God & Politics
Who Would Jesus Vote For?
It was the most-watched convention season in history.
Between thirty-seven and thirty-nine million
viewers tuned in to see Senators John McCain of
Arizona and Barack Obama of Illinois accept
their parties’ nomination for the office of
president o the United States. Between the
electrifying figures of Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Obama, and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, politics
has come roaring back to the forefront of
national interest. Men and women of all ages and
political persuasions are animatedly debating
issues and personalities, pigs wearing lipstick
and so on. Even young adults and, unbelievably,
teens are watching this race very closely. Voter
registration is at an all-time high. The voltage
is off the map, with temper flaring and tears
falling. There was no Dream Team—a move that may
have proved cathartic and energizing to the
Democrats, but the truth is Hillary Clinton
brings nothing to the table Barack Obama didn’t
have already, and she brings her luggage—Bill
Clinton and her own ambition to be
president—with her. Senator McCain
out-maneuvered Obama’s calendar by announcing a
controversial vice presidential choice the day
after the Democratic convention. Governor Sarah
Palin has dominated the news, keeping foreign
policy and even devastating hurricanes off of
the headlines. Palin has energized the
Republican base, who now seem as excited about
electing Palin as the Democrats are about
electing Obama. Which is curious considering
Palin is not running for president—John McCain
is, a fact all but lost in the noisy hubbub over
the new gal.
The McCain campaign, already hitting sophomoric
lows in its relentless anti-Obama campaign, went
even lower post-convention. Once the very
paragon of virtue, to the point where his own
party had all but disowned him, John McCain has
embraced the darkest and most ignoble of Karl
Rove dirty tactics, slipping in
not-so-subliminal race fear into his series of
ridiculous anti-Obama ads (the crowd chanting
noise reminiscent of Islamic fundamentalists,
and every ad featuring phallic symbols—towers,
columns, etc.—placed strategically in the
background). McCain’s campaign against Obama is,
in that light, both hateful and racist. It has
destroyed the McCain brand name—ethics,
plain-talk, straight-shooter. Now his campaign
is simply about lies. Lies about Obama’s record,
lies about Palin who is a brilliant political
prop—part crutch, part shield for the otherwise
lackluster McCain campaign. But there’s simply
no there there. McCain’s not talking about
issues because he can’t beat Obama on issues.
The mess our nation is in, the Dow Jones
tumbling more than 500 points and three major
financial institutions imploding last week, is a
Republican mess. It’s sad that a Republican
candidate whose campaign is run by and is
virtually infested with lobbyists is, with a
straight face, declaring war on lobbyists and
special interests. Lies. It’s like every time
his lips move, now. A man whose spent months
bashing Obama for his inexperience places an
infinitely less experiences candidate a
heartbeat away from a 72-year old president with
serious health problems. The McCain campaign
accused the Obama campaign of going negative as
an excuse for themselves going negative. Then
they accused the Obama campaign of playing the
race card “from the bottom of the deck,” while
they run these subliminal scare commercials with
their Islamic chants and phallic symbols.
All of which has the Obama camp reeling, trying
to figure out how to fight back. If they go
negative, they lose. They become just another
politician. If they stay above the fray, they
lose because people are, frankly, stupid and
believe whatever they see on TV. Palin is the
Teflon Queen, immune to any and all criticism
and, apparently, any truth. Anytime anyone at
all criticizes her or even asks her a simple
question, the McCanites scream “sexism!” It’s
brilliant. She’s a brilliant shield for McCain.
Bullets just bounce off her. The McCain camp has
the Obamas in a crouch, trying to wait out the
Palin Surge. But Palin will gobble up news
headlines on her way up and on her way down.
When she deflates, they’ll be writing about
that, too. Meanwhile, McCain runs out the clock
on Obama, stealing his thunder with the empty
suit Palin while the Republicans run around the
country collecting names of foreclosed
homeowners to selectively invalidate their voter
registrations. Much as I’ve tried to remain
neutral in all this, it would be disingenuous of
me to not point out all this lying. I’m sure the
Democrats are lying too, but the Republicans are
just so much more brazen about it. They're
lying, they know they're lying, their base of
conservative voters know they're lying--and
nobody seems to care. Because, by the time the
Obamas gear up to prove something they've said
is a lie, they're off making other baseless
accusations. And that's the game: to keep Obama
off-message, to not allow talk of the economy or
the war in the headlines, but to distract
everybody with pointless frenetics over the
glass-half-empty Palin and pigs wearing
lipstick. They’re not even trying to hide the
fact their anti-Obama campaign is sleazy, unfair
and misleading, that Palin’s qualifications are
at best specious, and that the McCain campaign
is selling us all a bill of goods. They’re
lying. It’s all lies. And they’re just so
blatant about it.
