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davywavyPeople sometimes say to me, “David”, they say. “David. Given your well-documented loathing of Tony Blair, why is it that you don’t dislike Barack Obama with the same passion, given the similarities between the two?”
“Well”, I reply. “What you say is in part true. Both Blair and Obama are charismatic demogogues who have realized that the true way to the electorate’s heart is to make lots of fine-sounding but fairly noncommittal promises. However, it cannot be denied that Tony Blair was an utterly fantastic Prime Minister so long as you didn’t happen to be British and, by that same coin, if the Americans want to elect a President who is utterly fantastic for everyone except them, I really don’t see why I should have a problem with that.”
This usually starts an argument pretty well.
After my post last week, a couple of people asked me to write up my views on the two US presidential candidates and, as British politics is being rather predictable and boring at the moment, the opportunity to pontificate wasn’t something I could really pass up.
The problem with assessing which of the two candidates would be the better president is twofold; firstly, when the job description is “Most powerful man in the world”, it’s hard to choose any criteria which can be taken as good previous experience for the role and secondly, given that contemporary electioneering seems to consist of focusing not on why you would be good at the job but why the other person would be bad, it’s difficult to judge people on their merits. However, it must be said that simply being a better option than the other guy is no qualification whatsoever for high office, and I wish politicians would stop doing it.
Given that the campaign is now pretty much sewn up, and John McCain’s last hope for victory must be for The Guardian to arrange a letter writing campaign in support of Obama like it did for Kerry in 2004, any comment is rather old hat now, but anyway…
I base my judgement on the two candidates on the same thing that I first looked at when I got interested in who was going to win: history.
The lesson of the 20th century suggests that the very best American Presidents have tended to be men with experience of the military, warfare or both. Roosevelt and Eisenhower, who I’d regard as the choice of the century, both had experience – Roosevelt as secretary of the Navy during the First World War and Eisenhower as commander of allied forces during the Second. This experience seems to have given them a grounding in the degree of responsibility of what it means to be commander in chief of the biggest guns on the planet, and the necessity of understanding and engaging with global politics in a constructive manner. Others had similar experience; Hoover’s experiences during the Boxer rebellion in China made him a great humanitarian, for example.
On this basis, it’s pretty unarguable that McCain would make the better president. He might have a short fuse, but history suggests that his experiences lend a degree of grounding in global realpolitik which other people, who may have dodged the draft for example, lack.
Unfortunately for McCain, he has a significant weakness, and that weakness is Sarah Palin. It’s pretty obvious from watching the debates that McCain is not in the best of health and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him keel over within the next few years – and it’s also obvious that Palin recognizes this and she has spent much of her time on the campaign trail angling for a Palin Presidency with all the subtlety and decorum of an epileptic tuba.
The problem is not just that Palin is plainly an evil lunatic. It’s that she’s an incompetent evil lunatic, and given McCain’s history of heart trouble my great fear is that six months after the election the Oval Office would see a scene like this:
Palin: John?
McCain: Yep, Sarah?
Palin: You really must come over here and see this video on my laptop. I think you’ll like it.
McCain: Sure. What is it?...Say, those two dames are pretty fine lookin’! Hang on, what’s she doing with that cup? That’s disgusting!
Palin: Keep watchin’!
McCain: Now they’re…oh, god, my heart! My heart! Pills! Pills! In my jacket pocket! My heart!
Palin: Mwu haha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahahaaaa!*
So, were it not for the Palin handicap, I’d have no problem at all with McCain based on what history has to tell us. Indeed, I came out in support of him over Hillary Clinton a few years ago.
But this is by no means the full picture. The US as a nation is at its best when it is positive and optimistic, and it cannot be said that McCain radiates positive optimism. Indeed, his campaign seems largely to have comprised of him holding a torch under his face whilst booming “Bewaaare the eeevil terrorists!” in a scary voice. Barack Obama is his polar opposite and has inspired positivity and optimism in some of the most cynical people I know. In fact, the positivity and optimism, which characterizes the US at it’s absolute best, is being compared to Kennedy (who was a rubbish president but inspired greatness in people) although I suspect it might be more accurate to compare Obama to Warren G Harding at this stage.
These things in consideration and given the lesson that history teaches I think that John McCain has the potential to be the better president, but Obama has the potential to deliver the better presidency. On balance, therefore, I’d vote Obama, but the thing which would have been the final decider for me would have been Sarah Palin.
