[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img]To some extent, the lowered bar that sees candidates halleluiahed for promising the obvious, has to dampen the enthusiasm around Obama’s campaign, in the sense that unity, hope and change for the better, change for the better, while very good things, are also fairly expected. When political bodies are deadlocked, thanks to partisan bickering, nothing gets done and people get rightly annoyed. That’s how we get fillet of incumbent on the menu. (Mmm, tasty.) Unity, optimism, a can-do attitude are just what we need.
Of course, when no one else is saying that, when the focus is on the quasi-mythical beast called “experience,” stating the obvious can seem like a breath of fresh air. After all, it’s well and good to talk about “experience” and, here’s my favourite buzzword, “solutions.” In the end, it’s not like the President unilaterally implements his/her vision. The focus on detailed, airtight plans to, say, fix health care or deal with the quagmire in Iraq, are not so important considering that the President is only one player of a political decision-making process that involves Congress and, of course, the hoi polloi we call the American People. The best laid plans of mice and Presidents can go to waste if other decision-makers don’t go along with it. What is needed is a management vision and, if anything, it is Clinton’s promise of a sinister 3 a.m. phone call and McCain’s desire to bomb Iran, stay in Iraq for a hundred years, and take President Bush’s gunboat diplomacy to scary new heights to lower that bar enough to make Obama’s message real fresh air instead of a mere perfume.
Disturbing is how the entrenched cynicism of American politics not only lowers the bar but puts it above quicksand. In the case of Obama, the recent furour over Geraldine Ferraro’s odious, intellectually-challenged, simplistic, frankly stupid comments illustrates how, in some quarters, Obama’s attempts to inspire hope inspires, instead, suspicion in some quarters. There’s a problem in crediting Obama’s success as due to his race when considering that he also faces obstacles by having a name like Barack Hussein Obama and that, whether we want to admit it or not, the U.S. still has profound traumas in the area of race that challenges non-whites. (InterPress Services reports http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41556 that a U.N. panel recently concluded that the U.S.’ racial divide supports a two-tier society among such areas as criminal justice) And when Ferraro resorts (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/11/) to whining about attacks on her comments on account of her being white and continues to whine about the whole thing in interview after interview, it’s hard not to conclude that dirty race-baiting politics are at play. It’s no wonder Bob Cesca wonders (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/) if Clinton isn’t some sort of Republican Manchurian candidate; her campaign certainly reinforces the distorted view of the world held by Republicans. It’s no wonder Keith Olbermann accuses (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/12/) Clinton of “campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and [she] were the Republican”
Interpretation, Not Truth
In the end, though, there’s no truth to be found in this flap, only interpretation – and that’s the problem that keeps the argument spinning in circles. The underlying issue is really the systematic effort to paint Obama as a noob off the street – despite the fact that he served in the Illinois Senate from 1996 and has worked in the Senate since 2004, doing the work a Senator is supposed to be doing. (He also surrounded himself with experienced advisors – isn’t that the sign of a good manager, choosing the right people for the right jobs?) Relegating his success to race is really just a way to avoid accepting that his message of hope, rather than fear, actually resonates with voters and that by being neither Clinton Part Deux nor McBush, he represents a break from the old generation. The fear that Obama might really be Something Different – whether he is or not; the perception that he is different is enough – is threatening.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not shilling for Obama. But since my pony in the race was put to pasture a few months ago, one has to go with the better candidate remaining. With all the dirty tricks, triangulation, “He’s not Muslim…so far as I know” waffling, and the rest, that candidate isn’t Hillary Clinton in my view.
The point: All this petty bickering has nothing to do with the issues that we should be talking about. While Democrats eat themselves, President Bush and his supporters continue to damage the country with impunity. In the midst of all of this, politics has taken an anti-intellectual bias that disregards mature and civil discourse. The fault, of course, lies with voters who accept a lowered bar.
