Political lives - October 29, 2008 - davidwarrenonline.com

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GOTTA LOTTA PERSONALITY?
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COMMENTARY
October 29, 2008

Political lives

One writes these columns to a specific word-length, and I sometimes regret the last-minute omission of some quibbling qualification, or supplementary jab, from the need to eliminate words quickly. A good example of the former was in my Saturday column, on messianic pretensions in politics. I said somewhat mischievously that if Barack Obama completed one presidential term, it would be his longest steady job.

When the column touched the blogosphere, innumerable U.S. Democrats challenged this assertion, and a gentleman in Chicago was so kind as to forward a summary transcript of Mr. Obama's employment record at the University of Chicago, proving he had taught there for more than four years, continuously. Not a full-time job, but hey.

I'd rather retract that sentence for a different reason: it did not make my point well enough. My point -- and it is one worth frequent repetition when discussing politicians, especially on the left -- is that the citizen-voter should look at a candidate's life experience. Everyone has some, by the age of four, but the question is whether the candidate has done anything as an adult besides running for and holding political office -- or, in the case of candidates farthest left, engaging in agitprop activities such as "community organizer," or boffering in the academic trenches, which amount to the same thing.

There are "credentials," and then there is "cred." It is sometimes necessary to shorten or otherwise alter a word, to recover its original meaning. Here we are discussing not a job resum?, but what can be seen through it.

Of the four candidates on the two U.S. presidential tickets, it strikes me that both John McCain and Sarah Palin have some credible personal background to equip them in dealing with the interface between politics and life. By comparison, neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden has ever done anything much, except master party political machinery.

Even within politics, the contrast between, say, Ms. Palin and Mr. Obama is instructive. Ms. Palin rose in Alaskan politics through a series of fights, in each of which she took on vested interests, starting with her local school board, and ending with her own party's old-boy network in Juneau. She had to fall back on her own personal resources -- and I mean psychic, not financial, for she had to raise her own money, too -- all along the way. She has grit, but with this grit, she was acquiring firsthand experience of how politics enters the lives of people who are not essentially political; who raise families, and work for their livings.

Whereas, Mr. Obama was from his political beginnings the darling of a Chicago political machine, notorious for both corruption, and harbouring radicals. His very smoothness and articulacy, even his blackness, made him their golden boy, assuring him of financial patronage along his way.

This has practical consequences. I am not saying that Mr. Obama is himself corrupt or even radical; only that he is smooth.

Now, who can imagine him having the desire, or, should he find the desire, also finding the will, to stand up to a spendthrift and intrusive Congress? Or, making appointments that require political imagination and nerve? (Consider the Joe he chose as running mate.) Let alone, facing down America's mortal enemies abroad, when the way forward cannot possibly be along the path of least resistance?

Whereas, I can easily imagine Mr. Palin digging in her formidable heels, and the only question -- a fair one, mind -- is, does she know enough about the mechanics of Washington and world affairs? (And to be even more fair: does Mr. Obama?)

For that, as on the campaign trail, she has shown herself to be a very quick learner, with sound gut instincts. She is no radical, notwithstanding left media efforts to paint her that way; her outlook is mild Reaganite -- ranging from right towards centre. She wears her allegiances on her sleeve.

By comparison, as a reading of his memoir-manifesto, The Audacity of Hope, will confirm, Mr. Obama's outlook does not range from left towards centre, but rather, from left into defensively impenetrable. As we have seen through the campaign, every solution he proposes involves additional government spending, and additional intrusion into private lives. It is the natural mindset of a person who has himself lived (except for the royalties from his books) entirely on taxpayer or political subsidy.

"Caribou Barbie" can famously field-dress a moose; the man whom no one dares to nickname in public tells you to keep the tires on your car properly inflated, while he "spreads the wealth around."

Is this an unfair comparison? No, because one could patiently muster a hundred more such juxtapositions, in which the contrast is between trust in government, and trust in life. And the clue to these contrasts comes, consistently, from the candidates' very different backgrounds.

David Warren

Ottawa Citizen


For an archive of David Warren's newspaper columns, see:
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com 
 

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