Today’s mainstream news is filled with New Hampshire coverage of the candidates asking to be president and they chose sides by reporting campaign events with a negative spin or a positive spin. I have been observing this process for many months now, trying to get real information about who among the 8 Democrats and 9 Republicans just might be able to bring prosperity and international respect back to our country because I take my one vote very seriously. And I have reached the conclusion that we know little more today than we knew yesterday about individual candidates.
As an independent voter with allegiance to neither party, I depend a lot on previous records of public service (Yes, public service; not political service.) I do believe that there is a very real difference between being a politician and being a public servant. Most of our elected representatives seem to view being a senator, a congressman, a president or a member of the Supreme Court as some promotion they have earned, a step up the corporate ladder so to speak.
It was not intended to be that way. I’m sure we all remember that the concept of "government" was centered around the notion that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" so various checks and balances were built into the government. One of these checks which is rarely thought of any longer was the limited service of public officials. A congressman must come from the district he/she serves and is most aware of his particular area’s needs and ideology. We saw an example of this during the antislavery movement that lead to the Civil War. A senator must represent his state and is usually elected because of statewide name recognition; however, the concept of a public servant donating his/her time to represent the people in his home state is long gone. Elizabeth Dole being elected a senator of a state she hadn't live in for more than 30 years proved that. It isn’t a few months of time taken away from professions, it IS the profession. And that profoundly changes the candidates who run for office.
I am looking for that public servant quality in the candidates and finding very little. From the biographies of the so called front runners, there is very little that doesn’t qualify as political "job experience" and only one, Senator Hillary Clinton, has a resume containing that. No matter why she did it, she did do it. As First Lady of an impoverished state for 12 years; and without the wealth of previous and subsequent administrations; Senator Clinton was a working wife who also found time for public service duties far beyond the duties assigned to First Ladies. Most of her public service work involved children and their health and education, and children and their legal defense. No matter what your personal opinion is of her, she has dedicated a large portion of her life to making the lives of children better - and that is what we say we want our candidates to do; make our lives better. George W. Bush had no public service experience when he entered office and no understanding of children’s needs as his ill conceived "leave no child behind" act has proven. If children are our future, then Edwards and Obama criticizing her experience when they have none or very little is just another political gambit to win.
Senator Obama’s biography indicates that he spent most of his youth outside the USA or in Hawaii which certainly didn’t expose him to the unique problems of coming of age during the civil rights struggles in the 60s and 70s. But you would think that his Kenyan heritage would provoke some response from him about what is happening there now; if only to demonstrate his foreign affairs expertise.
And his public service record, as reported, says that he spent approximately 5 years as a "Community Organizer" before attending law school, but the details of what he was organizing are missing. Although he conducted a voter registration drive the record doesn’t indicate if this was a political voter drive. He practiced law for 3 years and was employed by the Chicago School of Law for 11 until winning his senate seat in 2004.
Senator Edwards claims to be the champion of the middle class and indicates that he is from a working class background. He is the first in his family to attend college and is a lawyer whose background appears to be in health and injury related areas which does help him understand the shortcomings of the insurance dependent health care industry. And he and his wife established a foundation in their son’s name after his death "to reward, encourage, and inspire young people in the pursuit of excellence." He did "pull himself up by his bootstraps"; something the present Republican administrations and most of the candidates did not have to do.
I do not feel any Republican running for president represents me in any way. I am not for making Church and State synonymous and I am not for a Mormon who equivocates about his religious beliefs while advocating a prominent secular role in government and where both candidates seem to have contributed more service to their religions than service to the people they want to to represent.
So this "horse race" has been narrowed down to three Democratic candidates dominating the media right now; in spite of Britney Spear’s breakdown. When I wrote my January 6 diary I was leaning towards Edwards because of his strong stand on health coverage and away from Obama because of his strong stand for mandatory insurance coverage when we can’t afford to pay the premiums we have now. But after watching the New Hampshire debates, a new component has entered into consideration.
The political agenda seems to have been reduced to which candidate is for the most "change". Considering none of these candidates stand out for advocating any major CHANGE in the Senate, none deserve the title. And it is true that all three candidates have had their names on important legislation for CHANGE which was either watered down or never happened; not a strong point to make at this point.
And considering their lack of commitment to CHANGE, I will confess that I was impressed with Senator Clinton’s response to Senator Obama’s criticism of her as being "status quo". You may call her many things, but the one thing she isn’t is considered "status quo". The former First Lady has been sticking her neck out there for as many years as she has been in public life. Short timer Obama, not exactly the bastion of CHANGE in his brief tenure in the Senate, had no right to use that argument against his opponent.
Former Senator Edwards, not exactly a bastion of enlightenment during his tenure in the Senate either, should have stuck to his message and not taken that low road. It only served to muddled his message and made him seem just another politician running for president and out to "win" whatever it took.
And in spite of all the negative press about her "tearing up" or "getting emotional" I think yesterday showed us a fraction of the real Hillary. Perhaps she is a world class actress but she seemed to really, passionately CARE what happened to the People after the 2008 election. And then I remembered she is one of us. Not someone with a legacy from a wealthy family but a middle class child who grew up and entered an unknown culture in one of the poorest states in our country. And she was a part of bringing that state from the bottom of state rankings up to the state candidate Huckabee had the privilege of serving as governor. That kind of experience is good experience. As silver spoon Bush has shown us that kind of knowledge of a different social class is important.