An Election To Think About
Rarely does a presidential year bring out the best in our national character though it’s possible hat by November this one could. No one can say with certainty whether that better vision of governance that so many of us feel is needed is really in the wind. We live in a big country with legitimately divergent perspectives that many would seek to exploit in the coming months and some assuredly will. But we are hopeful fall will bring continued change in the cultural climate and by January, genuinely better national leadership than we’ve seen these past eight years. Few of us would even argue we’re somehow better off now because we’re not and most everyone knows it. Both parties claim a corner on change, a profound mystery or an oddly veiled rebranding, and every vote counts.except in Ohio, Florida, and a few other states.
We respect John McCain’s personal life story, but we do struggle to take some of his views seriously, and we’re very concerned about his judgement. We’ll return to both these things after the debates have helped us all see the candidates in better focus. Like most people we’re moved by the story of McCain’s captivity and leadership as a young man. But like many people with a long career in public service, his lengthy record is a very mixed bag at best, and some of the things he advocates, like privatizing social security, are truly bad ideas.
Then of course there’s Sarah Palin, McCain’s wild card and certainly one of the most unusual electoral choices to run a big and important country. Though she apparently sees herself as a “hockey mom” grounded in the concerns most of us share, Palin’s perspectives on a range of issues are unusually extreme for a vice-presidential candidate and potential world political leader. She thinks creationism should be taught in public schools, questions whether human activity has caused climate change, and wants to outlaw all termination of pregnancies even in cases of rape and incest. She supported Pat Buchanan for president, sued the federal government for listing polar bears as an endangered species, and believes the Iraq war is “a task from God.” She is of course quite attractive and reads well from a teleprompter. So while we’d be inclined to trust her to deliver the evening news, trusting her to make that news is altogether different. Ms. Palen’s already warned the media don’t get her mad because she’s a pit bull, so we’ll steer clear of that and not address some of the problems that have arisen about her record. But one tough-talking new media star doesn’t trouble us nearly as much as the prospect of Ms. Palin one cardiac-impaired heartbeat from world leadership. That’s scary. We normally don’t quote other newspapers here but when the New York Times called her “alarmingly out of touch with reality,” we think they got it exactly right. When your message is from beyond the pale, attractive doesn’t count, or shouldn’t. .
Elections in a more perfect world would be about issues, not images, and about policies and visions of governance and not the visage of personalities. That realistically, may be too much to hope for given that news and pop culture are barely distinguishable, and our voting process sometimes mirrors American Idol better than it does the vision of our founding fathers. So while we look forward to more substantive discussions amongst the candidates, if the worst is yet to come and we suspect it is, we’ll all be seeing it soon enough; the disinformation, the swiftboating, the suppression of voting rights in key states and heaven knows what else the Karl Roves of this world have dreamed up. We suspect we’ve seen the previews already; in preemptive vilifications of the media for doing things like vetting Ms.Palen’s background as well as the RNC should have, and in the aggressively divisive speechmaking of former candidates or almost-candidates Huckabee, Romney, Guiliani and Pataki. Ever grateful for the small things, we’re just thankful it’s not one of them leading their party’s ticket.
We couldn’t say whether Lincoln is rolling in his grave. But the party he founded seems to be betting there’s a mainstream in American politics which now flows due south past the former New Orleans and into the Gulf of Refineries. To navigate that stream, we think they’re preparing to launch a culture war between those who like country music and those who like other music, between those who cherish the second amendment and those who cherish them all, and between those who tolerate the need for government and those who just plain don’t want it in their lives, except to prevent women from choosing whether to have children, or to deny equal protection to the one-in-ten of us who aren’t heterosexual. It’s an odd main stream but it could swell by election day.
We hope everyone’s ready to listen closely and critically, to trust their senses, their smarts, and their intuition, and to vote for the future they want to live in as if our nation depended on it. BP