Aftermath

Well that was exciting, wasn’t it?

As mentioned previously, I don’t really do manias, so allow me to express my excitement over the new President with a British level of breathless enthusiasm and say that America’s election of Barak Obama was very nice indeed.

You’ll forgive me for not congratulating our nation for turning some great corner, since the elevation of America’s first black president came after decades of African American supreme court justices, cabinet members, senators, congressmen and governors (not to mention CEOs and fictional black presidents and deities). So while I’m excited to see Obama obtain the last great prize that has been denied African Americans to date, I certainly don’t think we have anything to prove to the other 199+ nations of the world, most of whom are 100 years away or more from achieving the same multi-racial progress the US has shown in the last 30-40 years.

My election joy was tempered (as expected) by disappointment that the other fine man I didn’t vote for didn’t win. But I suspect I enjoyed myself more than those who spent the campaign glued just to MSNBC or Fox (certainly the Fox viewers). While the uber-decideds who had chosen these networks as the filters through which they would have all their hopes, fears and prejudices confirmed may have had a certain amount of fun watching Bill O’Reilly bellowing about the treacherous MSM, or listening to Chris Matthews taunt Republican strategists on Election Night, I suspect that schadenfreude is a poor substitute for genuine happiness.

One particularly perceptive commenter on this site pointed out how desperately she wanted to stay positive this election, but that loved ones she tried to talk with insisted that she must “buy the package” that also included fearing or loathing of the other side. For all the complaining about the underhanded and disgraceful tactics the campaigns supposedly unleashed on the country this year, I maintain that the candidates did a far better job behaving themselves this time around than did the voters (especially the decided ones who spent so much energy sneering or yelling at we undecideds for “spoiling” the election for them).

Commentary on the new young President (will he govern left or center), the opposition (what now for the GOP) and the electorate (as Steve Cobert put it: “does this mean racism is over”) has been falling so thick, it’s left very little room for the rest of us to provide additional commentary. So let me simply throw out a few, highly unoriginal observations:

• It’s a welcome relief to know who the President is before going to bed on Election Night


• Now that he’s lost, people seem to be coming around to the fact that John McCain was, indeed, a class act. More than that, he continues to be an historic figure, one that I hope my kids will grow up to admire and emulate.


• The technology story behind the election has yet to be fully told. Suffice to say, the social-networking model used by the Obama campaign entailed some risks, in that it created an open forum whereby any nut could create a MyBarakObama page and embarrass the candidate. But the rewards of a system that linked millions of individuals into networks that transcended time and space more than made up for those occasional embarrassments. Suffice to say, we’ve seen the last McCain-style campaign that delivers its message via wax cylinder.


• While I don’t buy the whole “media is the enemy” pitch, I think it’s safe to say that (1) the media has a hell of a lot of soul searching to do vis-à-vis its behavior towards the candidates this year; and (2) there is little to no chance they’ll perform that soul searching between now and when the last newspaper is printed (which, if present financial trends continue, will be sometime before the next election)


• The new leaders of the country will quickly discover what can and cannot be done from the top. And that’s a good thing. For there are some challenges that can only be faced on a national level (notably defending the nation), some that require great wisdom to balance competing legitimate needs (such as determining how to regulate the excesses of the market without killing the goose or simply transferring corruption from the corporate boardroom to the congressional staff room), and some that shouldn’t be tackled at all. As one lively commenter pulled out of me, I feel that most controversial social issues belong in this latter category, not because these issues are not important (they are), but because asking the President or Supreme Court to decide them for all of us usually ends up prolonging agonizing controversy, rather than ending it.

What began as a simple educational project to ensure my two boys weren’t running around the house yammering empty-headed political clichés, ended up a fulfilling exploration of how resilient, yet how fragile our civil society can be, absent a Principle of Charity that has been in such short supply the last 16 years.

One of my favorite writers, Judith Martin, wrote a book in 1996 entitled Miss Manners Rescues Civilization. Yes, that’s MM’s real name, and despite the fact that the topic she wrote about for decades seems prim and narrow (how many times do we need to read about proper table setting, after all), Martin was a wily observer of human nature who realized the decline in formality and lack of interest in simple behavioral rules was one of the reasons we spent so much time shouting at and suing one another. Thus her observation that a call for civility was more than just that of a dinosaur pining for bows and curtseys. Rather, it was an attempt to save civilization itself from the darker instincts that are unleashed when rules are thought to no longer be important.

People talk about this election in rapturous terms, with predications of how a new charismatic and historic leader will bring us to great heights never before experienced. Bully if that happens, but I suspect we’d all be better served if the next eight years were simply a time that people behaved more politely to one another. It’s a modest ambition, but so much else flows from it.

Anyway, it’s been a fun couple of months and while I prefer projects (including blogs) that involve a beginning, middle and end, there were many issues left unexplored during this hasty experiment. While I plan to take a break from blogging (“Thank God,” I believe I hear from family and friends) I do expect to return to this or some similar forum soon, possibly to continue exploring issues of interest (notably The Principle of Charity), possibly to tell you about my cat (if I had one).

