Recently in Campaign 2008 Category

Continuing on the the previous post.... I'm something of a contrarian. And I also have a heart for what I perceive to be the underdog. Four or five years from now, I may well be sitting with conservative friends, agreeing strongly about how the Democrats messed up the country with bad ideas and overreaching.

But that hasn't happened yet. What has happened was that I spent the past 6+ years writing columns and talking to friends about how excessive partisanship was a big problem and that we needed to find middle ground. The response of my conservative readers and friends was, "To hell with compromise, we've got a job to do."

So conservatives took firm command of the wheel, refused to share driving duties or to listen to navigational advice from others, drove drunkenly in the wrong direction for thousands of miles at a time, and crashed the car a few times for good measure.

When 75% of the public said, "We really would like to change drivers, thank you," that 25% minority got belligerent and said, "Look, we're on the right track, and those other guys will reeeeaaaally get you lost. We mean it. Those liberals are the worst drivers ever." And many conservatives are out-of-their-minds furious that the American public could dare to pull them from the wheel.

If the GOP said, "Holy cow, this didn't go well, I guess it's time for some rehab and for us to find some new conservative approaches that are appropriate for these new times," I'd have more respect for them. Instead, they're saying, "Give me that wheel back! How dare you?!?!"

I don't much respect that. The American people got more than enough opportunity to hear the Ayers accusations and the Rev. Wright issues, and still decided that it's time to give the other guys a chance to drive. If my conservative friends are convinced Obama will wreck the car even worse, they'll just have to let that play out. But in the meantime, I don't believe them when they insist that this road trip was going to turn out well if we just stayed the course.

When the Iraq war had just started, a group of friends debated the matter. I argued against the war, while most of the rest of the group passionately defended it. I complained about how President Bush had promised a "humbler" approach to foreign policy. One friend exclaimed: "Humility will come later. It's not the time for humility now."

That humility never seemed to come. It's still not here, even after 360 electoral votes against them. Conservatives have been court-ordered to rehab, but other than perhaps a few people like Gov. Bobby Jindal, they still insist that they don't have a problem, "only our rivals do." As they say in AA, you can't get better until you admit that you have a problem, and you can't admit you have a problem till you hit rock bottom. What's it going to take for conservatives to hit rock bottom....?

Supporters of Proposition 8 are angry at various acts of protest against the measure's passing, the Daily News reports here.

"Our opponents do not like the outcome and that is to be respected. They fought hard and they feel defeated and that is understandable," said Frank Schubert, co-manager of the Yes on 8 campaign. "What they do not have the right to do, however, is to harass and intimidate people. And they do not have the right to commit acts of domestic terrorism against our supporters."

What? Actually they do. That's as much a constitutional right as voting your conscience or expressing your opinion. In fact, that is expressing your opinion. Again, there is a difference between my freedom to express my opinion and someone else's duty to respect it. Are gay activists supposed to be compelled to keep eating at El Coyote?

It would be far better if we could all discuss these issues in a civil and respectful way; instead we've got angry activists doing anthrax hoaxes on one side and, on the other side, Sarah Palin complaining about how media scrutiny violates her 1st amendment right to slander her rivals. Neither side is clean here.

But there's a difference between "what's right" to an ideologue and "what a right is." There is always a right to boycott within our system.

This is a proud moment for me: An old friend and protege, Kirk Wimberley, had his first op-ed published today, in the Seattle Press-Intelligencer. He discusses his reflections on a rowdy, pro-Obama party on election night.

Some salient passages:

Sniggers and sneers accompanied McCain's parting words as conversation bubbled up around me; their reactions were bitter and their words were cutting. They were no better than the dejected naysayers in Arizona....

I struggled to hear McCain's speech, but sensed his courage to stand humbly before an America that didn't want him to be president. Even he acknowledged the historical significance of Obama's victory. I felt sympathy for McCain....

Later, during his acceptance speech, Obama confirmed his campaign demeanor by saying, "I will listen to you especially when we disagree." Back at the election night party, I encountered the opposite sentiment. The celebrating politicos reminded me of the entrenched divisions still thriving in America. If we don't put aside our bitter differences, Obama's historical triumph will be reversed and we the people will have failed -- plunging us further into cynicism.

