“Now, Dimitri…”
-- Peter Sellers as the U.S. President,
attempting to calm the nerves of his Russian counterpart in the Cold War send-up film Dr. Strangelove.
News from the Republican Campaign:
On April 16th National Public Radio, during the “Marketplace” broadcast, unpacked
Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain’s campaign proposal to lift the gas tax from Memorial through Labor Day. The commentator brought up so many questions about that “proposal” that an analysis
of how many ways it was ill-conceived could not even be completed during the show. First
off, and highly problematic (perhaps you will agree) is that the proposal “could not even survive a first semester Econ 101
analysis.” When artificial taxes are lifted, consumption will rise. Gas production is in high demand during the summer anyway…and production is at its highest capacity…if
the tax is lifted, more people will want to buy…but supply will remain the same…hence, PRICES WILL RISE. Worse still, his advisors seem to be working with a 1999 model that takes absolutely no account for the
need to DECREASE global warming, decrease carbon production, etc.
Okay…moving right along:
Next?
Let’s take this recent Penn state brouhaha.
First, exactly why must every candidate somehow show him or herself as a kind of reptilian/human…morphing into the
demographic of those to whom she speaks or to whom he or she appeals for a vote?
Further, I wonder two more things:
Why do some voters prefer to hear what a candidate will do for the country
and the world in the long run?
And why do some voters only judge a candidate on what he or she is supposed
to deliver to “them”…regardless of others?
This is perhaps a moral question…but I believe it is a good question.
Begging your pardon, gentle reader, but am I incorrect that a viable presidential
candidate must be a world and national leader? Being able to seamlessly kick
back with the good old boys seems like a misguided goal, at best. I would hope that with the utter tragedy of what that model
has recently wrought upon the world in the form of George W Bush, it would seem that the American electorate would seek anyone
but a person who possessed the qualities that most enamor blue collar sensibilities (whatever that really means.)
Why must a denigration cast upon another person about his or her background…be
it educated or uneducated, traveled or non-traveled…be considered an accurate assessment of a person’s intelligence, honor,
integrity, or ability to lead? So, Hillary went to Yale…came from a working class
background. Obama, raised by a mom and pop pair mostly on Oahu or as a kid in a different county altogether…went
on to attend Punahou, Columbia, and be the Editor of the Harvard Law Review…making him the nation’s most singularly sought-after
law student upon his graduation year…either should be considered to possess the “right qualities.”
We are a nation that needs confident capable people whose work it will be to
attend state dinners, to meet with world leaders, to think and strategize for all of us…keeping at bay global warming, an
economy that is falling apart, solving a Middle East problem…I do not see that being able to negotiate a bar in Pennsylvania
OR in San Francisco is something that can remotely qualify a candidate or human for those responsibilities. We should, I assert, not place emphasis upon a candidates’ ability to match her constituency…only to be
able to lead all of us into a better future. Again, I have yet to experience
hearing solutions to world problems emanating from local barrooms from the Bay Area to Philly.
Deep-thinking and wise leadership is what we need. Why does this become the equivalent of “elitist”…and how is being capable a bad thing?
In this country…since the American Revolution and the necessary rejection of
the intertwined King/Anglican church hierarchy that required being a royal subject
and a member of the church, the American identity has been fundamentally forged upon the notion that one could practice
(or not practice) religion with complete freedom from governmental oversight.
This explicitly anti-authoritarian and anti-intellectual mindset has continued to form how Americans view themselves. It also explains the myriad of “Christian” denominations that then multiplied across
the countryside…based upon one kind or another of a relatively free-wheeling “sola scriptura” approach to religion. (I can
read it for myself…rely on it without interpretation by a priest…and rejecting clergy leadership of most forms).
Since the late 19th century this model became a bit untenable, and
education became, once again, of value to most Americans and also to most churches as they chose clergy. The anti-authoritarian
strand, though, still shows up and really fails us at the national level. This
country needs to grow up…needs a grown-up leading it into the bold, new complicated world.
Tossing back whisky and trash-talking other nations from the Indian Ocean
to the Middle East to Shanghai
to Dubai…must be a relic of the past.
We need a leader who is comfortable on the stage of the World….and who does
not see that skill set as elitist.
Why do Americans want to identify a valuable skill set as elitist and be dismissive
of a person who has worked hard, studied hard…was not raised with a silver spoon, and earned his or her way into the best
schools? Is that not what we all seek for our children? I have yet to meet any parent anywhere who is not affected
by “No Child Left Behind.” The force behind that federal mandate seeks to bring schools and students up and out of low-wage
paying jobs. So, why do we then judge our presidential candidates by how much
they can “relate” to a demographic that our country has identified as that which we vociferously reject as the future for
our children?
Do presidential candidates need to understand and care about all people? Of course…but let us not criticize our candidates for simply not having every possible
life experience.
Lastly:
It is a rather sorry state of affairs to have to discuss this, but I think
it is Mrs. Clinton’s purity of meanness and the many iterations of such behavior that just offend my sense of hope for humanity. How can one human really desire for the good of all peoples and simultaneously seem
to want to shred the very fabric of the relatively unimportant-in the-scheme-of-things, yet vitally important-in-the-global
moment Democratic Party? Can she not see that her personal egotism, her willingness
to actually engage such antics as calling Mr. Obama “un-American,” and the wedge this all creates literally put everyone on
this globe at risk of four more years of an out-of-balance American system on the loose?
As voters go to Pennsylvania
polls, where about one-third of the voters are over-60, we sit at the very center of the political teeter-totter again. For whom will that Liberty Bell toll at the end of the day?
And, now we go to Indiana...