So, with unending thanks to everyone who chose to visit, comment, lurk and even roll their eyes at what’s been posted here lo these many weeks, for now it’s time to sign off.

Undecidedman

Decision

Time to plotz or get off the pot as my militant Communist Great Aunt Sarah would say (if she actually existed).

Having finally accepted the fact that Chris Dodd has run out of time to turn this election around for himself, it’s time to choose between the two candidates actually printed on the ballot. (And no, I’m not going to cop out and write in someone else, even Senator Dodd. In addition to being a phenomenal cop out at this point in the game, my handwriting is atrocious.)

Now what were we talking about? Oh yes, today’s election! After all this time, what should go into this final decision? Well, to begin with:

Voting History. I have been a party-line voter all my life (a Democrat, for those of you who haven’t guessed) who does not regret any of the votes I’ve taken in the past (although I wish I hadn’t been such a snot in the early through mid-1980s, marching in lock-step with my generation to sneer at a president who turned out to be an historic figure, in contrast to the non-events he defeated). Clearly this election triggered something that overcame my usual knee-jerk party unity. 9/11 and its aftermath certainly played a role, as did the fact that this year’s Republican candidate appealed to me in a very deep way. Still, the gravitational pull of my previous voting history remains strong.

Momentum. The media and polls have been telling us for weeks that the election of Obama is a foregone conclusion (even if they urge avoidance of complacency). “Join the bandwagon before it’s too late” is the subliminal message being broadcast morning, noon and night wherever I turn. Given my preference to pull in exactly the opposite direction whenever I’m told there is only one possible sensible choice, I’m more inclined to vote in a way that bucks the prevailing wisdom, rather than jumping on the party boat just because it’s about to leave the dock.

Peer Pressure. All of those closest to me will be voting Obama and support him in a way that made reading this site difficult for them. I’m old enough to not care about the opinion of others (at least with respect to personal politics), but it’s pretty clear that if I choose McCain, all of the work I’ve done here will be interpreted as an elaborate mechanism for justifying the decision to “Go Republican” (which some loved ones suspect I have already done). I also have another community (see next paragraph) that will be equally bewildered and appalled if I pull the lever for Obama, so peer pressure pretty much cancels itself out as a factor this year.

My Pet Issue. I’ve written before how people choose to see passion for a particular issue as the driving force behind all other political choices, related or otherwise (an understandable stance, given how the single-issue domestic partisanship of many voters is the prism through which they view the world). Still, it’s important to point out my identity as an activist and strong supporter of Israel. In addition to increasing the importance I place on foreign vs. domestic affairs, this role also puts me in a peer group (many of whom I know only online) who I like and respect who have spent the campaign broadcasting what a disaster Barak Obama would be for US-Israel relations.

Now I am not blind to the ideological track record of the Democratic nominee, nor to the company he has kept in the past. And I resent the notion that just talking about those subjects is considered some kind of Rovian Swiftboating, or a form of red-baiting, Muslim-bashing or bigotry. That said, I am also cognizant of the force history plays in preserving continuity in US foreign policy, and the fact that events (far more than personal ideology) dictate the course of presidential decisions in foreign affairs. I also agree with Alan Dershowitz that a liberal president preserving the nation’s continuity (which means continuing to support the Jewish state) will make it harder to turn Middle East conflict into a stand-in for domestic left-right politics.

Admiration. People who have read this site for a while will no doubt spot a deep-seated respect for John McCain. While this partly wells up from my respect for military men and women who chose to serve their country in ways I never have, it also derives from the same admiration most of us have for a man who chose honor over life itself (a choice I hope to never have to make). Living by a code, committing one’s life to service, bucking friends and allies in order to do what you feel right, these are all virtues hard to come by in this day and age. While I fully expect to admire Barak Obama more and more as the years go on (whether he’s President, or the leader of the opposition), he’s just not been on earth long enough, nor shared the ghastly formative experiences of his opponent (thank God) to earn the same level of admiration (although I do admire him greatly).

Endorsements. These are pretty cheap and predictable these days. No one waited with baited breath (or even cared that much) regarding who the New York Times and Boston Globe would endorse. In fact, I suspect that the irrelevancy of endorsements is the reason why so many media outlets chose other ways to throw their support behind candidates this year. But one endorsement stands out from the crowd: Joe Leiberman’s endorsement of John McCain. Leiberman is a man who was shafted by his party, but who still caucused with them (making him the key reason Democrats continued to control the Senate over the last two years). And then this uncategorizable former Democratic VP candidate turned around to support the Republican nominee. Opportunism? Only for those who cannot recognize integrity when they see it. I suppose the Colin Powell endorsement of Obama was also dramatic, although it would have been more compelling if it had taken place before the Democratic candidate’s victory seemed all but certain.

