I alluded to offensive ads in my last post. They still bother me. I've gotten pretty quick with the mute button whenever I see them come on--a practice that briefly solidifies my sanity. As with most things, it's not really the words that bother me, it's the principle. I'm even (mostly) okay with attack ads as attack ads, but such tactics should never be used as campaign propaganda.
Elections should be a battle of ideals and plans. As a nation, we're in some trouble. So, who has the best ideas to help up get out of the rut we've been digging for a decade? Each candidate has an answer that distills the solutions for intensely complicated problems into ten-second sound bites. Barring some fabulous exception I've not seen, that sound bite, by definition, is a half-truth. I only like full truths.
Everyone has flaws. Everyone. I don't mind my politicians having flaws. I don't really care what company they kept 20 years ago. I don't care if they inhaled. I don't care about their kids. I don't care about their marriages. In my mind, a person if free to do pretty much whatever the hell strikes their fancy without having to worry about offering a formal apology and dodging the judgments of talking heads or the Schmo family. However, the single trait I demand from public officials, even though I so rarely get it, is honesty. Thus, sound bites and campaign ads offend me.
Obama's health care ad that pawns the death of his mother for some public sympathy (which can then be pawned off for support) angers me in a way more often reserved for movie talkers and infants in nice restaurants. His mother died of cancer. That's sad, but so what? She worried about medical bills. So does everyone else in the hospital for any length of time; why does this matter? I understand the intent here, but it falls on callous, disinterested ears. He's handsome though, so he can get away with it.
Even if I believed universal health care was a good idea right now, that ad would really stretch my dedication. It's not quite dishonest, but one should never use personal tragedy to drum up support for an idea. Good ideas, really good ideas, can stand up all by themselves.
McCain has also earned my ire, but it's less focused than my feelings toward Obama. Both candidates have fallen into the trap of negative campaign ads. This mud-slinging is an affront to everything the elections are supposed to mean. First and foremost, these elections should be aimed at choosing the best-qualified person for the job. Instead, these ads force us to choose the least-offensive candidate. The thrust of most of the commercials I've seen is "The other guy is worse than I am" rather than "I am the best choice" as it should be, and it bothers me to no end.
My last entry was a plea to voters. This one is a plea to candidates. Stop being so damn lazy with your campaigning. Don't bother explaining why I shouldn't vote for someone. Prove to me that you deserve my vote. What I want is more a shift in emphasis than a change in content, but it is important nonetheless. We tout ourselves as the greatest nation on the planet and take pride in our democratic processes, but that is no reason to stop striving for better.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Let's avoid hanging chads this time, hmm?
I enjoy a fairly sheltered position from all the economic turmoil of late. I am young; I still live with my parents, and I am unemployed. I'm sort of an instinctive miser, so I've got a comfortable bit of cash set aside that can support my needs for a while. All things considered, I've got it pretty nice right now, but I'm still worried.
There's so much emphasis on the economy recently that it's frighteningly easy to forget that election on the horizon. Choosing between Obama and McCain is a bit of intellectual masturbation--a pursuit of self-satisfaction, but this time built upon the campaign-trail platitudes that pollute the whole process. Obama is so far to the left that, if he gets his way, we'll edge perilously close to a socialist state. McCain is far enough from the right that his victory wouldn't quite be a loss for the democrats. So what are we debating? Party lines.
The race card will inevitably be a topic for the pundits, but I don't think it'll be much of a legitimate issue. This is going to be just like every other election. Some 35%-40% of the population will deign to cast a vote (maybe more if the youth vote can finally be mobilized), maybe 40% of those will be educated enough to make a reliable decision, the rest will vote for an elephant or a donkey simply because they are an elephant or a donkey, and we'll magically get a new Commander-in-Chief.
On principle, I’m concerned that we are still largely bound to party lines. Ideas on the scale of a presidential election are so huge and nuanced that they deserve deeper consideration than we often give. Obama has lots of support because he gives a hell of a speech, is a handsome man, and advocates policies that appeal to the helper in all of us. But where's the substance? He's got multi-step plans to solve all the world's ills. Let me know the first two steps, just so I can have some assurance that there's at least an idea behind the rhetoric. The big mover though, is universal health care (I'll try and skip over the damned-near-offensive ads Obama has running that uses his mother's death as if it's a poker chip for another post). Everyone deserves to be healthy. Everyone deserves equal access to qualified doctors. Everyone should pitch in to help the have-nots with their problems, be they structural or self-inflicted. On some level, that all makes sense. I agree with the sentiment. I personally believe that we all have a moral obligation to extend whatever aid we can to those who cannot sustain themselves (I'll also leave the topic of the billions of dollars donated overseas when millions of our own citizens wallow in nothingness stateside for another post), but that's just the point: it's a moral obligation.
It is not, nor should it ever be, the State's responsibility to declare my morals. The obligation of supporting those less fortunate falls on individuals, communities, places of worship, and maybe states—Notably not the federal government. Most pertinent now is the minor issue of funding such a plan. We are at war. Social Security is dying. The economy is limping along. And we've committed ourselves to almost a trillion dollar expenditure (that's $1,000,000,000,000) to bail out this mortgaging debacle. Where, pray tell, will the money for universal health care come from? Raising taxes is the obvious answer; it also happens to send us right down the road toward socialism.
