I thought Obama did a fine job Thursday night of showing himself to be serious, thoughtful, dependable, forward-thinking and solidly mainstream. In Regressive World, believing in national healthcare, or that Iraq was a blunder, makes you a looney-left socialist surrender-monkey. Fortunately, Americans have now had an ample taste of Regressive World, and most of them no longer subscribe to such insane ideas. They want healthcare, an end to the war, maintenance of Social Security, responsible environmental stewardship and a balanced budget. Go figguh, eh? What a wacky little country we are.
Anyhow, just like the last one, this election will turn on the mass of voters who really, really don’t want to vote Republican if they can be given any plausible assurance that the Democrat can be trusted as an alternative. This is precisely why the Bush people had to devastate Kerry as a wimpy, French-speaking flip-flopper who just couldn’t handle national security responsibilities. You know, the kind of guy who would let the Huns march right in. Similarly, Obama had to show these same voters that he is solid and centrist, and I think he hit that mark pretty well in Denver.
It’s certainly a measure of Obama’s successes to date that McCain is showing increasing desperation as he scrambles to have a prayer at winning the White House. Like Bush the coward running as the macho dress-up warrior, McCain’s "Country First" slogan has now become a sick joke due to the astonishing levels of black irony attendant to it. Hiring Karl Rove’s minions to further degrade our political sphere hardly qualifies as putting country first. Choosing a candidate who is more grossly unprepared for the White House than any in at least fifty years (when you’re a 72 year-old three-time cancer survivor, no less) is as complete an act of irresponsibility as can be imagined. Toward what end? Time and time again what McCain is actually doing is putting country last, well behind his personal career ambition to be president.
I don’t yet have a good sense of what kind of president Barack Obama would make. I’ve written before that he could be either a bold and transformative FDR figure, or a cautious and self-serving Bill Clinton-like centrist, and I still think that is the case. To some degree, no one knows, since events will make a presidency as much as the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue himself. I lean – barely – toward the former possibility as the more likely (and it sure won’t hurt to follow an act like George W. Bush). That is to say that I think he might well have the courage and smarts to govern at the progressive edge of the envelope of possibility. Which is not so bad, because a lot is now possible given the right person standing on the bully pulpit. If Obama’s presidency ended Iraq, ended Guantánamo and torture, brought national healthcare, got serious about the environment and energy, repaired the fabric of American political discourse and vanquished the GOP to the scrap heap where it belongs, I guess I’d be one pretty contented voter who felt like he got his money’s worth. I think all of this and more is quite possible over the next four or eight years.In any case, one thing’s for sure: He’s a hell of a candidate, and he showed it again this week in Denver.
What’s that foreign feeling now coursing, however tentatively, through my veins? Dare I say it?
I think it’s called hope.
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