More election thoughts from afar
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2007
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Trip End
Jul 16, 2008
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Hue,
Vietnam
Sunday, March 9, 2008
I'm a Republican. I'm supposed to enjoy what is happening now. After all, the slow-motion train wreck that Hillary Clinton is imposing on the Democratic party, her attempt to secure the nomination for herself despite the almost impossible mathematical odds by destroying Barack Obama in exactly those states the Democrats most need to carry in November, obviously benefits my party and our candidate John McCain.
Yet I hate it, and I keep hoping for a final Obama victory, one that drives a stake through Hillary's stony heart and puts the undead two-headed Clinton monster down forever.
In the 1990s the Democrats made a deal with the devil. They nominated a persuasive, charming and corrupt man as President because they believed he would win. He did. Then they re-nominated him after the dimensions of his corruption had been revealed, believing he would win again. As he did.
In doing this, they removed the very concept of character from the qualifications for political office. Every revelation of another Clinton misdeed became the occasion for a new attack on "the vast right-wing conspiracy", or an assertion that values, not virtues, should be the basis for political support. Thus Patricia Ireland, head of the National Organization of Women, declined to condemn Bill Clinton for sexually assaulting Kathleen Wiley and raping Juanita Broderick, reasoning that it is acceptable to be a rapist as long as one is pro-choice.
Now the Democrats have available to them another young Presidential candidate. Where Bill Clinton was persuasive, charming and corrupt, Barack Obama is eloquent, charming and decent. And the Democrats have lost the very vocabulary needed to differentiate between an Obama and a Clinton (either Bill or Hill). The two Clintons are capable bad people of liberal political inclinations (Bill) and liberal political convictions (Hillary) respectively. The country and the Democratic Party will both be better off when and if they are finally removed from center stage of our national political life.
I think a Presidential contest between Obama and McCain could be what a 1964 battle between John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater might have been - a debate about ideas and national policy that is elevating and clarifying, not divisive and obscuring.
One can dream.
In any case, as a Republican I hope my party's candidate wins in November, but as an American I would rather see John McCain lose to Barack Obama than see him beat Hillary Clinton.
Comments
Character
The suggestion that corruption in presidents is correlated with Democrats and the 1990s is more than a little nearsighted. For me, torture, the Geneva Conventions, and beating bad data to death in order to bring the country to war with a really crappy plan are all character issues. Even if you believe these are things over which men of Character can disagree, we are not quite old enough where we can claim to actually have forgotten Watergate.
Are there Character issues with tarring Hillary with the brush of Bill's alleged rapes? It is clear Obama wouldn't go within 100 miles of doing something like this, I don't think McCain would either.
But your largest point is one which I say a great Amen to. A race between Obama and McCain will elevate the playing field itself to heights it will never get to with Clinton in the race. And they both reject torture four-square and unequivocally. Men of different parties, diametrically different views on the war, but they agree on this. Two men of character rejecting torture. Coincidence? I think not.