*If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, trust me when I say you don’t want to. I’d rather I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Well”, I reply. “What you say is in part true. Both Blair and Obama are charismatic demogogues who have realized that the true way to the electorate’s heart is to make lots of fine-sounding but fairly noncommittal promises. However, it cannot be denied that Tony Blair was an utterly fantastic Prime Minister so long as you didn’t happen to be British and, by that same coin, if the Americans want to elect a President who is utterly fantastic for everyone except them, I really don’t see why I should have a problem with that.”
This usually starts an argument pretty well.
After my post last week, a couple of people asked me to write up my views on the two US presidential candidates and, as British politics is being rather predictable and boring at the moment, the opportunity to pontificate wasn’t something I could really pass up.
The problem with assessing which of the two candidates would be the better president is twofold; firstly, when the job description is “Most powerful man in the world”, it’s hard to choose any criteria which can be taken as good previous experience for the role and secondly, given that contemporary electioneering seems to consist of focusing not on why you would be good at the job but why the other person would be bad, it’s difficult to judge people on their merits. However, it must be said that simply being a better option than the other guy is no qualification whatsoever for high office, and I wish politicians would stop doing it.
Given that the campaign is now pretty much sewn up, and John McCain’s last hope for victory must be for The Guardian to arrange a letter writing campaign in support of Obama like it did for Kerry in 2004, any comment is rather old hat now, but anyway…
I base my judgement on the two candidates on the same thing that I first looked at when I got interested in who was going to win: history.
The lesson of the 20th century suggests that the very best American Presidents have tended to be men with experience of the military, warfare or both. Roosevelt and Eisenhower, who I’d regard as the choice of the century, both had experience – Roosevelt as secretary of the Navy during the First World War and Eisenhower as commander of allied forces during the Second. This experience seems to have given them a grounding in the degree of responsibility of what it means to be commander in chief of the biggest guns on the planet, and the necessity of understanding and engaging with global politics in a constructive manner. Others had similar experience; Hoover’s experiences during the Boxer rebellion in China made him a great humanitarian, for example.
On this basis, it’s pretty unarguable that McCain would make the better president. He might have a short fuse, but history suggests that his experiences lend a degree of grounding in global realpolitik which other people, who may have dodged the draft for example, lack.
Unfortunately for McCain, he has a significant weakness, and that weakness is Sarah Palin. It’s pretty obvious from watching the debates that McCain is not in the best of health and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him keel over within the next few years – and it’s also obvious that Palin recognizes this and she has spent much of her time on the campaign trail angling for a Palin Presidency with all the subtlety and decorum of an epileptic tuba.
The problem is not just that Palin is plainly an evil lunatic. It’s that she’s an incompetent evil lunatic, and given McCain’s history of heart trouble my great fear is that six months after the election the Oval Office would see a scene like this:
Palin: John?
McCain: Yep, Sarah?
Palin: You really must come over here and see this video on my laptop. I think you’ll like it.
McCain: Sure. What is it?...Say, those two dames are pretty fine lookin’! Hang on, what’s she doing with that cup? That’s disgusting!
Palin: Keep watchin’!
McCain: Now they’re…oh, god, my heart! My heart! Pills! Pills! In my jacket pocket! My heart!
Palin: Mwu haha ha ha ha ha hahahahahahahahaaaa!*
So, were it not for the Palin handicap, I’d have no problem at all with McCain based on what history has to tell us. Indeed, I came out in support of him over Hillary Clinton a few years ago.
But this is by no means the full picture. The US as a nation is at its best when it is positive and optimistic, and it cannot be said that McCain radiates positive optimism. Indeed, his campaign seems largely to have comprised of him holding a torch under his face whilst booming “Bewaaare the eeevil terrorists!” in a scary voice. Barack Obama is his polar opposite and has inspired positivity and optimism in some of the most cynical people I know. In fact, the positivity and optimism, which characterizes the US at it’s absolute best, is being compared to Kennedy (who was a rubbish president but inspired greatness in people) although I suspect it might be more accurate to compare Obama to Warren G Harding at this stage.
These things in consideration and given the lesson that history teaches I think that John McCain has the potential to be the better president, but Obama has the potential to deliver the better presidency. On balance, therefore, I’d vote Obama, but the thing which would have been the final decider for me would have been Sarah Palin.
*If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, trust me when I say you don’t want to. I’d rather I didn’t know what I was talking about.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 10:37 am (UTC)Looks like I'm going to be wrong on both counts. And in this case I like being wrong as McCain appears to me to be Bush clone.
