I’ve heard it said that, to a carpenter, every problem looks like a nail. To a surgeon, a scalpel. There are probably more examples of this. But the idea is that every person looks for a solution within the realm of our own experience.
This election year, American voters are faced with candidates who look for solutions through very different prisms.
John McCain served in the military. He’s the son and grandson of admirals. His public persona is very much tied to his military service. And commentators have often noted his comments about the end of the Vietnam war—that it should never have ended the way it did. That we should have kept fighting until we won.
Barack Obama is a lawyer and law professor. He specializes in constitutional law. His mother was an anthropologist, interested in cultures different from her own. He might reasonably be expected to look for solutions by understanding other cultures, and by writing new laws.
This is not an insignificant difference. For the last seven and a half years, the executive branch of the United States government has looked to military power as the answer to global problems. They have promoted widening wars and publicly stated their expectation that these wars they began would last for our lifetime. They have also demonstrated an almost unprecedented level of contempt for the rule of law, holding themselves as immune from the laws that govern the rest of us.
It is, of course, up to the voters to decide whether or not they judge this perspective to have been successful. Whether or not it actually made our lives better. If it did, in fact, solve any of the very grave problems the world faces.
If the polls can be trusted, most people do not believe it did. However, only a very slim majority of voters seem to make the connection between the current war mongers and the warrior who would replace them. Again, based on candidate preference polling. McCain is seen as a more honorable man than the current promoters of war. He may be. But he still seems to see war as a solution to virtually every problem. It is perhaps natural. But it is a solution we have already tried. And very few seem happy with the outcome.
I can only hope American voters make this connection in November and decide to make us once again, a country of laws. And not a country perpetually at war.