Is Change Upon Us? Only With Obama…Maybe

Posted on | October 31, 2008 | Author: | DanS | No Comments

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For the entirety of this rant, I’m putting on my Jon Stewart salt-and-pepper wig and shifting into US Election mode. There might be a project management theme or two. Understand that I’m not in the election mode so deeply that I’ll make a promise I can’t keep. But hopefully, as you once did when you watched ‘Wayne’s World’ (or as the advertising slogan suggested you would do) – you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll hurl!

Rant commencing…

…

…now

A big problem in the United States is a severe lack of appreciation for the opportunities every citizen has on the first Tuesday of November. Voter turnout has long been a glaring issue in American politics, one that pollsters think will be turned on its head this year because of the volume of youths registering in record numbers.

And what looms in the minds of most outsiders is a variety of questions:

· What is driving all this interest?

· What is the golden egg that the proverbial goose, Barack Obama, is promising in his mantra of ‘change’?

· Can’t McCain-Palin be viewed the agents of change in this election?

· Most importantly, which side of the aisle stands to benefit the most when more people vote?

Let’s break this down one-by-one…

What’s Driving All This Interest? The economy is the straw that’s breaking the main culprit’s back. The culprit’s legacy (though he often states that history will judge him in the long run) is already sullied beyond recognition, rendering his verdict fruitless. And, like the King that drove the 13 American colonies that would become the USA to revolution, his name is George.

For all the right-wing complaints I’ve listened to and read about dealing with the eight years with Bill Clinton as President, those comments tend to leave out a crucial issue they can’t resolve truthfully: economic prosperity. As so often happens, the issue sullied to the point that it is left to humorists to set the record straight.

Comic Dana Gould, speaking on ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ three weeks ago, responded to Wall Street Journal columnist Steve Moore’s complaints about never receiving the supposed Clinton middle-class tax cut with a sarcastic remark that touched home with a lot of Americans struggling through the economic turmoil during Bush’s tenure by comparison.

‘I so glad we’re not stuck in his economy,’ Gould said of the Clinton era, turning on a fake look of frustration. ‘All those jobs!’

Maher willingly backed up Gould’s assessment. ‘Yeah, and all that prosperity.’

You’ve heard about The Notorious GWB’s struggles and failures (well-documented or not so well-documented) with interventionist diplomacy, mixed messages on the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Halliburton, the Katrina response, indifference to Guantanamo Bay, the suspension of Habeas Corpus laws, Alberto Gonzales and the U.S. Attorney firings debacle, the Harriet Miers nomination, and the Novak-Plame-Wilson Affair, among others. Still, the one failure or success that resonates most heavily with voters at all times is economic affairs. It’s why Clinton could say ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ in 1992, put off nobody, and soundly trounce an overmatched George H.W. Bush.

And at the end of the day, it’s only natural, because economic status is the issue that more than any other most directly affects them. The lesson has stuck with me because of the words of my own Father, who laments that regardless of the popular crises of the day, the price of petrol is the true barometer for the voting public’s intentions:

‘As the gas prices go, so goes the public.’

The gas prices (and this is said with the admission that Americans have no idea how bad gas prices truly can get!) have gone beyond Americans’ wallet capacities in many cases. Therefore, so goes Bush’s legacy. Not to mention the desire of his appointers (read: voters) to push for more eligible voters to sign-up and enact change.

What are the golden eggs that the proverbial goose, Barack Obama, is promising in his mantra of ‘change’? While ‘promised actions’ and ‘guaranteed actions’ tend to be like sugary and salty foods when politicians win elections, Barack Obama’s promises sound like issues you would never hear raised in the UK out of sheer ‘We’ve fixed that already’ soundness (please note that some pledges have pulled from campaign web sites):

Again, these may not sound like full-scale liberal ideals. It is more left of center, and these proposals are a hell of a lot closer to being in touch with the new way forward that so many Americans (yes, primarily younger Americans) are looking for than McCain-Palin. Add it all up, and the seeming mantra of Obama’s around the notion of change holds more water. As opposed to…

Can’t McCain-Palin be viewed the agents of change in this election? Actually, astute reader, you’re right: THEY CAN’T BE VIEWED AGENTS OF CHANGE!

