’t hard to actually follow said policies. It wouldn’t matter if Senator So-and-so had a billion-dollar estate and twenty houses in three countries, if he voted to boost the middle class everything would be gravy. FDR wasn’t exactly a poor man later in his life, but Social Security is arguably the most important piece of legislation to the middle and lower class (if not all classes).

That’s what makes the divide between image and reality in 2008 American politics so infuriating. The Republicans have shanghai’d the “defenders of the average American” line when the exact opposite is true.

Even in terms of simply representing the desires of most Americans, Republicans fall short. In poll after poll, the majority of Americans want out of Iraq, want Roe v Wade to stay in place, and want universal health care. Republicans stand in sharp opposition to each of these issues, but through absolutely ceaseless propagandizing have managed to craft the image that a pro-choice war critic Democrat is “fringe”. Even as two-thirds of Americans want national health care, Republicans are using “my opponent wants universal health care” as an attack.

The dissonance is often difficult to fully appreciate in the same way it’s hard to get an idea of how big a sequoia is when you’re standing with your nose pressed to the trunk. It’s staring us all in the face, but no one seems to step back and look at it.

That’s why, unfortunately, even as their tax plans get dissected and votes on issues that matter to Americans are fastidiously analyzed and compared to popular opinion, it was McCain’s hemming and hawing about how many homes he and his wife own that caught the firestorm. For the first time, we achieved syzygy. The reality that policy wonks had known for some time came out, manifested in one brief, shining moment.

I’m not happy that this was the vehicle by which the Republican hypocrisy unraveled, but I’ll gladly celebrate that it’s happening at all. If anything, it may make the talking heads finally do their damn jobs and start pointing out that, contrary to “common wisdom” in the media, there is no indication in John McCain’s life or his politics to indicate that as president he would do a damn thing to help out anyone below the “so much money I dunno what to do with it all” line.

The stronger the image gets, the more gaffes we find and the more the character issue comes out, the greater the odds of the policies getting the spotlight they should have been getting from the beginning. Plus, I won’t lie, there’s a whole lot of schadenfreude in watching the smug Republicans get thrown into a tailspin when reality comes and kicks down their door.