Richard Ford GOVERNMENT

Politics
Ford, like most political writers wanted some kind of social breakthrough and revelation to occur with the publishing of his new novel “Lay of the Land”. More than anything he wanted political consequences. He felt (rightly so) that it made no sense that a party could come into power simply by rigging the election. But he knew that this was inevitable he feels voting is a forgotten responsibility, “To Americans, politics is a TV show every night between six thirty and seven. And we’re promised by our constitution the privilege of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... but [for Americans] politics falls into a sort of forgotten responsibility which is taken care of by a highly polished political class...” Ford thought that setting his newest novel in that tender time of political confusion during the 2000 election would bring people back to what happened. To make them remember and make them upset again.
“I thought if I set this book in that interregnum period between when we American’s voted when the Republican via the Supreme Court stole the election, I thought I could draw attention to something that American’s slept through, which is our civic responsibility, our franchise, when we didn’t rise and revolt, when we didn’t do more than almost just sheepishly vote. There was a time in that particular period of weeks, and Vice President Gore was particularly egregiously lax in this, when we as citizens, and I count myself as culpable here, should have done more than we did to [connect] to the people who were deciding the election, ‘Hey, a lot of people voted for Vice President Gore. In fact more voted for him than this moron who became the President.’ and I just thought that it was a time that America needed to come, through the agency of my book, back to.”

In Ford’s recent commentary “Gov’t on our Minds” he remarks on similar topics as he did in the Frye Festival interviews but with a slightly different twist. He still thinks Americans (himself included) don’t like voting but he now says they never think of politics when in reality they can’t think of anything but politics simply because American’s are bombarded with it left right and center.
“The midterm election, however—the constitutionally mandated annoyance whereby all of the Congress and a third of the Senate (plus eight jillion local likelies) have to stand before us once again—pretty much insures that we can’t get government out of our minds, lives, hair, dreams, and just be satisfied being “the governed.”
That goes back to the analogy of the TV show. American’s are just observers of a terrible soap opera that they are addicted to (eg. Ms. Kaye and Coronation Street). The TV show becomes a lifestyle or a fad (think Team Edward/ Team Jacob but with political candidates).

Ford also has bad news for anyone who tries to speak out against politics and those involved in it.
“Writers don’t have a platform in America today, you can’t do what you can do today which is write into the Globe and Mail if you know something and Peggy Atwood can write to the Globe and Mail have something on her mind and see it published. You can’t do that with the New York Times. You probably can’t even do it with the ‘Des Moines Register’. Can‘t do it with the ‘Sacramento Bee’...but you can write a novel whose intention is to get at something that hasn’t been got at before,”
Although Canada’s government is unfathomably boring at least we have the ability to comment on it in a public forum. A lot of work has to be done to say something about the situation now. By the time it takes to write and publish a novel, the political situation could have completely cooled off. No one would be interested. I feel Ford must feel this way sometimes. He’s used to writing about things that happened though and uses fiction as a vehicle for it. An essay on the 2000 election doesn’t exactly tantalize readers in bookstores across America. Lay of the Land does.