You‘ve already figured out which way I, an American who has been granted several British rights (thanks, Honey!), am tilting in this election. But you have to understand that I felt differently about John McCain eight years ago. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you about who I was then.

In 2000, I registered to vote in United States of elections for the first time. Times were clearly different: the New York Yankees won the World Series every stinkin’ year, I didn’t have a passport (not unlike 80 per cent of fellow Yanks), I didn’t know the woman who would become my wife, and the sport I would refer to as ‘football’ involved a gridiron. All of those things would change in the course of 2000 and The Notorious GWB’s first year in office, 2001. Shockingly to those who know me, the last element was probably the most monumental. Frankly, my foundation is still quaking from that alteration, but so is the Greek goalkeeper whose failure to stop this shot (could anyone?) ensured the change in me to begin with.

Back to me. Though I leaned left then (and now), I registered willingly as a Republican. The primaries would be in Pennsylvania, and I felt George W. Bush’s unbelievable and unfortunate rise to the nomination for presidency was not set in stone.

John McCain was the reason why.

This is where the ‘Maverick’ phrase came from: in those days, McCain didn’t pander to the religious right that had engulfed his party. He had a clear understanding of non-interventionist policy in foreign affairs. He worked with both parties, and didn’t toe the company line on all issues. The ‘maverick’ nickname, for all intents and purposes, stuck, because it was genuine.

The war hero element certainly didn’t hurt, but for me his conduct under duress was the key: He was noted and decorated for his service as a prisoner-of-war because he didn’t leave his guys behind in Vietnam for a ticket out of Hanoi. Compare that to Bush, who didn’t serve in Vietnam but still seemed very isolationist and foggy in 2000. Compassionate? I didn’t buy it. Bush-vs.-McCain for the right to the Republican nomination spurred my thinking in a brand-new way, regardless of how I voted in November. I had to make sure McCain was the Republican nominee.

In McCain, I knew I had a guy who could cut off the cancer before it spread. His ‘Straight Talk Express’ appeared to be genuine and believable. Although it seems simple to chalk up popularity to being similar to us and folksy, that’s America at the end of the day. Moreover, to expand on that analogy, it is more understandable in the first place that voters would want to be chummy with a genuine, experienced war hero than a Yale graduate who fancied himself a cowboy. Somehow, McCain’s chumminess had to be cut off. And as McCain gained momentum and victory in the Republican nomination campaign seemed to be right around the corner, dirty political tactics in South Carolina reached their ugly hand up from the vat of chemicals like Jack Nicholson in ‘Batman’.

Back to the present-day, briefly. In recent weeks, McCain’s team have produced a series of robocalls to random voters throughout the US, some of which may be deemed illegal. The calls, traditionally, are designed to deliver false or conflated items of information about a candidate’s opponent to the receiver of the call, and drum up support for the candidate. Often, the calls are delivered as ‘push polls’: in effect, the caller talks in the guise of a fake pollster seeking answers to loaded poll questions designed to elicit an unfavourable response about the candidate’s opponent.

Bernie Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont, was not amused by the robocalls that accused Obama of ‘hanging around with terrorists’.

‘If Obama wins, there are millions of people who are gonna believe that there is a terrorist in the White House,’ Sanders told Maher on the 17 October edition of Real Time. ‘And if he loses, there are going to be millions of people who are furious at what McCain did.’

Here’s an paraphrased example of a push poll question: ‘Would you be more or less likely to vote for Candidate A if we told you that he fathered an illegitimate black child?’ The expected response, according to push poll design, would be ‘less likely.’

Ugly as such a question is in the first place – not to mention how ugly the tactic itself is – it should surprise everyone that John McCain would resort to these tactics when polls show him trailing coast-to-coast. Because the example question above all but derailed his campaign in 2000.

Bush’s political operatives targeted McCain’s adopted daughter of Bangladeshi descent with the push poll question, and it got the responses Bush’s team was looking for. McCain’s reputation was further soiled among South Carolina voters by other robocalls that falsely indicated his wife was a drug addict, that he was a homosexual, and that he was not a ‘patriot’. Misinformation or no, the accusations did not play well with the Republican base in South Carolina, and Bush swept through to the Republican nomination.

