Moving on with other election-season peeves, next on the list is the tendency to genuflect at a candidate’s feet — and Obama isn’t the only one to receive this treatment. Hillary Clinton got it, and Sarah Palin did before her interviews with the press showed even the faithful that is she is woefully unprepared and unqualified to run her own state let alone the country. McCain? Maybe not so much – it took Palin to fire up the base – although he does have his own herd of worshipful lemmings cheered on by Sen. Joe Lieberman. The point is that people – voters, reporters, Big Talking Heads – treat politicians, our fearless “leaders,” like messiahs instead of, well, politicians.
This is part of the whole cavalry peeve I talked about last week, but more so. It represents a tendency to idealize candidates and reject a more accurate picture. Obama, for example, is not necessarily a grand liberal hero, despite what his more obsessive supporters and rabid conservative critics would believe. In voting for the recent FISA bill, he angered and broke the hearts of many, many lefties. Words to the effect of supporting limited offshore drilling also raised eyebrows, although I’d argue it was an example of bipartisanship and compromise in the service of the goal of a clean energy plan. Then there’s the affaire Rezko, which raises some questions. But, of course, McCain isn’t all that shiny, either. War hero, yes, but also tainted by the Keating Five corruption scandal, knee-deep in lobbyists and Washington insiders, and a flip-flopping panderer who turns against his own legislation and apparently left his independence back in his 2000 bid for president.
Answers Are Scarce
For both gentlemen, questions abound but answers evade. The conclusion is that for all the lofty rhetoric, they are politicians, subject to political realities. The problem with treating candidates like saviours rather is that passion overrules reason, and it’s all too easy to become focused on single issues instead of taking the big picture into account. In other words, we’re not going to get everything we want in a candidate, so we have to accept playing by lesser-evil rules. Besides, if either Republicans or Democrats were serious about voting for principled, ideologically distinct candidates with integrity and experience, they would have respectively chosen Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich as their candidates. How’s THAT for a match-up?
The flipside comes with laying down the hate on the opposing candidate. We’re stuck in an all-or-nothing campaign. It’s not enough to say, “y’know, I just don’t agree with his policies or ideas.” It’s become necessary to thoroughly discredit an opponent in each and every possible way. Even admitting something good about an opponent is a bad thing – because it might somehow erase everything else – a peculiar attitude to which Obama has been subjected to more so than McCain. Where McCain is respected from all quarters for his military service and for a long Senate career, Obama is made out to be a vapid “celebrity” ready to impose Kinsey-like sex education on kindergarteners while taxing everyone into their graves and surrendering to the terrorists that, as a Muslim, he obviously sympathizes with. Somehow, calling McCain old and unable to use email seems pretty harmless as far as cheap shots go.
In sorting through all these peeves – another obvious one would be the shock everyone expresses whenever bipartisanship occurs – two presidential criteria arise:
• Ability to articulate a vision to guide the legislative process – and create excitement about that vision.
• Ability to compromise with the goal of achieving as broadly inclusive a consensus as possible, in accordance with a national vision.
McCain indisputably has more experience than Obama. And he has been known, at least in the past, to think for himself. But Obama, while certainly not a perfect candidate – I’ve always seen him as an establishment candidate, however polished and inspiring, not a revolutionary – is not an inexperienced noob. He’s highly educated, has a respectable amount of legislative experience (even if “small” in comparison to McCain or Biden), and an overall career experience that translates into a skill set useful for managing people.
Getting past the “experience” and “character” debates that have so far made the campaign a street fight, the question of who can best serve as a guiding force is far more important than the petty insults over this particular bit of experience or that particular nugget of character. For my money, McCain’s botched, theatrical mishandling of the economic crisis, among other things, demonstrates a complete lack of vision and sincerity, illustrating more than ever how he is a big phony, a mere repeat of Bush, equally detrimental to conservatives and liberals. (It says something that even conservatives like George Will have become skeptical (http://www.washingtonpost.com/) of the Republican candidate.)
Obama, whose celebrity is far from a bad thing despite what jealous, petulant Republicans say – has the enthusiasm of a world ready to re-engage with the U.S. and the excitement of young voters ready to engage the civic process. He has, indeed, articulated a vision reminiscent of FDR and Kennedy, and displayed the measured rationality of a man who doesn’t jump the gun and jerk knees, but proceeds with deliberation. Of course there’s politics in that. But if the Democratic candidate doesn’t live up to the hope he’s evoked, if he turns out to be empty rhetoric, then there’s always the 2012 election to do something about it.
This week at Frédérik's blog (http://frederik-sisa.blogspot.com/), read an interview too hot for thefrontpage online.com. It's about sex. It's about culture. All from the perspective of sex blogger and phone sex worker Ellie Lumpesse. Click here to read. (http://frederik-sisa.blogspot.com/)