Word has it that Obama has a long liberal history as a community activist and that Hillary was the liberal foil to the triangulating mind that was the other half of the Billary hybrid. And yet, and yet...
The message of Obama's campaign is that he is all about post-partisanship. He will bring people from both sides of the aisle together in order to solve the country's problems. He will sit down with the insurance companies and work with them to really fix things. He will take us beyond the vicious partisanship that has held us in thrall for far too long. He brings us tidings of hope that the nastiness in DC will come to an end. And he does this with a passion and an eloquence that moves millions and brings tears to my eyes.
Hillary, on the other hand, is all about intelligence and capability, about experience and realism. She is the quintessential technocrat, ready to whip out her slide rule and figure out the exact formula to get the country back on the right track. She has Bill at her side, ready to bring his formidable political skills to bear on producing a new restoration, a restoration to the greatness that was the 90's. Listening to her speak with such sharp intelligence about the great issues of the day makes me pine for the days when such people were not denigrated as nerds or wonks.
My problem with both of these truly fine individuals is not with who they are. Hell, for me to say that I know who they truly are would be silly, but I do get the impression that they are both committed liberals who fervently wish to govern as liberals. How could I ask for more?
My problem is with the carefully crafted images that they present to us. Each seems to be trying not to rock the boat, not to wake the sleeping giant of the right-wing noise machine, not to upset the lobbyists and the corporations that employ them. Each acts as if all that is needed is a vision of how things might be, and a true desire to make it so. And each tries to convince us that s/he is the best to take us into that better world.
I believe that they are both intelligent people who understand political realities as well as possibilities. I believe they both know well that the right wing never backs down, that there is such an astronomical amount of money at stake for the wealthy and for the corporations that a right-wing backdown would simply defy the laws of economics.
You wouldn't know this, however, from their rhetoric, a rhetoric that not only never mentions these challenges explicitly, but seems to pretend that the challenges simply do not exist. That says that intelligence, or passion, or experience, or hope is the magic ingredient that has been mysteriously missing from our government. Howard Dean they are not.
Please tell me that they are lying. Tell me that each is doing this because of the particular intersection between their own personal realities and the incomplete social progress of today's America.
Please tell me why I should vote for a candidate who I hope is lying, rather than the candidate who I hope is telling the truth. Please.
I want to believe.