Now…

If you had a political tactic that worked because of it’s popular policies that will delivered in a genuine, heartfelt and sincere manner that refused to pander and play to special interests, but you lost to someone primarily because of underhanded ways that you were not a fan of, and you vocalised your displeasure and disgust to that opponent personally (more details on his reaction to Bush here and here), you would find yourself in a difficult position if you ran for that office again:

· Stick to your principles, remain true to your beliefs and let the chips fall where they may;

· Become your enemy and win

It may have been a tough choice for John McCain to abandon who we all rooted for in 2000, tone down the Straight Talk Express to the point where he started drawing ‘Bush Light’ comparisons, and pick a Vice-Presidential candidate who’s a little bit too comfortable with guns (we all know where that got us last time around). Or maybe the guy from 2000 never existed to begin with. Whatever. The point remains that for all that you can accuse Barack Obama of, John McCain became the anti-thesis of the maverick image he put forward to the world in 2000, an ideal that people bought into because he presented something radically different from the base and expected.

Now, he is who he is: a career politician. One who admittedly has no qualms with compromising his principles then or now. He admitted to the New York Times in the article posted above that in 2000, he ‘chose to compromise his principles’ over an issue regarding the Confederate flag.

But to take the change mantle and make it his is right only one sense: John McCain will change with the waves of success for the sake of winning. And if that’s the kind of change you’re looking for and the type of change that can make for a better life for you and your fellow citizens, then I suppose he’s your man for the job.

I don’t buy it. For my money, changing your mind about winning for the sake of yourself while damning the principles of who you are, all the while adopting the dishonest, snake-biting tactics that beat you years ago? That is as low as you can go.

And even if American wasn’t so vilified, disliked and ridiculed for its policy over the last eight years, that low would still too low for my vote.

Which leaves us with…

Which side of the aisle stands to benefit the most when more people vote?

Younger voters have long been the target of the voter apathy issue, but the rising has clearly begun in 2008. Voter registration drives tend to target younger Americans who may be voting for the first time (qualified citizens become eligible to register at age 18). The work seems to be paying off: In the primary season earlier this year, voter turnout among voters aged 18-29 doubled from 2000, the last time a presidential election’s two major parties featured open primaries.

A USA Today/MTV/Gallup Poll showed that voters aged 18-29 preferred Obama over McCain 61-32 percent, which the USA Today reported as the most lopsided result within in an age group in any presidential election. Just as striking, 55 percent say that Sarah Palin ‘isn’t qualified to serve as president, if that were to become necessary. Obama running mate Joe Biden, according to the age group, is qualified according to 59 percent of those polled.

Quoting from the USA Today article directly:

“In ‘04 they disliked Bush and in ‘08 they really like Obama,” says Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE, a Tufts University research center on civic engagement and youth. “But as several of these happen in a row you start to wonder whether it’s about the kids, not the candidate, at least to some degree. Other measures of civic engagement such as volunteering are much higher in this decade than they were over the preceding 20 years. When young people get involved in community service, they ask whether they should also be involved in politics.”

For many, that participation has a Democratic stamp. By 40%-21%, young people consider themselves Democrats rather than Republicans.

And to those who remember how important Florida became in 2000, the Miami Herald reported today on another great sign young voters present for Obama, Biden and Democrats:

Polls suggest the Democrat has made inroads. A recent Miami Herald statewide poll found that 57 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they planned to vote for Obama, compared to 35 percent for McCain…

In terms of new voter registrations, Democrats have gained a 658,000-voter registration advantage over Republicans in Florida since the last presidential election.

It’s just one state, but this breakthrough, coupled with in-roads Obama has made in previous Republican wins from 2004 in Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, Nevada, North Dakota and Virginia clearly show that McCain’s chances are slimming by the minute. Ergo: McCain sanctioned robocalls.

Is this a election referendum on change? My calculation is yes, should everything remain as current data suggests. Is Obama the man of change? On the promise side, absolutely.

On the guarantee side? Answers to that question begins in January.