Election 2008
Thoughts on Election 2008
Ken Collins
November 2008
Before putting my own entangled thoughts about the election campaign and outcome onto the page, let me share a few tidbits to set the tone.
From Sophocles’ Philoctetes (Seamus Heanney’s translation, The Cure of Troy):
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
An e-mail from our trip leader on our Southern Africa trip (May 2008), a 30-something articulate, intelligent, and supremely sensitive Zimbabwean who lives and suffers, with his family, in that utterly ruined and brutalized country:
From: valentinegumpo
Subject: LAND WHERE ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN
Date: November 5, 2008 8:30:39 AM MST
To: k6a0c8@cybermesa.com
HI Ken
Well all I can say is WOW! There is a place where a man can rise above all obstacles to achieve the almost impossible. WHAT A MAN AND WHAT A SPEECH.
Congratulations America for your achievement. May the Lord continue to bless you.
Always your African connection
Valentine
P.S. Who knows what the future holds. I just know that anything is possible and I have been inspired
Lawn sign seen in the Deep South during the campaign: Rednecks for Obama – Even We’ve Had Enough!
Poignant story on voting day. A black Army war veteran of the Korean War, resident of Santa Fe County for many years, recently moved to Socorro, 150 miles south. He submitted change of address information, but never got a response, so assumed he was still registered in Santa Fe County. His daughter drove the ailing veteran 150 miles back up to Santa Fe County. He came in his Army cap, dangling with his medals, and explained he would not miss, for the world, this historic occasion to vote. But he had been dropped from the rolls in Santa Fe County and could not vote, after all.
At a program of New Deal documentaries a few weeks before the election, held at Santa Fe’s main performing arts center, the first film, The Road is Open Again, was about a composer who is struggling to write an inspiring patriotic song about the New Deal. As he sits at his piano (played by Dick Powell), three figures appear – Washington, Lincoln, and Wilson – and as he chats with them, the light bulb goes on and the song, “The Road is Open Again,” comes to him. He plays it at the piano and sings it. The whole thing is corny as all get out, and yet when it was over, the audience was swept away by the message of hope at the depths of the Depression – it was clear that everyone’s pent-up feelings of hope and change had been touched, and corny or not, the film was an outlet for the current state of affairs. Our emotions were simply too powerful to put a lid on letting it all out.
As I look over the campaign and what lies ahead, some thoughts stand out.
First, if you supported Obama, there was an emotional fire that simply wasn’t there for those who supported McCain. I have the sense that McCain supporters were disappointed but went on with their lives fairly easily. For Obama supporters, win or lose, the outcome was slated to be emotionally overwhelming or emotionally devastating, depending on how it went. The drive behind Obama by those who supported him was at a level of passion, commitment, I cannot remember with any other candidate. It truly became a matter of life or death, for each of us individually and in our minds, for the future of the country and the world.
All the same, it is sobering to realize that the country overall is relatively conservative, and despite Obama’s cogent and almost always inspiring messages of hope and change, had we not been in an economic crisis and had the Bush regime not been so unpopular, Obama’s chances would have been much poorer and I really question whether he could have won. He had so many intelligent things to say across the spectrum of issues, and yet how much would that have counted towards a victory at the polls? There is a real question of whether this can happen again in 2012. I don’t fool myself into thinking this is a fundamental shift in the nation. And yet on the other hand, as our generation moves on and a much younger generation plays a far more influential role, are we seeing a shift in outlooks such that our positions on fundamental “values” issues will begin to resemble the rest of the advanced, industrial world? It is hard to say.
Given the country is basically conservative, one of the real strengths Obama displayed was not coming across as partisan, not being pigeonholed in the liberal-conservative polarities, much less in the far more potent black / white racial divide. People seemed to react to him in terms different from the divisive ones that have prevailed in the last 20 years. He had a way of putting one at ease because he remained so at ease with himself.
At the same time, he managed to fight back in a way that I haven’t seen a Democratic candidate do, with the exception of Clinton, since Lyndon Johnson. Not only was he inspiring, but he had a fantastically well-run campaign machine, that didn’t allow the endless Republican nasty (and highly personal) charges get by. It was a thrill to see the kind of astute aggressiveness that was so lacking in the Kerry and Gore campaigns. The Obama campaign did not put up with the kind of crap the Republicans kept throwing their way. The Obama campaign was not reactive, but way out ahead and extremely astute in using the latest technologies in innovative ways. The debates were also illustrative of this aspect of the campaign.