Domestic Issues. Whenever it came time to think about a pressing domestic issue, be it the economy, education, or healthcare, I couldn’t escape the sense that John McCain does not think about these matters that much or that deeply. Of course they concern him, but his approach seems ad hoc and half-hearted (as opposed to the passion he shows on geopolitical matters). In contrast, Barak Obama (like the last Democratic president) seems to have given these problems much more thought and brought to his side people who share that passion.

As in other areas, there is the risk that Obama’s ideology more than pragmatism will drive his decision making. Yet he is also a bare-knuckles politician (his soft-focus image notwithstanding) who saw what worked for his predecessor (a well-managed entry into the world economy) and what didn’t (ill thought out and overwrought meddling such as Clinton’s failed health care initiative). If the last sixteen years taught us anything, it’s taught us that the old cliché of stolid, Republican financial responsibility vs. Democratic profligacy is a joke. So on domestic issues, I simply have more confidence that Obama will make better informed (and hopefully better) choices than his rival.

Foreign Affairs. Despite pie-in-the-sky predictions, whoever is elected president will soon discover that all of the globe’s problems were not, in fact, caused by George Bush. I’ll let history judge Bush’s presidency (I trust it more than I do people who express their political opinion using 10-foot-tall puppets). But I think it’s safe to say that Joe Biden is right: the next President will be tested, and tested soon. We are at war with Islamist Totalitarianism on a global scale, and this enemy has a tendency to redouble its efforts when it senses weakness. And it won’t matter if that next president is black with the middle name Hussein, or white with a middle name of whatever middle name John McCain has.

The first thing that will prove useless when history comes knocking is ideology. But a deep seated understanding of how the world really works, now that makes a difference. And one candidate has this experience: John McCain.

Character. Both candidates had the chance to show their mettle in this regard this election: John McCain when he demanded that his campaign ignore Rev. Wright (insisting that he would not inject race into the contest), and Barak Obama when he told the media to drop it (citing his own background) when the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s child threatened to become a feeding frenzy. Points to both men in this column.

Risk. Contrary to what you’ll see on many blogs, the choice of either candidate entails a great deal of risk. Obama is young, inexperience and untested. And McCain is mercurial and hot-headed, prone to make as many bad decisions as good ones (some of his choices during the campaign being prime examples). And unlike Obama, McCain seems more prone to act on his first instinct, rather than listen, learn, weigh and then decide. None of this is news (in fact, the negative traits of both candidates were the subject of much intra-party debate and discussion during the primaries). So we need to weight the candidates based on what we’ve known about them longer, rather than vote for the images we’ve been fed since the conventions.

Regret. I’ve noted before that I’ll regret not voting for one candidate as much as I’ll be excited to vote for his rival. But there is a difference. If Obama fails to win tonight, there’s a chance I’ll get to vote for him sometime in the future (especially if the Democrats learn their lesson and stop eating their young out of disappointment). But clearly this is the last chance to vote for John McCain for president.

And so, weighting all of the factors, and with a full understanding that I (like millions of other Americans) may be making a brilliant choice, or making the biggest mistake of our lives, I choose to vote for Barak Obama.

I tried both candidates names out at the end of that last sentence. My vote went to the person who best seemed to fit.

Narcissism

Two pieces in the Boston Globe this week caught my attention.

The first purported to be about a series of psychological studies that proves our political dispositions are actually genetically determined. Like the study I noted here, these experiments derive their remarkable conclusions from correlating political opinion of less than fifty people against supposedly relevant stimuli (fear instinct or the brain’s reaction to change).

I found the Brain-Change experiment to be particularly amusing, consisting as it did of asking people to look at a screen where the letter “M” flashed continuously, interrupted occasionally by an inverted image of the letter “W”. When electrodes were attached to the scalp of various conservatives and liberals, the experimenters discovered far different brain activity on the part of liberals when confronted with the letter “W.” While I lack a PhD in experimental psychology, I would suggest repeating this experiment with 6s and 9s before deciding genetics and not environment have anything to do with these results. (And can someone please put parental controls on the Science Magazine Web site preventing editorial pages from accessing their research during an elections season).

The other piece ran today and asked the question whether the two candidates running for president were saints or narcissists. While this was a lighthearted op-ed, it seemed to struggle with the question many of us have as to whether these two guys are real. The author’s conclusion was to declare them both saints and hope to God to be right, but I got the sense that the writer was dealing with the same unusual challenge many of us are having this year of having to choose between two admirable individuals (rather than one or two empty suits).

The issue of narcissism actually seems more applicable to the voters this year than the candidates. As already noted, this site began once I heard my children parroting opinions they clearly had not formed themselves about the virtues of one candidate and the despicability of the other. My wife and I nipped this in the bud immediately, but I was surprised at my visceral reaction to seeing my own kids do what I’ve seen others do before: parrot their parent’s opinions (often on command at parties, like a bunch of trained seals).

