The score is 86 to 79, and there is a minute and a half to play in a game between two big-time NCAA basketball teams. The game is a regular season game, no more of a must-win for either team than any other, but the losers have already started to foul the winners. Each time the winning team gets the ball, the member of the losing team with the lowest number of infractions scored against him fouls the member of the winning team with the poorest record at the foul line. The fouled player goes to the line, makes one or two points, or none; and the losing team gets the ball back and a chance to score a two- or three-point field goal. The losing team scores or not, gives up the ball, and fouls again. This scenario will repeat itself until the final buzzer.
Most basketball games end this way these days. It’s normal, what we expect, not remarkable. If a losing team should opt out of the procedure and play out a game without fouling, fans and sportswriters would call them losers, accuse them of lacking in competitive spirit, or worse yet, lacking a proper work ethic. Their coach would be vilified for failing to teach them proper values, and perhaps be fired. The fact that this style of play is unsportsmanlike, involves intentional rule breaking, and is something that a society that values fairness and the rule of law ought to reject, has never seemed to occur to anybody since the practice began forty or fifty years ago. By now, as I say, it’s normal, what we expect. A species of flagrant unsportsmanlike conduct has become the right thing to do.
If I ask myself why this should be so, part of my answer has to recognize that we live in a society in which winning trumps everything else. It’s so important to be a winner, to be associated with winners and winning (and even more important, not to be a loser), that when some curmudgeon like me questions some injustice that is broadly perceived to be an enabler of winning, I (or whatever person does this) will automatically be accused of 1) not understanding how things are and what’s really important, 2) being a wimp or a wuss (that is, a loser), or at a certain level at which this discourse is sometimes pursued, 3) being un-American or unpatriotic.
We live in a time in which the Presidency of the United States (at certain times in the last century called imperial), has largely become a criminal enterprise, pursuing an illegal program of domestic spying, detaining foreigners without due process of law, engaging in criminal torture, and pursuing a foreign war that has no strategic or other value to this country outside the interests of a venal military establishment and the presidency’s own need for legitimacy and a second term in office. The president who led us into this situation is now vastly unpopular. It ought to be possible to deconstruct the moral pretensions of his administration and put right at least some of its most egregious wrongs.
But apparently not. George Bush is unpopular because he didn’t win the war in Iraq, not because his depredations have offended the moral sensibilities of a great number of Americans. John McCain, who aspires to be Bush’s Republican successor, tells us that we can still win the Iraq war if we just hire him as the new coach; and he has now backed away from any criticism of the war or opposition to torture, echoing the president’s claim that waterboarding is a crucial tool in the war on terror, so as to appear tough and patriotic — to look like a winner, one supposes. Even Barack Obama, perhaps the war’s most serious critic among remaining presidential candidates, has criticized the war on pragmatic, not on moral, grounds.
Looking like a winner can be as important as winning in today’s high-stakes political arena. Ron Elving reviews the results of the Texas Primary/Caucus at npr.org and argues that the Clinton campaign had anticipated a split decision before it occurred.
That’s why efforts had been made to discredit the caucuses in advance. Her campaign complained that the caucuses were too small to be representative and too random in administration to be fair.
On caucus night, her campaign held a stormy conference call with reporters to say Obama forces were attempting to hijack the proceedings at specific sites. Similar complaints had been lodged against caucuses in other states in January and February, as the Obama campaign racked up consistent wins in delegate counts.
The Clinton campaign have consistently followed an endgame strategy of fouling their opponent, gaining whatever short term advantage that strategy can produce, in order to look as much like winners as possible. Clinton even gave a victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, and has continued to follow that strategy as she has lost contest after contest. With respect to Texas,
. . . most of the country will go on thinking that Senator Clinton collected a bonanza in Texas . . . . So even if she didn’t, and even if she did not quite meet her own goal . . . , she got her momentum back . . . .
That is: she started to look like a winner again.