To me it is unquestionable that it has become, certainly since the Dukakis –Bush-1 campaign, a fundamental approach of the Republican Party to use highly personal, totally distorted, unbelievably slime-laden attacks as the modus operandi in campaigns. Often it happened at a remove so that it couldn’t be traced back as an official party technique, but there is no longer any question that getting down deep into the filth has become a core strategy. Yes, there were distortions in ads from the Obama campaign, but anyone who simply says both sides stepped over the line equally just does not want to face up to the dramatic differences of degree and kind. This time the Republican down and dirty approach did not really gain traction. The state of the country has simply become too grave for it to work particularly well.
I suppose what really was thrilling for me was to see the triumph of intelligence over stupidity. After 8 years of being lied to, of having complex issues simplified into massive untruths, to sense that here was someone who saw, with laser clarity, what was needed and could express it in a way that conveyed that intelligence really does matter, that we were no longer elevating stupidity as our highest value, sent electric shivers through me. Stupidity really is costly – there is a very high price to pay for seeing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when they don’t exist, for conducting foreign policy through ideological blinders, for ignoring scientific expertise and advice of non-partisan professionals across the board. To think that at least for a few years ahead, using the best minds of the country to begin attacking some of our very serious problems, may give us the chance we so badly need, is deeply encouraging. There are a lot of indicators that increasingly the GOP is the party of the ignorant, the poorly educated, the very prejudiced. There are signs that some of those who were once Republicans of moderate stripe may be gravitating over to the Democrats. Having to become willfully stupid is distasteful to many highly educated citizens.
It bothered me that so little of the campaign was devoted to the serious problems we have all across the board other than the economic meltdown. While there wass a little discussion of our health care and education crisis, there was very little that went into depth about those two areas, much less our degraded infrastructure, climate change, environmental damage, the despoliation of our public lands, the trashing of the Constitution, the perversion of virtually every government agency (think the Justice Department, the EPA, the Interior Department, for starters), how poorly we have become regarded throughout the world, the radical ideological drift of the Supreme Court, the huge breaks in the wall of separation between Church and State, the contracting out of fighting wars. The war in Iraq, that has destroyed not just the lives of countless American soldiers but disrupted (when it has not destroyed) millions upon millions of Iraqis, that has wrecked our values and credibility throughout the world, distorted our economic priorities, got minimal and very superficial mention. And these are just the big issues that come to mind immediately. I am grateful that we will have a President who appears ready to deal with all these troubling matters across the board, but I keep wondering how many Americans were really paying attention during the past eight years to all these devastating developments. Sometimes it seemed that the whole damn election would ride on gas costing $4/gallon. What have we come to?
I keep thinking of an Administration that preached democracy around the world and then did everything imaginable, at home and abroad, to show that it did not have a clue or care a fig about real democracy. It scares the hell out of me how much undercutting of our most cherished values and traditions and liberties could be accomplished in just 8 years. The reality is that most of the public does not pay attention to these things. If the “elite” and the “best and the brightest” let it happen, it does not matter what is in our Constitution and our laws, our liberties can disappear. The more I read about Cheney’s activities, the scarier and scarier it becomes. While it will likely never happen, there are few things that would give me a greater sense that there is a shred of justice than if other countries make it known that should Cheney enter their borders he will be treated as a war criminal, which I truly believe he is.
In fact, as I experience, as we all do, the final days of this Administration, the depths of its kleptocratic, criminality and mind-boggling incompetence washes over me and defies any meaningful way to put it into a context that relates to the country we are a part of. It is beyond my imagining that we could have a government so malign, so perverse, so destructive of virtually every value we hold dear. It makes my incredulousness of what we have chosen, starting January 20, 2009, even more beyond all measure of dazzled wonder.
While we all saw our democratic traditions seriously threatened, I had reminders of its strengths. I served as a Presiding Judge (not actually a judge in the normal sense of the word) at one of our polling precincts on Election Day. This is the top position amongst the poll workers at a precinct. While the predicted crowds and lines never materialized, because New Mexico has early voting and vote-by-mail, which had a big impact on the Election Day turn-out, nevertheless, it was an inspiring experience. Any number of parents accompanied their children who were voting for the first time, and one could see a real excitement in the youngsters’ eyes. Seniors came in wheeling an even older parent in their late 90’s in to help them vote. It was such a broad spectrum of Americana. One could not help be humbled by witnessing such an event.
Is it okay to be extra proud because we have a black family in the White House? Because we have someone with a most foreign-sounding name in the White House? I love it! I absolutely love it! I shouldn’t admit it, it should be completely irrelevant, but I also know I am not alone, even if we are not supposed to give voice to such feelings. First, I cannot imagine anyone aware of our horrendous racial history, not feeling a complete sense of disbelief that we could have elected someone with black blood (to use absolutely unscientific terminology) to the highest office. I can still remember, vividly, as an 8-year child getting my first exposure to segregation as I made a trip to visit relatives in Virginia. Adults may have come to accept it as the normal way of things, but a child sizes up the truth instantly, and I was no exception. And even growing up in New York, always hearing talk about “the coloreds” – how does one square that, emotionally, with what has just happened? It becomes a kind of magnificent but inchoate overload on all internal systems.