There’s just no way I could support this
candidate, reward these tactics with my vote.
It’s truly sad, the desperation that has driven
John McCain to abandon everything he’s stood for
and fought for, to become just another liar.
Not About Me:
Obama dismisses the historic nature of his nomination. "This has never been about me.
It's about you."
It was history in the making.
Not the speech itself, though I thought the speech quite good,
just the simple notion of a black man accepting the nomination
of the Democratic National Committee for the office of President
of the United States. Thursday night Senator Barack Obama made
history by accepting the nomination of the Democratic party for
president of the United States. For those of you who remember
hearing Martin Luther King speak live, who vividly remember Neil
Armstrong setting foot on the moon, this was an utterly
transformative moment, one many of us will remember forever. On
the other hand, I called around to some friends, and found it
utterly stunning that so many of them were out wandering the
streets, even at the church, completely unaware of and
unconcerned by what was transpiring in Denver. I found myself
shaking my head at us, at how lost many of us are. That every
African American in this country wasn't glued to a TV set to see
this thing live utterly perplexes me. Unless your spouse or your
child or your parent lay dying, there was nothing, I repeat,
nothing going on in your life last night that was more important
than this. This was more important than your rehearsal. More
important than your socializing. More important than even your
bible study. It was a moment we should have joined together, as
a people,. as a nation, and laughed, cried, cheered, and,
mostly, sat in awe of this thing that God has brought into
being, at this glorious nation finally, even reluctantly,
achieving the greatness of its promise. Pastors: unless you
wheeled a TV set into your bible study last night, you blew it.
Leaders need to lead, which means stop being transfixed by the
shine on your own shoes or your reflection in the mirror. Stop
being so focused on your little church on the corner—no matter
how big that little church might be—and see the whole picture.
It was a sight we should take to our graves: an African American
nominated for president of the United States. If you missed it
live, it's all over the web, so please go see it. And shame on
you.
The convention was, in most other ways, typical. It seemed to be
a party for Hillary Clinton, whom Obama apparently has gone well
out of his way to celebrate in an effort to unify the party. All
of which still was not enough for disgruntled Hillary voters,
calling themselves PUMAS (for Party Unity My Ass), most of whom
are angry at Obama for not putting Hillary on the ticket.
Hillary Clinton duplicates many of Barack Obama’s strengths, and
her own political ambition tends to be more competitive than
complimentary. Choosing Hillary might have unified the party,
but, in terms of the general election, she would bring more
negatives to the campaign than positives. Obama needed to
balance his ticket, which I believe he did brilliantly with Joe
Biden. None of which matters to the PUMAS who are more about
emotion than intellect. Their interest in Hillary appears to be
mostly about Hillary being a woman than about Hillary’s values
and policies, all of which Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, a kind
of Bizarro World Republican version of Hillary, repudiates. But
the PUMAS are angry, want to remain angry, and would rather lose
the election for the Democrats than actually honor what Hillary
stood for.
Which seems to be the disconnect between the Obama campaign and
the McCain campaign. McCain’s campaign appears to clearly
understand people vote their emotion way more than their
intellect. They tend to vote their fears much more than their
hopes. McCain needs only to first frighten us, and then to make
an awful lot of noise to distract us, to beat Obama who, as most
intellectuals might, tends to scratch his head and wonder about
the childish, sophomoric tone of the McCain campaign, and why
anyone would fall for it. What the senator fails to realize is,
every time he says, “They must think you’re stupid,” he earns
more votes for McCain. People buying into McCain’s Fear & Smear
campaign are, indeed, stupid. But I’ve never won over a stupid
person by pointing out that they’re stupid. Ego will win over
intellect every time, and stupid people will cling to stupid
choices even harder when so challenged. It’s always better to
outflank stupid people, to give them room to breathe, to ask
questions, and to allow them to change their own minds. Stupid
people have a huge investment in their stupidity. Admitting
they’ve been wrong is usually more than their ego can take, so
pointing out they themselves are stupid only polarizes them in
their stupidity. In fact, the more they themselves realize
they’re being stupid or that they have, in fact, been wrong all
this time, the harder it is for them to change. Even knowing
they’re completely wrong, their pride simply won’t allow them to
admit it. “They must think you’re stupid” rallies the Obama
base, but it cements the McCain crew in place.
