The man on Undecided Street

by David Benjamin

“The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, ‘Where is the best place to go to?’ He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages—heaven for climate, and hell for society.”
—Mark Twain

MADISON, Wis.—The last time—well, the only time—I talked about politics with my California friend Fillmore, he averred that he was an “independent” voter “undecided” on his choice in the next election.

What he meant was, “I’m a Republican.”

What I didn’t ask—and should have—was, “When was the last time you voted for a Democrat?” He would have dodged this trap, claiming a dubious loss of memory, or hiding behind the ex post facto privacy of the voting booth.
But I knew Fillmore. Raised in an affluent, conservative family, he was cautiously inclined, upwardly mobile and fiercely capitalist. He was, above all, proudly detached from politics (a dirty business), indifferent not only to the issues but fuzzy on the candidates’ identities. Although he was sufficiently conscientious to cast a ballot on Election Day, this would be his first sentient moment of the political season. His choice would more reflexive than reflective.

I knew he had pretty much always voted straight-ticket GOP, but he would never concede to me, nor to himself, his lifelong party loyalty. He’s a stealth Republican just as another of my “independent” friends—whom I’ll call Girard—is a stealth Democrat. If either were to be buttonholed on the street by one of the crack roving reporters from the New York Times, they would cleverly characterize themselves as “undecided,” thrilling the journalist much the same way that an ornithologist would react to sighting an ivory-billed woodpecker. Clutching Fillmore and/or Girard lest they fly away, the reporter would fawningly ply each with the $64,000 questions and and then, in his breathless dispatch to the re-write crew in Manhattan, refer to Fillmore/Girard as “swing voters.”

If said reporter had gotten to know either Fillmore or Girard as I have, he would have seen through their artifice and read their actual sentiments.

I read one of those Times stories this morning, in which three reporters ganged up on the septuagenarian Ma and Pa Reed in darkest Pennsylvania. The Reeds professed that Tuesday’s debate between two staggeringly different presidential candidates had done nothing to solve their quandary. One candidate had spent the last nine years inextricably duct-taped to the lives of Ma and Pa Reed without once articulating a coherent position on a policy issue affecting them. They found the other candidate disappointing because she failed to offer sufficient “detail” on a host of coherent positions on policy issues that affect the lives of Ma and Pa Reed.

What they meant was, “We’re Republicans.”

Times reporters are fairly astute. But if they had stated what was obvious, that these two purported “independents” who claimed to be “undecided” were actually locked into voting for the GOP guy—no matter how vulgar, corrupt or senile he might be—just as they had voted in every election since Nixon/Humphrey.

The colloquy between the Times trio and the Reeds continues one of the least enlightening practices in journalism, the man-on-the-street interview. It consists of cornering a total stranger, supposedly representative of a broad swath of the community in which he or she has been cornered, and asking one loaded question about this pivotal moment in the history of the Republic.

Although the answer is almost always halting and equivocal—or downright nutty—it affords the reporter the opportunity to turn to the camera, or call up re-write, and announce, “There you have it. The Voice of the People!”

I’ve had fifty-odd years in journalism and I’ve never attempted a man-on-the-street interview, partly because I don’t trust the man on the street but mostly because it would take a thousand of these intrusive and evasive encounters to compile even a fragmentary impression of public opinion in that locale.

Worst of all, my editor would expect me to disregard the rock-ribbed partisans on the street—which means almost everyone—but find somehow, somewhere the rare waffler, the “likely” voter yet to make up his or her mind.

Seemingly, remarkably, the “mainstream media” have yet to realize, or simply prefer to ignore, that most “undecideds” are liars. They know what they’re going to do, just as they’ve always done. But they’re cagey, and they sense that the curious reporter—who knows nothing of them or their predilections—is easy pickings for a harmless, amusing lie.

“Sir, how will the outcome of this debate affect your vote?”

“Aw, jeez, I dunno. I’m really on the fence here. I wish they’d told me more. Why do they have to bicker like that? And what about those poor little dogs?”

“Thank you, thank you, sir! There you have it, America … ”

There are, as far as I’ve discerned, four reasons for voters to pose as undecided despite their long-held partisan leanings. The first is a healthy reluctance—which I share—to be identified as a member of any group, especially when it’s difficult to agree with some of its dogma. Can you call yourself Catholic, for example, when you support abortion rights?

Second, I suspect that Fillmore, living in a mixed community of San Francisco liberals and Marin County libertarians, found it prudent, lest he alienate some of his friends, to camouflage his political biases. This is a strong motive.

Third, the undecided independent might be truly irresolute, not just about the latest election but about getting involved at all in politics, or even democracy. There are millions of people like this. They survived Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union without a scratch or recrimination.

Finally, and this is the biggest category, many of these folks are just butt lazy, a tendency that could be easily revealed by a reporter with the initiative, although it would violate the sacred code of the hit-and-run man-on-the-street ambush, to keep asking questions.

For example, Ma and Pa Reed lamented a dearth of policy details from the candidate for whom they would not vote (even if she promised to save the cats, dogs and ducks of Springfield from the Great Haitian Barbecue).

Follow-up #1: Okay, folks, so, tell us: About what do you need to know more, specifically, on what particular issue that affects you personally?

Follow-up #2: Okay then! Have you looked up the candidates’ specific positions on this point, to see if they’re posted online?

Follow-up #3: No? Really? Have you heard of Google?

Follow-up #4: Well, good. So then, on this and the other issues for which you’re desperate for details, what are your sources? Whom do you google? What do you read? Whom do you trust?

Follow-up #5: I see. Well then, please explain. If you’re so all-fired interested that your vote depends on it, why do you know so little about this issue and about the candidate’s established public position on this and related matters?

Follow-up #6: Why have you waited so long to find out, and why in God’s name would you depend on a television debate to fill your vast void of knowledge on this vital issue?

Follow-up #7: C’mon, man. Do you really give a shit?

Questioning like this wouldn’t shake most obstinate undecideds from the comfort of tantalizing disengagement. It’s their only moment in the spotlight. But it might shatter the spotlight. It might force editors everywhere to liberate their journalists from the degrading and benighted ordeal of asking random pedestrians stupid questions, to which the only answers must be even stupider.