Having said that - nobody outside America thought that 'W' could win a second term.
Note: My total knowledge of american politics can be summed up with 'Morgan Freeman was pretty cool in Deep Impact'
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 10:39 am (UTC)I've been betting heavily on Obama since January, though - I'm set several nights on the booze and a shiney new MP3 player should he win.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 10:51 am (UTC)(Comment to be read with appropriate John McCruick hand betting signals).
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 03:08 pm (UTC)McCain came at this many years too late- Bush got the nomination he should have. That was the Big Mac at his best!
Then...
His party is killing itself. Its not often you see a candidate go for the nomination on a ticket of 'Make me president and i can save this party' but he kinda did.
The splits in the Republican party really are serious. I mean even more serious than the fault lines in the Conservative party- we are talking Labour in the mid-80's cracks- yeah THAT serious.
He had a decent team who brought him from dead in the water, to being the GOP candidate...
And then he made what i think was his worst mistake.
The team that made him the nominee was the remains of the team that lost to Bush- theteam that created Brand McCain- the STraight talk Express! the one the media adored.
So McCain has them get him the nomination- and all is good and then...
Well and then we watch the Democrats slug it out for a few months.
In the Uk people were saying stupid things like 'This is bad for the democrats'- actually it was great for the democrats- McCain was 'the other guy'- the election campaign was over in the Democratic side of the field...
And people are going 'Why is everyone looking at the dmeocarts'- and rather than saying 'Well, its GREAT political drama and the idea of a woman and a black man fighting over who will be the next nominee is awesome and great news' they decided to say...
McCain you team suck- fire them and hire THESE new guys who all were trained by the brilliant dudes who got W elected...
So he did.
Only his team were not brilliant.
They do brilliant stunts...
The Obama is a celebrity advert- awesome!
The way they announced Sarah Palin- awesome!!!
but since then?
Lumbering, lurching, lost and wild.
Like a drunk man on the way home...
Palin was not vetted enough- turned out to be a liability who is going for the 2012 nomination... he stopped talking to the press... he stopped talking to anyone... he failed to get a grip in the debates and generally has been let down by second raters... Steven Schmidt (his campaign manager) i called the New prince of Darkness after the advert and the unveiling of Palin (destroying all the big publicity for the Democrats National Convention), but since then he has lost his touch... and when Karl Rove gives his blessing to the Obama campaign as the best of the two (Schmidt is like his main dude), then you know its the campaign that let him down...
He CAN technically still win.
Technically.
maybe.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 03:15 pm (UTC)Oh, yes, "Look at this huge pile of money I've got", that's what they're thinking. But apart from that.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 11:18 am (UTC)When Bush won his second term I started reading a shed load of books by Neo-Cons... and discovered that amidst the people they admires was both Thatcher AND Blair for the same reasons (advocates of neo-Con foreign policy), I began to see some awesome writers, with some interesting ideas... who s6taked all on Iraq... and lost...
But the truth is- Bush should NOT have been the President he became.
-Bush carried over 70% of the Latino vote when he was elected in Texas- he reached out to them as someone who CARED about their community.
-Bush introduced a series of educational reforms (inspired by his wife Laura) that radically changed and improved education in Texas- he himself was known to campaign against ignorance and illiteracy...
-His platform was to end the Clinton's 'adventures abroad' to bring American soldiers home, to take a more passive stance internationally and as such psuh for Middle Eastern peace...
Hew was a bumbling, easy on the eye, good for education kinda president.
Then came 9/11.
Have you see W yet? Its jolly funny- but jolly sad...
Bush was the wrong president at the wrong time.
As for those neo-cons- well considering some back Obama, I would like to think they are saying...
"Hang US out to dry will you, you rat fink bastards?"
no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 05:01 am (UTC)NPR interview with likely voters in York, PA on expectations of post-election chaos (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96086423).
no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 11:10 am (UTC)Thats because they did not listen...
"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time. Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation...
Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism...
And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.... This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."
A more perfect union- the most important political speech of the last 40 years in the United States.
Remind yourself-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077.html
I do not believe for one second there is ANY evidence whatsoever to suggest post-election fear EXCEPT in the minds of a few white voters who believe that Obama will visit the sins of their forefathers upon them.
And there is no evidence on Gods Green Earth to suggest that.
None.
Not one iota of evidence.
Not a shred.
Nada.
NOTHING!
Chaos expectations
no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-31 12:30 am (UTC)Let's face facts - he's a guy who needs his e-mails printed out for him.