While certainly being caught between a hurricane and a hard
place, Senator John McCain tried to make political expediency of
the potential human tragedy of Hurricane Gustav. By severely
truncating the Republican National Convention, McCain and
company got to dodge a major bullet—appearances by President
Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, two guys McCain would much
prefer not attend the party anyway. What was most interesting
about the Republican Presidential Nomination Convention was how
much energy they put into avoiding the words “President” and
“Bush.” McCain also got to sidestep an allegedly disgruntled
Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, both snubbed in McCain’s
sensationalistic nomination of Wonder Woman for vice president.
The senator also sought to maximize his profile by highlighting
his leadership skills during the crisis, even though as a
senator from Arizona he had no specific tasks to perform and no
useful powers to exercise. Senator Barack Obama, on the other
hand, brings not only a deeply embedded grass-roots organization
into play, but nearly two decades of street-level organization
and community action skills Senator McCain simply does not
possess. While, like McCain, Obama has no official standing in
the region, he has tremendously useful community-based
organizational skills and unparalleled popularity among those
most potentially affected by the arriving storm that would have
made any “highlighting” of Senator McCain’s leadership skills a
dicey gamble on McCain’s part.
Boots on the ground, helping troubled communities, has been
Obama’s primary occupation. Being a politician, I don’t put it
past either candidate to make political hay of a disaster, but,
if anything the potential tragedy would have likely further
highlighted the differences between the two would-be presidents,
with Obama having the network and community relationships to
make a quiet, useful and effective difference on the ground. Had
tragedy struck, Senator McCain might have worked through
official channels, but his social, economic and empathetic
distance from these at-risk communities—rather than his
leadership skills—is what will likely be highlighted.
Rolling Snake Eyes: McCain's loses his big gamble
Reality Check
“A community organizer,” former New York City Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani sneered, referring to Barack Obama’s years on the
streets of Chicago, from June 1985 to May 1988, as director of
the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based
community organization originally comprising eight Catholic
parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and
Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. During his three years
as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its
annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with
accomplishments including helping set up a job training program,
a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights
organization in Altgeld Gardens [Wikipedia]. And this was before
earning his Juris Doctorate from Harvard and teaching
constitutional law for twelve years. Giuliani, like most of the
“red meat” republicans in attendance, wrote of Obama—a man they
know very little about—as though the senator has been lounging
on a sofa for twenty years waiting for the nomination.
Giuliani made it seem that such work was negligible and
unimportant, and that it didn’t contribute to the overall fabric
of the man who would be president. I’ll have to think hard, but
I really can’t remember if we’ve ever had a U.S. president who
had any real street-level experience solving the problems of
average Americans. I would tend to suspect such experience
should be a vital qualification for high office and, rather than
sneer at Obama for his years of service, I’d tend to criticize
Senator McCain’s résumé for not having any such community
service on it.
The GOP spent four days telling us, often in grating detail, the
suffering McCain went through in Vietnam which, I suppose, Obama
would be doing if he’d had that experience as well. But McCain’s
outstanding military service record neither prepares him nor
qualifies him for the Oval Office. It was four days of emotional
blackmail, three of them spent finding 7,000 ways to attack
Obama without using the “N” word. The entire event was fairly
difficult for me to watch. It was sad, all of those people in
such denial, actually booing—yes booing—Obama’s service as a
community organizer. Which was both shocking and revelatory of
how disconnected from reality these folks are.
ABC News reported the GOP convention was 93% white, with 51% of delegates reporting an annual income above $500,000. I guess if you live in a big house in an upscale neighborhood, community service is some esoteric “other,” some “thing” done by some people over there, where the poor folk live. Well-off people don’t understand it beyond the most basic pass-out-sandwiches face of community service.
