It’s late, I should go to bed, but I’ve been thinking how very worried Republican (and right-leaning Independent) voters are about this election. In the line at the County Building for early voting, I noticed a palpable undercurrent of grim anxiety. They’re disillusioned with Bush, they’re unenthusiastic about McCain, they don’t trust Obama—they’re distraught and afraid, and their leaders’ campaigns encourage their fears.
I realize that I am not a trustworthy source for this group, being a Democrat by apparently innate temperament, rooting for the left since Nixon/McGovern in 1972 (age 14) and in every election since. But there is really not that much to be afraid of. I can tell you my fear—it’s that Obama will be too much of a centrist and conciliator, that he won’t fight hard enough for the issues that matter to me, like pushing universal health care, renouncing torture, rolling back the threats to civil liberties from the “War on Terror,” getting our soldiers out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (etc., etc.).
Obama is a centrist Democrat. He is middle of the road. His views, likely policies, and natural inclinations are much more mainstream America than those of the Bush administration. Think FDR, think LBJ (before the McNamara escalation in Vietnam), think William Jefferson Clinton. I realize that these guys are demonized by the wingnut fringe, but really, how scary and un-American were they? How awful was life during their tenures as president? Obama is black, and he has an unusual name, but those things are not signifiers of sinister mystery. He’s a smart kid who grew up with advantages and disadvantages, who missed his father and was loved by his grandparents, who made it into the best schools, who is idealistic and ambitious, who is a canny politician, who has an optimistic and imperturbable disposition, who is organized, who married well to a smart woman, who has cute kids, who is a gifted orator, whose character is a mix of strengths and weaknesses as is anyone’s.
He’s not a monster, he’s not a Manchurian candidate, he’s not got a hidden agenda. He’s going to win on Tuesday. And everything will be OK. Believe me. It’s gonna be all right.
4 comments:
I agree that it will be nice to have a non-crazy, non-idiot in the White House.
But I had to take issue with this:
FDR, think LBJ (before the McNamara escalation in Vietnam), think William Jefferson Clinton
LBJ was the one in charge. The buck stopped with him. JFK got things started and then LBJ escalated. It's of a piece with U.S. foreign policy for the last 200 years--Democrat, Republican, it's made little difference when it comes to military aggression.
Clinton was the one who laid the groundwork for the Iraq invasion, and he and his wife both publicly supported the war. Truman was the only leader in history to use nuclear weapons--and he used them on civilian targets.
It's an open question whether Obama will change course on American aggression abroad, but if he did, he'd be the first Democrat ever to do so. Matt Yglesias's idea that if we could just return to the days of the sensible Democrats, everything will be ok again, is misguided.
But I understand you're looking at a radically different political landscape in Utah than I am--Provo has got to be ground zero for crazy Obama conspiracy theories.
Hah! That makes me laugh. I was going to include more of my leftist bias in this post [acknowledging the long shameful history of American imperialism, black ops abroad, dirty tricks at home, equivalence of Dems and Republicans when they get a little power] but I thought it might dilute my message too much. I also thought I'd wait until the day after the election to start ranting. Of the people in the primaries, the ones I actually agreed with most were Edwards on domestic economic issues and Kusinich on pretty much everything else, but as I've heard before (or maybe just made up this instant) politics is the pursuit of the possible. I pretty much agree with your fellow blogger IOZ's critique of the Powers That Be (my gosh, does he think he made that stuff up? Seriously, I remember William Ayers from when he was FIRST in the news, and thought of him and his Weather Underground co-conspirators sympathetically, with all my passionately radical little 14 year old heart), but unless you're willing to go along with his [IOZ's] plan to do nothing but write beautiful blog posts while smoking pot and laughing ironically, you have to start somewhere. And Barack Hussein Obama seems a good place to start. Of course we'll all be disillusioned again--ask me about it in four years--but I'm not by nature a nihilist. So hope is futile, in some kind of absolute sense. Again, I think it has to do with innate temperament. I'll keep hoping because it's my nature. And I'll be disappointed. But I'm going to enjoy this week at least.
Amen.
I also have to take issue with this: "JFK got things started and then LBJ escalated".
DDE got things rolling, by supporting the French in their fight against Ho Chi Minh and
then supporting Ngo Dinh Diem in his overthrow of the Emperor of Vietnam and his refusal to hold the referendum mandated in the Geneva Accords of 1954. JFK walked into the buzzsaw that DDE left running when he left office. Talk about a military-industrial
complex.
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