Click above to visit the entire site
Friday Fronts
25 January 2008:
George Packer on Hillary Clinton and "inspiration," in The New Yorker.
Blame it on the media, or blame it on the voters, but American politics requires something more.
The "something more" that is missing, in this complaint about Hillary Clinton, seems, according to George Packer's report in The New Yorker, "The Choice," to be the power to make people feel good simply by showing up. It is a something that Ms Clinton's Democratic Party rival, Barack Obama, apparently has in spades. I am doing a good job, I think, of not holding this against him.
The closer you got to him, the more you realized that his magic lay in his effect on others rather than in any specific policies. But he became a very important vehicle. He got young people very excited. He was transformative in the sense of just who he was. And a few things he said about social justice licensed people.
That's Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on Robert F Kennedy. My first impulse upon reading it is to consider raising the voting age to something more mature — forty-five, say. The very, very, very last thing that I consider a plus in politics is excited young people. The worst thing about them, it turns out, is that they carry their political excitements into their dotage, as I'm finding with a number of acquaintances who still miss RFK. Mr Packer ventures the suggestion that Mr Reich may endorse Mr Obama.
It will be observed that the United States is a representative democracy. According to the best Burkean theory, the legislators whom we elect represent our best interests whether we know what they are or not. That's putting it strongly, I'll admit, but I should prefer my elected representatives to represent my interests, such as they may be, rather than my dreams — my dreams of who I would be if this were an ideal world (in which case, of course, politics would be altogether unnecessary). With all due respect to Martin Luther King, I do not want my representatives to "have a dream." I want them to have a plan. (Dr King had many good and effective plans. The beauty of his dream was that he asked us to have it.) I expect the politicians whom I put into office to know how, selon Bismarck, to make sausage. I'll take care of the dreams and ideals, thank you very much.
When I read, as I do at the beginning of Mr Packer's piece (about long-time Clinton friend but recent Obama supporter Greg Craig [what were his parents thinking?]), that some voters want to be "inspired" by the occupant of the White House, I wonder if, to paraphrase Ripley in Aliens, IQs have dropped sharply in the past two centuries. Is this kindergarten? Or are we so confused by our pesky spiritual impulses that we're looking for the Holy Spirit in the Oval Office?
Consider the three indispensable presidents: Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. Not one of these men was remotely "inspiring." Washington was the most Stoic of aristocrats, vaguely contemptuous of Jefferson for being "inspiring." Lincoln was a geek ante lettera — we're lucky there were no GameBoys in his day. And FDR seems to have radiated all the moral uplift of a minor character in a Noel Coward comedy. Not one of these great men would have survived the most preliminary televisual scrutiny. But when you look at their achievements — that's inspiring!
Please do not construe this page as a defense of Hillary Clinton. I harbor no briefs yet. The only way to nail my vote is to promise to send George W Bush to justice at The Hague. Beyond that, I have a completely open mind. I was taught that that was the idea. The presidency of the United States is so not about my feelings.
Copyright (c) 2008 Pourover Press