Isn't your candidate concrete enough? Return him. In America satisfaction IS guaranteed

I watch the presidential debates on CNN. After each debate, CNN shows a focus group (a bunch of common people living in common places such as Ohio or Missouri) and their reactions to the debate. In the first two debates, it was common for the people in the focus group to vent their disappointment about the lack of concrete proposals by the candidates. They did not say anything specific –the complaint continues- about how they plan to handle issues such as the financial crisis or health care problems. The reporter would side with the common people and face the camera with an expression of unspeakable suffering, concluding something like: "Obviously, these folks think that the candidates are out of touch with the concerns of main street America." However, the truth is that both Mc Cain and Obama are very clear about their plans and priorities. The charge so often repeated in these focus groups that the candidates "don't say anything" is plainly false. The question, then, is: why can't the American people hear them? Two possible explanations. The first is that American people are not used to political discussions anymore. Perhaps the slow but steady destruction of common spaces that took place under neoliberlism is finally taking its high toll on American politics. The reason the audience thinks that Mc Cain and Obama only say "general things" which don't concern them (the audience) is perhaps because they (the audience) are no longer able to identify themselves as part of something general, a public. A second explanation is also possible. Often candidates have to phrase answers in such a way that their message doesn't offend a public sense of property and politeness. Republicans have found this rule of courtesy very useful when defending themselves in a context in which they can be blamed for so many things that it is a miracle that they have a candidate actually running for the presidency. The rule of courtesy helps Republicans because at its center there is an article of faith that reads: it is unpatriotic to criticize America. Candidates, above all Democrats, have to be very careful in phrasing their observations in such a way so that, even as they denounce the fact that the health system is broke or that the financial institutions have withered away into thin air, they simultaneously uphold the idea that this is the best country in the world, the most progressive force in history and that its institutions are the envy of the whole civilized universe. Let's go back to the focus group for a moment. The person waiting for a "concrete answer" to his concern (health care in this case) doesn't want to hear that the problem lies in the speculative practices in the pharmaceutical industry or in the fact that the hospital networks in low and medium income areas are underfunded. He wants a solution for him, not for the problem, because attacking the problem entails the possibility of embarking on an un-American journey.
These two attitudes, the impossibility of conceiving of a public dimension and the impossibility of criticizing America constitutes a sort of shopping mall mentality. Voters, citizens or consumers (whatever they are) crave some kind of personalized attention because this fake friendship is the one they get in their everyday doings with corporate America. As for the conviction that criticizing America is un-patriotic, it seems rooted in a form of pre-emptive satisfaction active in corporative mentality. In every Starbucks there is a sign that reads: if your drink is not good, let us know and we will do it again. Corporations are smart. They know that there are only so many times that you can send your drink back.