I am hoping that there will be, before long, an oral history recorded of African-American reactions to the election. I find I cannot read a single statement by any black American without welling up and becoming emotionally shaken. These are powerful feelings that come from some ancient depth and they rise up totally out of our rational part’s control. It has been a very unifying experience to share it with so many others going through the same kind of experience. It translates into the excitement of being part of a historic, defining moment in our national history.
I was saddened to think that the age cohort of 60 and over was the one least swept away by Obama, so I think I am still young at heart that I wasn’t too old to get completely swept off my feet. Perhaps it is also why we find living at our old folks home, El Castillo, so congenial. This set of “old folks” were about 90% pro-Obama, a statistic quite counter to the norm for this age group.
Obama is smart and black and has a personal history that I find very unusual for an American political figure but extremely encouraging for the difficult times ahead. He is smart and black and he replaces a President who is white and a total jerk. Will that end the subtle racism that can never believe a black person to be more intelligent than a white? Who knows, but I love the disparities and confusions it causes to some of our deepest but least admirable feelings. Then when you throw in Obama’s coolness, comfortableness in his own skin, utter sense of what he wants and what he must do, and ability to stick to his convictions despite all kinds of pressure (including from his “friends”), I keep thinking that if anyone has a chance of leading us forward at this critical time, it is someone like himself.
I was inspired by Obama early on, but it was reading his speech on race in America, which he gave after the Reverend Wright flap last March that sealed the deal. That he wrote such stirring words himself, and that a major political figure was capable of addressing such a huge issue in our national life in such a direct manner, not shaving off any of the complexity of it, but at the same time saying something truly important about our national life was something I had given up ever expecting from a politician. This was utterly extraordinary. I can’t remember a politician ever speaking so honestly and with such wisdom about any topic, much less our biggest but most ignored topic.
I do think I am living at an extraordinary moment and I feel very fortunate. Just to hear our highest leader speak articulately and eloquently and intelligently – what kind of totally new experience is that? I also realize it is a terrible thing to say, but it will be great to no longer hear a Texas accent and mispronounced words and dangling sentences, at least for a few years!
Whether it all just looks good, a lot of nice words, but not real substance, has been undercut by the first signs of how the transition team is kicking in. This has greatly heightened my hopes that we have a first class crew in charge. They seem to have a grasp on how to take over in a way that I have not seen before. Things are off to a good start and it will be fascinating to see it all play out.
Of course, Election Day was not all joy, milk and honey. I feel, as do so many others, keen disappointment that Proposition 8 won in California, making marriage between gay couples impossible. I keep thinking how can one legislate away fundamental rights like that? It seems like gays are the last group against whom one can legalize discrimination and whom one can demonize. I am fairly confident that in time – and not all that much time – this will all seem as weird as making it illegal for members of different races to marry (which ended not all that long ago) but we are not quite there yet. As the younger generation, and those who follow, become the majority population, these battles will die away, and I think it highly probable that “gay marriage” will become a non-issue and all these Constitutional Amendments will be undone by reversing amendments.
I have heard one proposal on how to resolve the whole fractious issue of “gay marriage” that makes more sense to me than any I have heard and fits within our American tradition. It is that the state get out of the business of marriage and only offer civil unions – to everyone. Those who wish to get married, which historically is a religious sacrament (to use the Catholic term) can do so through a religious body. This gets the state out of involvement with religion but sets the terms for recognition of a relationship in legal terms so that a couple enjoys all the benefits the state has to offer. Our present arrangement conflates a religious event with an official, governmentally-sanctioned one.
Other than that sad development, along with even more bigoted ones like Arkansas making it impossible for unmarried couples (aimed at gay couples) to adopt children (and there are so many who need a loving home) this has been a thrilling year in terms of hope for the future. I plan to savor it fully. Despite the country being, in most ways, in as parlous state as I can recall in a long, long time, it really does seem we have a person at the helm who is up to the task. Occasionally we get lucky and get the right person for the job that lies ahead.
Cheers and hopes,
Ken
Addendum:
My choice of the two best editorials about what was at stake in this election, in terms of eloquence and content were those that appeared in The New Yorker and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. If you have not seen them yet, you can find them on the Web at:
The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/13/081013taco_talk_editors
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: