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Our political system and elections within it are the model of a finite game within an infinite game. In the infinite game, the daily governing, the daily wheeling and dealing that have continued for 200 years, the purpose of the players is to keep the game in play. Within that infinite game, the business of electing officials is a finite game, where titles such as ‘Senator,’ ‘Governor,’ and ‘President’ are awarded. To win a finite game, the player must be intent on playing for finite - tangible - gains, which the title is a symbol of. Howard Dean could not have won the title of “Democratic presidential nominee,” nor the title of “President,” for the simple reason he did not want the finite gains from winning such a contest badly enough to adopt the role-play required of a finite player.
In his 1986 book, Finite and Infinite Games, James P. Carse writes the following:
“Inasmuch as a finite game is intended for conclusion, inasmuch as its roles are scripted and performed for an audience, we shall refer to finite play as theatrical. Although script and plot do not seem to be written in advance, we are always able to look back at the path followed to victory and say of the winners that they certainly knew how to act and what to say.
“Inasmuch as infinite players avoid any outcome whatsoever, keeping the future open, making all scripts useless, we shall refer to infinite play as dramatic.
“Dramatically, one chooses to be a mother; theatrically, one chooses the role of mother.”
Howard Dean was the infinite candidate of 2004, whether by choice or by his personal nature is unimportant. Where the other, more successful candidates adopted roles — the “presidential” candidate, the “son of a mill-worker” candidate, even the “lefty pinko” candidate — Howard Dean peeled back the curtain of political theatre and showed his audience what was going on backstage. Although he was assigned a role by the game’s referees, “the angry candidate,” he and that part of the audience that was rooting for him publicly rejected that role loudly and often. He was assigned the role, but refused to cooperate.
“Since finite games can be played within an infinite game, infinite players do not eschew the performed roles of finite play. On the contrary, they enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy and self-veiling, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players. ... They freely use masks in their social engagements, but not without acknowledging to themselves and to others that they are masked.”
There is no better example of this sort of infinite play than the remarks that often ended Dean’s rallying speeches: “The biggest lie that people like me tell people like you at election time, is ‘If you vote for me, I’ll solve all your problems.’” Mid-campaign, the NY Times quoted him as saying, “my handlers said I have to not talk about that.”
Say hello to the man behind the curtain.
Another instance in which Howard Dean’s veil was pushed aside came during a debate where he was asked, if president, in what year of his administration would be be able to get the country’s books back into black ink and he replied that it would come in his sixth or seventh year. As the everyone around him chortled, he looked up and asked, “whaat?” as if incredulous at their incredulousness.
These instances of truth-telling in which the veil was pushed aside or slipped came to be known as Howard Dean’s “gaffes.” If you want to be a serious candidate, if you want to be a finite player going for finite gains or title, especially in a game with as high stakes as the presidency does, you can’t afford to allow the veil to slip.
“Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of play, but in the course of play.
“The death of an infinite player is dramatic. It does not mean that the game comes to an end with his death; on the contrary, infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing the play. For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others. ...”
Throughout the last several months, many have tried to claim that upon his candidacy ending, he would pick up his marbles and retreat to a corner, or worse, go third party. This in spite of his repeated claims he would back the eventual nominee if it should not be him. One of the most telling moments (in the debates) that none of the other candidates would drop their role as a serious, or finite, candidate came when all on a stage were asked if they thought Howard Dean could defeat George Bush. None rose their hand. Dean, however, turned around and said he felt any one of the candidates could beat George Bush. Whether he truly believed it or not was beside the point. It showed that he, unlike the other candidates, was prepared to accept his eventual “death” in play.
The fact that Howard Dean was already developing a plan to put into play upon his “death” is further evidence of his acceptance of its eventuality.
So what about the internet — that tool that allowed Dean’s candidacy to go as far as it did? The internet is the premier realm of the infinite player, and the reason is one of boundaries versus horizons.
“While finite games are externally defined, infinite games are internally defined. The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of an infinite game eliminates boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time.”
Every campaign needs a media from which to project its message. Traditional media is defined by its boundaries. Licenses are needed to broadcast on radio and TV, large amounts of money are necessary to buy advertising. Newspapers need to have enough advertisers to pay for printing its content, and enough content to fill the spaces where there is no advertising. Leaflets are confined to the spaces where they are left (and the cost and availability of resources).
The internet, however, is an infinite resource where there the only boundaries are the basic cost of bandwidth and the spatial allocation of an IP address. The rest is all horizon. The internet was a game board just waiting for two master infinite players — Howard Dean and Joe Trippi — to wander into the room and make it sing.
“Society is a manifestation of power. It is theatrical, having an established script. Deviations from the script are evident at once. Deviation is antisocial and therefore forbidden by society under a variety of sanctions. ...
Deviancy, however, is the very essence of culture. Whoever merely follows the script, merely repeating the past, is culturally impoverished.
“Cultural deviation does not return us to the past, but continues what was begun and not finished in the past. Societal convention, on the other hand, requires that a completed past be repeated in the future. Society has all the seriousness of immortal necessity; culture resounds with the laughter of unexpected possibility.”
(I don’t believe it should be necessary at this time to delve into the reasons why the internet is more of a culture than a society. This is something that should be self-evident to all who are intimately acquainted with the internet.)
If traditional fundraisers are societal, melding Howard Dean’s campaign to the internet was all about deviance. It was the laughter of unexpected possibility making its voice bubble up to the rooftops when Dean was encouraged to and did, at the last minute, pick up a red bat symbolizing the website’s fundraising gimmick and bring it on stage at Bryant Park. The unexpected possibility of blogger upon blogger picking up the message and running with it. Their differences, some of them, with Dean's positions were of lesser importance than his campaign's intuitive ability to allow the culture to develop itself rather than impose its own societal rules upon it.
It also explains why traditional pols were so hostile to Dean’s campaign. Society, bounded by rules, met head on with culture which it could not control. Fear ruled.
That Al Gore Jr., the former vice-president whose backing helped launch the internet chose to endorse Howard Dean, the candidate who by accident or by design tapped into its previously unused power source, was only fitting. Unfortunately, it drove fear into the hearts of the Election game’s finite players, who saw the culture outside of their control as more of a threat than ever.
They fought back. And they won.
Some of them have tried, are trying, to tap into the internet and repeat Dean’s masterful play of this resource. They will continually fail to at this as long as they attempt to impose society upon the culture — or until they are able to by placing more and more boundaries upon the internet. The latter is a possibility in the future if we are not wary, but that’s for a whole ‘nuther essay.
For now those who embraced Trippi & Dean have the opportunity, if they so choose, to keep the game in play. In the finite game to determine who will be the US President, Dean died on the field. But there’s a good chance the player who took on the role as “the presidential candidate” can win in its end, and we’ll have four years to go to work. It is time for the infinite players to roll up their sleeves.
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