This image reminded me of a story Hollywood conservative (yes that guy) Ron Silver told of going to a dinner party where the host begged the guests to not talk politics, then proceeded to spend the evening talking about George Bush the fascist numbskull and his criminal “war for oil” regime. It occurred to Silver that, for the guests, this talk was not political, but was, in fact, a fashion statement, which enabled guests to show off their enlightenment to one another in the same way they’d display their latest handbag or custom-made cell phone.

This kind of narcissism crosses party lines. After all, what is AM talk radio if not a way for people to make sure their own voices get heard at a volume sure to drown out all other opinions (because this election, after all, is all about ME, my thoughts, my opinions, my edginess and attitude)?

The rage of the blogosphere (both left and right), the division of the mainstream media into partisan camps all reflects the need for new and old media to feed the maw of those who have already decided what they think, providing them an endless stream of information carefully culled to satisfy existing, confirmed prejudices.

And, in this respect I’m one of the worst offenders. OK, I can make the case that this blog was started to provide an outlet and discussion points for someone whose vote will not count anyway, given my citizenship in a state where the outcome of tomorrow’s contest is assured. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that I’ve been tuning out news and new information more and more each day, trying to use any extra time to come up with some new clever thing to say, rather than go out there and try to learn something new every day.

I had hoped that the success of two admirable candidates, each representing something other than the same-old-same-old, would provide an incentive for voters to listen this year, rather than put most of their energy into broadcasting their identity as enlightened X or Y supporters on their blogs, lockers, cars, kid’s bikes and jack-o-lanterns. But the urge to identify with one side apparently requires setting yourself apart from the other. I can’t just throw the lever for Obama because I think he’s the best choice (even if I have reservations about him). No, I must do so full of anger over John McCain’s alleged betrayal of his principles. Nor can I simply vote for McCain because I find him admirable (warts and all). Instead, I must do so full of fear that his rival has a secret, unreported, covered-up past that will prove the country’s undoing if he manages to trick the country into electing him.

Well sorry. I plan to vote for someone I like, and to regret not being able to vote for his opponent. And the person I’m going to vote for is… a topic for tomorrow.

Temperament

As the Commentariat started running out of new things to say about this election, talked turned to the differing temperament of the two major candidates. Normally I’d ignore attempts at psychoanalysis by journalists who seem to be having such trouble just performing journalism this time around, but then it occurred to me that there may be something to this topic beyond just the characterization of John McCain as a Captain Maverick/Mr. Hothead or Barak Obama as Captain Cool/Mr. Roboto.

For starters, this is one of those years when the candidate’s demeanor cannot be chalked up to acting classes or camera coaching. Say what you like about John McCain, but what you see is what you get. And Obama has turned out to be such a natural in front of crowds and the camera, why should he be anything other than himself (at least with regard to his nature and demeanor)?

Presuming that what you see is what there is with both candidates, then what have we learned about each during the course of this campaign?

Starting with McCain, there has always been a “shoot-from-the-hip” nature to the man, a trust in his gut instinct, a penchant for action and readiness to do what he thinks is right (even if it may not be in his strategic interest, and even if he might be wrong). When he and his supporters talk about “McCain the Maverick,” they are talking about his readiness to take on anyone (friends and foes) coupled with the aforementioned preference for deeds over words.

To a certain extent, who can argue with success? When his primary campaign was broke and in ruins last year, John McCain went to the public and promised to just be himself; Mr. Damn-the-Torpedoes, Full-Speed-Ahead. And lo and behold, the public liked what they saw and decided to give “this one” the nod rather than the half dozen other candidates with fatter war chests, more friends in the party and better hair.

So why does this not seem to be working during the election itself? Beyond the obvious (that he’s now running against a Democrat in a year when there seem to be a lot of people who would rather not vote for Republicans), there has always been a problematical side to McCain’s personal politics of boldness. For starters, it assumes that the Senator’s judgment, if not infallible, is pretty damn close. But looking over McCain’s history, one can spot a number of blunders that can be traced to the candidate trusting his gut and pushing ahead with all guns blazing, only to find out later that a little more thought and patience might have been a better course of action.

Despite his years, there is also a strange kind of innocence to McCain, a tendency to see problems as the result of people of ill will, rather than systemic failures. Thus his obsession with Congressional earmarks (as opposed to systemic issues of a Federal government controlling one-fifth of the economy). Thus his attacks on “greedy bankers” for the current financial mess (ignoring the witches brew of government meddling in the wrong areas, not regulating in the right ones, and financial “entrepreneurship” run amok).

In normal times, Americans kind of like a man who trusts his instincts (especially if he has proven himself to possess other virtues such as honor and bravery). But these are not normal times. Many of the problems we face, from the economic crisis to wars overseas, seem to be the results of running when we should have been walking. And thus our appetite for action over thought has diminished enough that many are looking to The Professor, rather than The Cowboy, to get us out of our current predicaments.