First, I do think McCain was gracious and humble in his concession, as was Palin in defeat, but that alone bothers me. They weren't gracious or humble in continually suggesting that Obama was a dangerous wacko leftist who would destroy the fabric of American society. They were either insincere in their concessions or insincere in their attacks. It's more likely the latter. But that cynical campaign strategy helped escalate a certain hatred of Obama that's counterproductive for us all working together.

Perhaps my many conservative friends who won't talk to me these days are more sincere and consistent than McCain/Palin in their muted, heartbroken reactions to Obama's victory. Yet I'll confess I'm a little peeved about how I really don't believe I avoided them for so many days after a Reagan or a Bush won re-election.
That, to me does show that Kirk is right. Both pro-Obama hubris and anti-Obama seething are dangers to our effort to show that democracy really is a system worth infusing into other nations. And I like how Kirk closes his piece:

Make a renewed commitment to work together, to honor the innate dignity in others and to meet on common ground. Each one of us, regardless of political affiliation, is responsible for that mission in the coming years.

Amen to that.

And there's another reason for conservatives to come in off the ledge. Here's a governor willing to make tough choices in cutting spending for social services and education due to economic constraints. And he's a Democrat. A good omen...?

Here's a little gloating from the Family Research Council. I do wish the FRC people wouldn't characterize yesterday's West Hollywood demonstrations as "anti-family rioting." These protesters aren't really trying to break up Ward & June Cleaver's brood.

The anger on both sides often baffles me. I heard people on the radio this morning talking about how we had laws for so long against interracial marriage. And I thought to myself, "Wow, if that right were being voted on, I'd fight really hard to keep it." Then I realized that I don't particularly want to get married. But it's an interesting psychology, isn't it?

I'm still not sure why both sides have to fight over this. But frankly, if we're going to make the law mirror the vows involved in marriage, we need to make it lifelong, and to ban divorce. That'll make lots of people realize it's a right they can probably do without....

Thanks a lot, Jonathan for bringing up this lovely third-rail issue.

They have no peace in the Middle East because neither side is sufficiently "pro-peace" (think suicide bombers on one side and illegal settlements run by occasionally violent groups on the other side). Amidst this mess, many Arabs are angry that we Americans are just not "fair and balanced" in our potential mediating role. As the great Jewish sage, Jon Stewart, notes, loyal Israeli citizens and politicians can criticize Israeli policies without threat to their careers -- but American politicians cannot.

Obama's mere election will cheer many people in that part of the world who feel that, while the U.S. will continue to tilt toward Israel, a man is in charge here who seems to understand the nuances of the matter. That, for Israelis and Arabs alike, should be seen as a helpful step along the road to peace, not as a reason for fear (even if Joe the Opportunistic Plumber sees this issue differently).

A few years ago, we started to see Democracy Hypocrisy -- when neoconservatives would demand that other societies hold elections, but cut off those societies if they elected the "wrong" person. We're seeing that again in our own nation, if you look at some of the comments posted on this site about Obama's victory.

The right-wing is angry that Americans have been seemingly brainwashed into voting for a supposed Marxist, becaue of our evil media and university system. So if you're saying that the American voter can't be trusted, are you suggesting a takeover by force...?

Personally, I would love to see some other conservatives comment about whether they agree with the specific comment I highlighted above from "JenK."

***

Speaking of our universities, the other paper has an interesting article here about UCLA students not being required anymore to take small seminar course, due to costs and space constraints. Seems like they need their own Prop 2, to protect their wingspace.

***

But again, I want to come back to the schizophrenic aspect of modern conservatism. The Bush administration was convinced it was bringing "the deepest longing of humanity" to the world, and was rosily idealistic about the chance to make a better world. Most conservatives though have seemed quite disillusioned about the world and how rotten it is.

That means that, while we were occupying Iraq, President Bush said it was to make it better while many conservatives said it was because we need to step on the throats of all the lousy people beyond our shores. That sent quite a mixed message to the rest o the world. So those conservatives who do believe in engagement overseas need to acknowledge that the many JenK's in their movement have given them a certain reputation around the world.

Like them, I wept tonight, which surprised me. I never thought a cynic like me would be so emotional about an election. When my dad died in September, I was stoic by comparison. The city teens outside my downtown apartment are screaming and hollering for joy. In a difficult and draining time for America, people around the country are more alive with hope than in a long time.