As a country, we like to live just within our means. Raising taxes means less spending money, which means some people will be less able to cover their living expenses, which means more banking problems, which means more people defaulting to the new universal health care system, which means fewer people actually funding the thing, which means an even deeper economic crisis.
Good times, eh?
There are bigger fish to fry than the warm-and-fuzzy sound bites Obama has built his campaign upon and McCain seems to realize this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a particular McCain supporter, but he does seem to have a deeper grasp on just what this war means and how important it is. If Obama is a wide-eyed, optimistic puppy dog, then McCain is a grizzly bear: tough to look at and terrifying, but still deserving respect. Everyone would rather have a puppy in their homes, but right now we need a more intimidating figurehead.
Obama has so saturated the airwaves with memorable ads and delivers such great speeches that McCain almost gets lost in the fold. For what it's worth, I'd rather have McCain in office for the next four years than Obama, but not necessarily because of politics, but because of what I see as their priorities.
We are living in difficult times right now. The market will most likely recover in time. The wars will end in time. But what we need is time. More to the point, we don't need change. The status quo we grew used to may be untenable now, but that is not call to change the parameters. We need to focus on getting back to center, even if it's on a lower rung than before, before we start making too many adjustments.
Innumerable people have been on TV pleading the public to go and vote. The subtext being to vote for "Change," but I want us all to vote for the people in whom we place the greatest confidence to do what is needed right now, even if doing so means sacrificing what could or even should be. We all need to vote for the right people, for the right reasons, not for a mascot.
There's so much emphasis on the economy recently that it's frighteningly easy to forget that election on the horizon. Choosing between Obama and McCain is a bit of intellectual masturbation--a pursuit of self-satisfaction, but this time built upon the campaign-trail platitudes that pollute the whole process. Obama is so far to the left that, if he gets his way, we'll edge perilously close to a socialist state. McCain is far enough from the right that his victory wouldn't quite be a loss for the democrats. So what are we debating? Party lines.
The race card will inevitably be a topic for the pundits, but I don't think it'll be much of a legitimate issue. This is going to be just like every other election. Some 35%-40% of the population will deign to cast a vote (maybe more if the youth vote can finally be mobilized), maybe 40% of those will be educated enough to make a reliable decision, the rest will vote for an elephant or a donkey simply because they are an elephant or a donkey, and we'll magically get a new Commander-in-Chief.
On principle, I’m concerned that we are still largely bound to party lines. Ideas on the scale of a presidential election are so huge and nuanced that they deserve deeper consideration than we often give. Obama has lots of support because he gives a hell of a speech, is a handsome man, and advocates policies that appeal to the helper in all of us. But where's the substance? He's got multi-step plans to solve all the world's ills. Let me know the first two steps, just so I can have some assurance that there's at least an idea behind the rhetoric. The big mover though, is universal health care (I'll try and skip over the damned-near-offensive ads Obama has running that uses his mother's death as if it's a poker chip for another post). Everyone deserves to be healthy. Everyone deserves equal access to qualified doctors. Everyone should pitch in to help the have-nots with their problems, be they structural or self-inflicted. On some level, that all makes sense. I agree with the sentiment. I personally believe that we all have a moral obligation to extend whatever aid we can to those who cannot sustain themselves (I'll also leave the topic of the billions of dollars donated overseas when millions of our own citizens wallow in nothingness stateside for another post), but that's just the point: it's a moral obligation.
It is not, nor should it ever be, the State's responsibility to declare my morals. The obligation of supporting those less fortunate falls on individuals, communities, places of worship, and maybe states—Notably not the federal government. Most pertinent now is the minor issue of funding such a plan. We are at war. Social Security is dying. The economy is limping along. And we've committed ourselves to almost a trillion dollar expenditure (that's $1,000,000,000,000) to bail out this mortgaging debacle. Where, pray tell, will the money for universal health care come from? Raising taxes is the obvious answer; it also happens to send us right down the road toward socialism.
As a country, we like to live just within our means. Raising taxes means less spending money, which means some people will be less able to cover their living expenses, which means more banking problems, which means more people defaulting to the new universal health care system, which means fewer people actually funding the thing, which means an even deeper economic crisis.
Good times, eh?
There are bigger fish to fry than the warm-and-fuzzy sound bites Obama has built his campaign upon and McCain seems to realize this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a particular McCain supporter, but he does seem to have a deeper grasp on just what this war means and how important it is. If Obama is a wide-eyed, optimistic puppy dog, then McCain is a grizzly bear: tough to look at and terrifying, but still deserving respect. Everyone would rather have a puppy in their homes, but right now we need a more intimidating figurehead.
Obama has so saturated the airwaves with memorable ads and delivers such great speeches that McCain almost gets lost in the fold. For what it's worth, I'd rather have McCain in office for the next four years than Obama, but not necessarily because of politics, but because of what I see as their priorities.
We are living in difficult times right now. The market will most likely recover in time. The wars will end in time. But what we need is time. More to the point, we don't need change. The status quo we grew used to may be untenable now, but that is not call to change the parameters. We need to focus on getting back to center, even if it's on a lower rung than before, before we start making too many adjustments.
Innumerable people have been on TV pleading the public to go and vote. The subtext being to vote for "Change," but I want us all to vote for the people in whom we place the greatest confidence to do what is needed right now, even if doing so means sacrificing what could or even should be. We all need to vote for the right people, for the right reasons, not for a mascot.
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