I just referred to Obama as “The Professor,” both because of his presentations style, and his history as an academic. This term has differing connotations. While Americans love cowboys, astronauts and firefighters, we also maintain considerable respect for the man of learning. Indeed, for all of the mockery of American intellectual laziness that goes on abroad, it’s no accident that the highest concentration of quality universities is here and not “over there.” Our system has created an unrivaled engine of intellectual achievement, powered by really smart people to whom we entrust our children for years if not decades of head stuffing.

At the same time, the arrogant, snooty know-it-all is always ripe for ridicule in American popular culture (a stand in for our national subconscious), and who has proven more full of itself in the last few decades that the Proffessariat? From positions of tenure (the last bastion of guaranteed employment) and upper-middle class entitlement (from hefty salaries, healthy benefits and homes in the suburbs), this new class of self-important mandarins lecture the rest of us, not just in their fields of expertise, but in any other subject they feel like talking about. Is it any wonder that we laugh out loud when The Marx Brothers or Three Stooges invade the college classroom?

There is a thoughtfulness to Barak Obama that attracts supporters, a sense that he will put the time and energy into learning and thinking about an issue before taking action. In times of change, many voters (including many conservatives who are not thrilled with the Democratic candidate’s ideological underpinnings) feel that Obama’s ability to listen, learn, adjust and apply judgment to new circumstances will be the primary driver of his decision-making.

There is also a discipline to “that one,” never more on display than during the campaign which kept its course despite changing events (war in the Caucuses, a financial meltdown) and despite ups and downs (including post-convention polls that put them behind McCain). If the McCain team tried to hit homers by swinging at anything that came near the plate, Team Obama was happy to stick to a plan that required a continual stream of singles and doubles. And keeping one’s cool during a hot-house campaign is certainly a test we’d like to see passed by someone asking to be our leader.

But then there is that aforementioned Professorial factor, the tendency to think that just because you know more than every else (especially about a rarified and difficult subject) that you are necessarily smarter than everyone else. While the recent financial meltdown cannot necessarily be laid entirely at the feet of bankers, the President or Congress, I’m ready to bet that there was an extraordinary number of MBAs and PhD’s involved. Suffice to say that an Obama administration that bases its policy around the assumption that an All Star Cast of super-smartypantses, a la “Best and the Brightest II,” has all the answers is going to run into trouble pretty damn quickly.

If it was an easy choice between (1) a man of dedication and honor who has demonstrated a penchant for shooting first and aiming later, and (2) a younger, less experienced man who nevertheless has demonstrated a much needed ability to learn and think before taking action, there would be no Undecidedman, now would there?

Continuity - 2

In a previous posting, I talked about how historic trends exert tidal forces on American politics, preventing our foreign policy from swinging wildly in new directions, even in the wake of major events and handoffs of power. Similar forces also act in the area of domestic and social policies. In the domestic sphere, these forces are a mix of historic trends and powerful consensuses within the American public.

Consensus #1: As a friend who worked in the Clinton White House once told me: “It’s a Republican country,” by which he meant that if you charted public opinion (which many people have) you would find the norm curve peaking at a political position generally through of as center right. And these conservative values are not static, but exert a strong pull on public opinion and the dynamics of both major political parties.

Consensus #2: Americans like to be left alone and, as a result, lean towards leaving other people alone as well. In theory, this could be lumped in with the conservativism of Consensus #1, but in fact it is clashes between these two powerful national characteristics that have led to our most violent social debates surrounding abortion, homosexuality and the mix of social and sexual issues that have come to define “The Culture War.”

Generally, if a controversial question boils down to individual freedom (even freedom to behave in ways that a right-of-center public would not approve of), social change makes the most progress. But when these same questions seem to impinge on the rights of others to make their own choices (sex ed taught in the public schools comes to mind), policy debate turns to Culture War.

While it’s fashionable to predict dire consequences if one or the other political party is elected (from sexual permissiveness running amok to the implementation of a Christian Fundamentalist version of Shiara), forcing change that flies in the face of one or both national consensus generally flops. By way of hypothetical example: if McCain is elected next week and serves two terms, what are we likely to be debating during that period, an expansion of gay marriage or a re-imposition of sodomy laws? Similarly, if Obama gets into office and serves until 2016, does anyone expect this savvy political operator to spend any capital on controversial social policies (seeing what happened to Bill Clinton for just touching the subject of gays in the military)?

This latter hypothetical also points out a paradox with regard to a new President “setting a tone” on major social changes. If you’ll bear with me, I vividly recall the explosion of expectation when Bill Clinton was elected President after 12 years of Reagan-Bush I rule. Yet it dawned on me how many people were destined to face disappointment during a call in radio show I listened to after Clinton’s election (but before his inauguration) that featured an advocate of “True Cost Economics,” an economic theory that advocates scrapping market-oriented pricing models with pricing that takes into account the full “true” cost of a product (including the work put into the product, the environmental impact of its use, etc.). Putting aside my own opinion about such a theory, my first instinct was that an advocate of “overthrowing the market,” had better have a lot of patience and readiness to do the spadework to convince others of the workability of such a scheme. But apparently, this advocate was of the opinion that the new Democratic administration just might be in a position to implement this idea once it took office. (“Good luck with that,” was my first thought.)

