Courting Goldilocks: Obama, McCain and the Growing Divide

The 2008 election is already working out to be a polarizing battle, you might even say, a battle of black and white. Senator Obama, the self-proclaimed and support-backed “uniter,” has come under attack recently as independents have started to examine his liberal voting record, and meanwhile Senator McCain, as he abandons his centrist policies, has struggled to find his own party, fragmented and alienated by the failures of President Bush. In fact the two major candidates, selected by their respective party’s for their wide and varied appeal, have become more controversial figures than those they already triumphed against; the partisan machine is winning.

Mr. Obama’s rhetoric is in part to blame. During debates and in victory speeches he habitually won over crowds through his powers of suggestion, often presenting his supporters with two options: change or status quo, war or withdrawal, hope or defeat. Indeed, in one of his most famous quotes he suggested that choosing between good and bad is “what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?”

What Mr. Obama is ignoring or more likely forgetting, is that between the two is a healthy skepticism—something that could have urged Mr. Bush to question if there truly were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, if there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, or if a western democracy could function in a Muslim country.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, having grossly miscalculated independent tolerance for conservative policy, has disaffected his independent base in the process of his rightward shift, leaving his supporters fundamentally sectionalized and ideologically confused. Just two days ago, Political Irony, called McCain a “two-faced maverick of convenience.”

Therefore it’s no coincidence that the independents who ultimately decide the presidency, are currently struggling to find the gray area between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, the candidate with the 98% liberal voting record who says he will unite the country and the Republican nominee who voted with the exceedingly unpopular President Bush 97% of the time over the past two years. In the end something’s gotta give, but it remains to be seen whether Obama will cease the divisive talk before McCain can thinly and safely spread himself across political the spectrum.

Does America Want Democracy?

Remember when Mitt Romney said “Washington is broken?” Remember what he was planning on doing about it? Probably not. Because it has been a long time since a real candidate campaigned for the presidency with real ideas. Not opinions about abortion, but something substantial like a constitutional amendment. And since you probably cannot find a real candidate with real ideas, then you, like the rest of us, are faced with a decision. Do you support someone who has a chance at winning the White House? Or do you support your favorite idiosyncratic politician who is willing to stand for something. If you, like three percent of America, chose the latter, then you’re in luck.

When Mike Gravel lost the Democratic nomination, he went Libertarian, not to win the presidency, but to raise awareness for his brainchild: the National Initiative for Democracy. The initiative consists of a federal statute and a constitutional amendment designed to create ballot initiatives at the federal level similar to those at the state and local levels. In other words, it seeks to have citizens vote on national laws the same way you might have voted on a Massachusetts law, like gay marriage. Even if you don’t support the initiative, it raises some good questions. Like why do our towns and our states trust us to create, pass, and nullify laws, but not our country? More likely, our country does, but the federal government will not give us this right because the only road to a constitutional amendment is through Congress, the group that would lose the power we would gain; trying to get Congress to grant us lawmaking privileges is like asking the gatekeeper to let you in so you can fire him.

So our representative government is failing us and it seems we have not power to change it. Congressmen have become trapped in a vicious cycle of partisanship; to get elected they need to run as a Democrat or a Republican, and once elected as such, they need to support the policies traditionally supported by their own party or they won’t be able to run under it for their next term. While we navigate the ballot, trying to pick the lesser of two evils, we rarely think about the alternative. There are other parties with other ideas, and most people don’t care which party’s umbrella a policy falls under. If a majority of Americans support something, it should be law.

And yet it isn’t. As it stands we can do little to amend this. We can lobby Congress to give us their direct power or we can throw our vote away on a meaningless presidential candidate. The only other option is Gravel’s farfetched proposition. In the National Initiative, he claims that because the Constitution was established by a large majority of states approving it, a majority of people can amend it. Whether the right is directly stated in the document or not, and whether Congress recognizes it or not, a majority of people advocating for an amendment might be forceful enough to make the federal government acknowledge it. What’s ironic is that a person as deeply pessimistic as Mike Gravel, who has lost complete faith in our Congress to protect us, would actually think this plan could work.

America and its Partisan Fog: Breaking Free from the Old Glaucoma

On July 5th, the Senate was scheduled to vote on an important climate change bill. Senate Republicans, desperate to halt the ballot, insisted that the 492-page document be read aloud, citing it as revenge for slow Democratic movement on President Bush’s judicial nominees. Nine hours later, the Senate voted, and the bill failed 27-28.

On July 19th, a Senate bill to fund solar power initiatives failed after a Senate vote marked the ending of a lengthy Republican filibuster. Only five Republicans had voted against ending the filibuster.

In 2000, I followed my mother to the polls to watch her vote for her presidential, congressional, and local candidates. Ten years old, I remember looking through the ballot, as she taught me how to vote. With your pen, you fill in the bubble next to where it says “Democrat.”

Two days ago, on my way into the subway, an Obama campaign representative stopped me. I said I would listen to what he had to say, if he would listen to me. He told me that Obama had an economic plan to increase minimum wage and support the middle class. He told me Obama had strength and character, that he didn’t accept financing from special interest groups. He told me that Obama opposed the war in Iraq, and would withdraw our troops within sixteen months.

So I told him that I wasn’t going to vote for Obama, that I opposed any candidate who endorsed the PATRIOT Act and that America was too precious to me and to those around me to be lost among a partisan fog. I said I opposed Congress’ own special interests and any candidate for “change” that would neglect Senate votes, opportunities to change public policy, only to campaign for himself. I told the representative that I was voting for Mike Gravel and that he should too. When he looked at me, confused, and asked to which party Gravel belonged, I told him he was a Libertarian. The agent told me that someday I might grow up.

In George Washington’s “Farewell Address,” he said “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” Just so, I believe, a trust in a party, is a distrust in oneself and in one’s capacity to think. I believe, the capacity of citizens is great enough for citizens to make their own laws by majority and replace Congress. But I also believe that there is a paradox that most voters fall into: lamenting partisan actions in Washington, yet sponsoring their party’s candidates with exclusion.

We must resist that urge, and we must remember not to believe what we are always told. The opposite of partisanship is not bipartisanship. When media networks refer to congressional bills as “bipartisan,” they mean that most bureaucrats support them. They are what we ought to call bills for incumbents, and the incumbents, those with the control of our country and the mutual goal of staying in office, are a faction among themselves.

Don’t forget that your political party, if you have one, is only a brand, something of an organization or a company created to help the elite of government keep it from those who disagree with them. No matter how many times Senator Clinton insists “the Democratic Party is a family,” don't believe her. It’s corporation, much like Wal-Mart or Microsoft, that looks to monopolize your district and render your vote meaningless.

So far, our parties have only filled our government. We still have the power to vote, and it’s not one that gerrymandering and slimy diplomacy have rendered obsolete just yet. Indeed, parties reform when their representatives’ collective re-elections are in jeopardy. Even if you can’t bring yourself to vote against your loyalty and your parents’ loyalty and their parents’ loyalty before that, you can vote against your incumbent. If you don’t like what has been happening in your district, you may have the power to change it; you may be able to change who leads you. But you also may not have that right for much longer, or soon it may be useless, merely ceremonial, like it has become in Zimbabwe. So before you lose it, use it, and don’t waste it. If you have an allegiance to this country, you don’t have one to a family and you definitely don’t have one to a party. Don’t make voting a formality.