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COMMENTARY
March 5, 2008
Eight months left
Given a choice not between a good and an evil, but rather only between two evils, I’m for choosing the lesser one. This has been my excuse for praying that Hilary Clinton would somehow win the presidential nomination of the U.S. Democrat Party. That accomplished, I could then turn my prayers to the benefit of John McCain, in the hope he would defeat Mrs Clinton in November.As a bonus, for a foreigner who is “conservative,” and thus tends to favour the Popular Party in Spain, and the Republicans in the United States, I think Mrs Clinton is the more defeatable Democrat candidate; and have noticed I am supported by the polls in that. But I don’t trust polling of hypothetical adversaries, eight months in advance of an election, and will continue to ride on gut feelings. From this misty distance, I see no reason why the Democrats, given that they are not only Democrats, but Democrats at the current stage of political degeneration, will not choose Barack Obama as the candidate more likely to unite them. He has captured the hearts of a large constituency of very naïve people, together with the glitter of “identity politics.” A victory for Mrs Clinton would make all those people sad, and persuade many of them not to vote in the general election. Mr McCain has anyway more cross-party appeal than Mrs Clinton, thanks to his somewhat maverick record in the Senate. And the Nader factor is worth toting in, too. Ralph Nader is, from a Republican view, an ideal third-party candidate, because he subtracts votes almost exclusively from establishment Democrats. Which makes him, by my assessment, a spoiler for Mrs Clinton, but less a spoiler for Mr Obama. Mr Obama emerged, late last fall, when he suddenly caught fire rhetorically. Prior to that, he had been a rather bland speaker with nothing substantial to say. His Senate track record was similarly undistinguished: no sign of leadership on any question of policy. His attraction was novelty and a specious charm. But without acquiring any discernible policy interests, he suddenly mastered the alchemist’s art of making empty phrases turn golden when touched by sparkle words like “hope” and “believe,” and by communicating to the inexperienced young the notion that “change” can happen by the Peter Pan magic of everyone wishing it simultaneously. As David Brooks has pointed out, Mr Obama is master of the minds of those whose consciousness is invested in Facebook and YouTube and open-source software. Perhaps he should also have mentioned Harry Potter. In the course of this transformation, Mr Obama became the photogenic media darling, replacing Mrs Clinton in that role so completely that the media now turn on her, and on her superannuated husband, whenever they dare suggest that Mr Obama has no clothes. We must assume that in a race between Obama and McCain, the media commitment to the former will be total, and that the latter will be horsewhipped for any word of criticism. The New York Times has already started testing various mud mixtures, to see how well they can adhere to McCain -- descending below the tabloid level by insinuating, for instance, a sexual affair that obviously did not happen, and corrupt interventions on behalf of special interests by the Senator who has been most spectacularly hard for special interests to buy. But Americans (unlike Canadians) rank journalists below lawyers and politicians in esteem, and the media have lost many elections. Indeed, their efforts to conceal the weaknesses of John Kerry in the last presidential election, when all the material was available on the Internet, contributed directly to the re-election of George W. Bush. So it remains to be seen what will happen when the distractions of the primaries clear, and open political warfare can resume between Democrats and Republicans. Will Mr Obama stand up to withering fire from an opponent who has no good reason to fear alienating “identity” constituencies on which the Democrats already have a lock? In particular, will the huge Democrat Hispanic constituency, that has overwhelmingly favoured Mrs Clinton heretofore, consider McCain v. Obama an open choice? And will the question, “Who do you trust as Commander-in-Chief?” -- a fair question for the electorate of the world’s pre-eminent superpower -- advance to the front burner? For that is a question that knocks Mr Obama out of consideration, and he can only hope to win as long as people can be persuaded not to think about it. If they persist in thinking, anyway, his own rhetoric could easily sink him, for on foreign policy he is incoherent. His official position now, towards America’s allies in the Middle East, is to divide them into two groups, abandoning some, such as Iraq, bombing others, such as Pakistan, with perhaps a mixture of abandonment and bombing in Afghanistan. Getting from there to somewhere credible will take more time than a presidential campaign provides. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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