Sure enough, it was less than a year after Clinton assumed the presidency (having taken a pass at issuing a decree replacing the market with “true-cost pricing”) that magazines covers that once blared their hopes for a new era were now asking what happened to their dreams. The President’s treading into controversial territory in low-cost (Gays in the Military) and high-cost ways (an overhaul of the US health care system) had blown up in the Democrats’ face, paving the way for a Republican takeover of Congress that would last until two years ago.

Both major parties learned their lesson: look like you care about controversial issues (especially as they impact an important domestic constituency), but for God’s sake don’t actually do anything about it while in office. That is why all of the major Democratic primary contenders distanced themselves from the gay marriage debate. That is why Republicans perpetually rail against Roe v. Wade while also hiding behind it when it comes time to take action that might require spending political capital (given that anti-abortion stances continue to be a vote loser in most of the country).

It is worth noting that gay marriage (whatever one might think about it in principle) did not get onto the national agenda because a President or Congress of either party supported it. It’s on the agenda because activists at a local and state level advocated for this change and won. Of course, that progress has triggered a countervailing activist agenda, also working locally (in this case, to try to enforce a strict definition of marriage as between a man and a woman). While messy and uncertain, this ground-level battle of ideas is how change (from the ending of slavery, to women’s and civil rights), transform the nation: not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

So, getting back to the paradox of asking the White House to be the driver of social transformation, if we take the “gays in the military” issue as an example, such federal advocacy is more than likely to be a kiss of death than a shortcut to success. On the other hand, action at a local level may take more time and lead to a series of battles (some won, some lost), but turns out to be the only avenue for long-term success.

When a heated election is less than a week away, you can always depend on doom-and-gloom predictions about “the other guy” starting to resemble The Book of Revelations. But most of us, undecided and otherwise, understand that neither candidate is the anti-Christ. Obama-Biden will not hand the nation over to a one-world government presided over by Michael York. And McCain-Palen will not proceed to enslave the nation’s women, a la political porn fantasies like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

As Margaret Mead once put it in an eloquent (if overused) quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Ironically, these small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens might find themselves wasting the next decade if they think electing a president who seems to share their values is going to be the primary engine for the change they seek.

Experience

Yikes! Just one week to go before Election Day, with so much left to think about.

OK, enough about we voters (undecided or otherwise), it’s time to get back to passing judgment on the candidates. And what better item to discuss than the critical topic of experience.

Now the parties have been a little schizophrenic about this subject over the last couple of months. As far as I can tell, the Democrats care about it deeply, but only in so far as it relates to the office of the Vice Presidency. The Republicans also talk about experience a great deal, although they seem to have simultaneously taken a shine to wet-behind-the-ears fresh faces (at least coming from their own ranks).

As noted here, I remain wildly disinterested in the Vice Presidential candidates, and will thus focus just on the two presidential aspirants, hopefully addressing the experience issue in ways that are not cliché-ridden or obvious. And my first non-obvious observation, discovered after months of exhaustive research, is the John McCain is actually older than Barak Obama. (“How does he come up with these breathtaking insights,” I hear both readers of this site cry out through the ether.)

Now I know we are supposed to be just as sensitive to age as to race and gender in this country, but how many of us have not asked ourselves whether McCain is just too old to begin a presidential career? Point of fact, I wish that I as a 46-year-old (one who was never subjected to five years of torture) had one-third the physical stamina McCain has shown on the campaign trail. And yet, comparing the Arizona Senator’s performance in this election vs. previous ones, you can’t help notice that the ol’ Maverick is slowing down. McCain’s opponents like to use the phrase “heartbeat away from the Oval Office” which translates to something along the lines of: “that the old geezer is going to kick the bucket before Inauguration Day, leaving the nation in the clutches of a gun-nut/sexpot/zealot/non-entity.” In truth, I do not fear that scenario (given that it implies McCain’s body is on the verge of giving out, which is shows no sign of doing) as much as I fear a replay of Ronald Reagan’s second term during which aging and Alzheimer’s made it unclear just who was making decisions between 1984 and 1988.

Now that’s a risk anyone voting for John McCain would have to take, but aren’t we talking about risk no matter who is elected? Sure, we can convince ourselves that the candidate we select is bright and wise enough to take on the hardest job on earth, but who are we kidding? As eloquently stated here (in a link brought to my attention in the comments section), none of us possess absolute conviction that one and only one choice will lead the country through the wilderness. When it comes to deciding which candidate will succeed in a future full of unknown unknowns, on Election Day we’re all destined to be just a bunch of decided undecideds.