Skeptics roll their eyes. "Prepare to be disappointed, you fools," they say. But if a hardened cynic like me can melt under the warmth of it all, something wonderful may be happening. My mother called from that terror-infected Pakistan, and she marveled about a sense of a new beginning, and about the world's renewed realization that Americans earnestly mean well. My younger brother's family in Ohio has sometimes been given to wondering if this country has the stomach to accept Muslims even if they love America; and they are giddy about what it means to see a man with the "dreaded" Hussein monicker rolling to a landslide. Tens of millions of people in America, and perhaps billions of people around the world, feel more than they felt ever before, that in America, they can really belong. For someone who's not a minority, it may be hard to understand this feeling of rebirth. But for me, that's perhaps why I've been more emotional about this evening than I could have imagined. "Yes, we can....."

A dear friend of mine has a spouse who works at Focus on the Family. After seeing my post today about why the world loves Obama, she lamented, "It is still sad to me that it is personality and image that wins people over rather than what they stand for or what they promise to do."

My response was, "Most of the people around the world do support him because of what he stands for and what he promises to do."

The people in England and Germany and Dubai and Pakistan and Indonesia want a guy who stands for working with the international community instead of telling it what to do.

There's a story in Fareed Zakaria's new book, The Post-American World,* about how French prez Nicolas Sarkozy takes pride in being an unapologetic Bush administration supporter. Condi Rice asked him, "What can we do for you?" And he said, "Stop being so unpopular around the world. It's killing the ability of people like me to work with you."

So the world wants a guy who will bring a different approach, as do apparently most of the American voters. The question is whether American conservatives in 2008 represent a political minority now in terms of what they expect a person to stand for.

*One disappointed person wrote to Colin Powell after his Obama endorsement, warning him that Obama is a Muslim who has been reading a book on the death of America by another Muslim. It turned out to be this book by Zakaria. It's a very telling sign of the panicked way in which American conservatives are reading the current state of affairs.

Gail-T says that Obama's imminent election is a "snow job" perpetrated on a gullible public. So, whereas staunch conservatives used to praise the American public's intelligence and the liberals used to mock it, the roles have been reversed.

Yet today I'd rather meditate on hope. Yes, that corny snow-job word, HOPE. When I went to the DMV this morning, the African-American clerk assisting me proudly wore an MLK-Barack t-shirt that read, "A Legacy of Hope." Her joy radiated as she talked about about asking her three-year old boy a few hours earlier who the next president will be, with him yelling out, "Obama-Barack!"

Hope fills our world today, from L.A. to London to Liberia to Lahore to Laos. America's most influential, and most frustrated, minority group -- the only group that got dragged to the Land of Opportunity by its hair -- is finally able to see its face reflected in the highest office of this great land. Perhaps America's Original Sin has finally been addressed and redressed.

And the world as a whole is cheering for Obama, because the world wants to believe that America is a great nation that values the rest of the world -- a noble empire that seeks to bring change not through a steamroller but through genuine respect and understanding. If that world out there irreversibly hated us, they wouldn't have had a dog in this hunt; but they have loudly cheered one particular candidate, because they want to believe that we can be good again.

I know it's all too soft and fuzzy for some hawks; but, well, they must accept that they are "just" a minority voice now (which will hopefully help them empathize with other minorities for a change). The majority of Americans are expected today to choose to be the America that the world has been hoping for.

So cheer up, conservatives, this can't be all bad for you and me. Besides, I don't think we'll be able to manage to fully install Marxism and mandatory polyamory till at least midway through Obama's second term.

From the mailbag....

A reader sent along a case for naming this decade based on the fun-filled presidential election:

Any reporting of the political arena clearly makes this decade, 2000-2009, the Naughty Aughties. A brief recap of just Election 2008, strongly supports the nomenclature for the Naughty Aughties.

Palin being chosen as running mate

Palin's Pitbull Lip-stick, Joe Six Pack & foreign policy

Obama's Lip-stick on a pig

Palin's Troopergate

Joe the Plumber

Obama's "terrorist" & ACORN affiliations

McCain's Letterman cancellation

Wallstreet Bailout

Cost of Palin's wardrobe & hairdresser

Joe McCain's 911 traffic call

Obama's association w/ Rev Wright

With negative campaigning coming to a peak, it can only get "naughtier"
in these Aughties.