Now what if John McCain is elected and the risk noted above regarding his age turns out to be a false alarm? Well then we would have a President with some unique credentials and experiences to manage this country through a world facing troubled times. I’m not talking here about McCain’s knowledge of and personal relationships with world leaders. If Obama is elected, I fully expect him to get a snootful of these same foreigners soon enough, and the Democrat’s ability to learn quickly has already been demonstrated again and again.

No, the experience of John McCain I’m speaking of has to do with the time he spent in a prison cell in Vietnam. As described here in detail, that experience forced him to look deeply into the face of mankind’s oldest enemy: ruthlessness, forced him to see the world as it really is, or would be if this thin veneer of civilization was pulled back.

Many have looked into this same abyss, especially during the last century, but few lived to talk about it. John McCain returned from that dark place and committed his life not to bitterness or revenge, but to commitment and reconciliation. There is a reason the jokes about McCain’s military service (like jokes about his “maverick” persona) are so weak and focus primarily on his incessant invocation of these experiences, rather than the experiences themselves. It’s because deep down inside, those joke-tellers and critics (as well as the rest of us) suspect that put into the same circumstances McCain faced forty years ago, we would either die or break, sacrificing anything (including our freedom, individuality, honor, even our loved ones) to get the pain to stop. John McCain lived and in the process maintained both his freedom and his honor. That’s an experience that no one should have to earn, but earn it he did and it’s something that sets him apart not just from his presidential rival, but from 99.999% of the electorate.

Obama’s career, familiar to many professionals the same age as he, involved working hard and succeeding in the country’s best schools, followed by jobs within important and impressive institutions. In his case, these institutions included law firms, universities, state government and the US Senate. What do Obama’s experiences have in common (other than being impressive for a young man from a humble background)?

Channeling my sifu Lee Harris, I would say that Obama’s successes were within major institutions with long track records of success. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. Institutions pervade our lives and the very permanence of centuries old colleges, long-standing businesses and our remarkably stable government may represent some of the most marvelous achievements in the history of the world.

But when you spend many years, or most of your life, within such institutions the notion of impermanence becomes a vague, theoretical concept. Of course there will always be a Harvard. Of course there will always be a US Senate. Of course there will always be a Goldman Sacks and General Motors. Whoops! I guess some of the things we took to be permanent parts of the landscape may be more fragile than we perceived, especially for those on the inside.

One does not need to be imprisoned and tortured for five years to discover that life for most people provides a limited margin of error. Running a window tinting business can do the same thing, as can losing an election. Political candidates have recently gotten into the habit of humanizing their bios by talking about personal tragedies (often involving the death of children). With full deference to the pain such stories genuinely reflect, I’d be much more interested in hearing stories of how the candidates watched decisions they made blow up in their faces, and how they picked up the pieces and moved on, learning something in the process.

When the nominees were both chosen this election cycle, I told people how much I wished that John McCain was ten years younger (a more familiar age for presidential candidates) and Obama was ten years older (in his second or third Senate term, with a well known track record). Unfortunately, history has once again chosen to not conform to my fantasies. And so my answer to the question of who has the better quality experience (not the same thing as most experience) to lead the country would be John McCain (age spots and all).

Opens and Closes

As readers of this site may gather, I have a certain fondness for the power of words, which got me thinking about what would happen if we changed the language regarding undecided voters ever so slightly, replacing the word “Undecideds” (which implies indecisiveness) with “Opens” (imply those whose mind was still open regarding who to vote for).

Certainly those who have already chosen a candidate might object to the implication that, as “Closes,” they were being close minded, rather than decisive. But I’m sure they could live with gentle ribbing from David Sedaris and John Stewart over their alleged shortcomings. (So the stewardess says “Sir, I know you ordered the chicken, but it turns out the chicken’s been stuffed with shit and broken glass. Would you like to switch to pasta?” “No I’ll stay with the chicken,” says the Close, “I don’t really like pasta.” “No problem,” says the stewardess. “Oh, and by the way, the plane is about to crash into the Andes.”)

I will admit to being a little bewildered why someone choosing to remain open/undecided even today seems to generate such bewilderment or even hostility among the closed/decided population. Perhaps we’re looking at election fatigue combined with an end-of-cycle desperation to know with absolute certainty what is going to happen week after next (the equivalent of venting one’s rage at a roulette table for all its numbers not being red).

This discussion of who is open- or close-minded, decisive or indecisive is a distraction from a more important matter: not whether someone is undecided now, but why. And in my case, it is no longer just about the civics lesson I’m teaching my kids. No, today I remain undecided because even after seeing the ups and downs, highs and lows of this campaign, I still feel that both John McCain and Barak Obama represent worthy, satisfying choices and I will be as proud to pull the lever for either of them as I am disappointed for not being able to vote for both (except, perhaps, in Chicago).

Is this naïve? Pollyannish? Self-deluding? Well let’s think for a moment about the much more decided, grounded, tough-thinking, determined set of people who do not share my opinion: the people making up each candidate’s campaign. Surely they will not be deluded by the kind of nonsense that filled the last paragraph.

Let’s look first the McCain campaign which , if you’ve been following it over the last few weeks, seems to have decided to run against the editorial board of the New York Times, rather than their Democratic rivals. As far as I can tell, this anger is over the fact that the Times and the rest of the “Mainstream Media” (or MSM) has not done nearly as many exposes on Barak Obama’s questionable past connections as they have about Sarah Palin’s shoes and hair. Now I do think they have a point regarding the media’s behavior this election (fodder for another essay), but I also have to ask: so what? As an informed voter, I know about Obama’s connections with Bill Ayers, the raving Rev. Wright, ACORN and other individuals and groups that I do indeed find troubling. And I haven’t appreciated the Democratic candidate’s airy dismissal of such concerns, or his supporter’s attempts to shut down debate over these associations. But all that said, I put those issues on one side of a scale (along with Obama’s inexperience and ideologically narrow track record) and on the other side I put the candidate’s intelligence, his demonstrated ability to listen, learn and inspire, the quality of the people he’s attracted to his team, and the toughness and discipline he’s shown during his campaign. The result is an image of Obama that takes into account his humanity (and thus his imperfections), but with more positives outweighing his negatives. If the McCain camp had crafted a message designed to take on the positives and negatives of the real Obama, rather than campaign against an alleged “Manchurian Candidate” it was their job to expose, they could have gained more credibility and possibly more votes.

Now onto the Obama campaign which, despite having an appealing candidate with a huge war chest, a united party and the most unpopular president in US history in the White House, seems to still be looking at a nail-biter election night. Given all these advantages, how is it possible that we’re not looking at poll numbers showing the Democrats 50-60 points ahead of their rivals? Some people commenting on the still closeness of the election have a simple, hair-trigger answer to this question: the American voter is a racist. But what about more mundane (as well as less judgmental and self-righteous answers), such as Obama’s honest negatives noted above (inexperience, a leftward track record in a center-right country, troubling past associations) which not everyone would say are outweighed by the candidate’s positives. Or what if, just maybe, John McCain is NOT George Bush but is, in fact, one of the most impressive, heroic, dedicated people who has ever served his country in war and peace? Again, if the campaign could take a minute to look beyond its’ maps, spreadsheets and online poll stuffing, it might have discovered they were running against the only Republican who could give them a run for their money this year, not because he is a Republican but because he is John McCain.

So by not applying the Principle of Charity to their opponent, each candidate has chosen to run a campaign blind to important elements of reality. Such self-imposed ignorance is never a good idea for any multi-million dollar project, but can be particularly lethal in the case of a political campaign. Indeed, such willful blindness is likely to be one of the major contributors to the defeat of whichever candidate loses this election. So again I ask, who is being naïve?

The implications of applying or not applying the Principle of Charity to both candidates goes well past election day. For the one and only fact we know for sure is that either John McCain or Barak Obama will be elected President in two weeks time. If Obama loses the election, was it because he lost a fair fight against a worthy opponent? Was it the result of the voters being uncomfortable with the Democrat’s ideology (which might require a rethink of the party’s philosophy or positions)? Or would an Obama loss be immediately be chalked up to the racism of American public, with a little paranoia about stolen votes throw in for good measure? It looks like Republicans are ready to fire up some “voter fraud” conspiracy theories of their own in case they lose a tight election. Would a McCain loss get the Republican Party to admit that some of their rival’s policies might be worth considering or even supporting? Will it get them to think about the shortcomings of their own track record over the last 8-12 years? Or will they simply stew until they are next swept back into power (a la 1994) where they can once again put their political rivals into the dock.

Things change. The White House and Congress switch hands every few years. All power is fleeting. And yet, we’ve lost the willingness to give our political opponents the benefit of the doubt on any matter whatsoever, as well as the patience and wherewithal to wait and work for our turn at power. How much more fun it is (and less effort) to sit in front of our favorite cable station and blogs, getting all of our prejudices confirmed, slipping into euphoria when our side wins (which it will, inevitably) and conspiracy theory fueled paranoia when we lose (which it will, just as inevitably).

It’s time to get off this particular roller coaster. This election gives us the chance to end an almost two-decade-long love affair with pathological political incivility which smashes away at our ability to even discuss politics in a civilized manner, much less act in a thoughtful, responsible way. To turn a page on this ugly chapter, all we need do is vote in November with great enthusiasm for our preferred candidate, BUT without spite for the guy we’re not choosing. We need to understand that even if our candidate’s defeat will leave us disappointed, the other guy deserves his victory and deserves our support, especially during such troubled times. In addition to being a simple strategy to help us back on the road to civility, it also has the distinct advantage of being true.