The People Have Spoken... Unfortunately

I keep waiting for Allen Funt to pop up on the TV screen on all the major networks, and yell, "Smile! You're on Candid Camera! Ha ha -- you didn't really think that the Democratic Party would nominate an urban black radical from Chicago to be the next president, did you? Especially when he was running against The Co-Presidents for Life, who have been using the Democratic Party as their own private litter box for 16 years now?" And yet, it seems that is precisely what has happened, although I do note that Hillary is holding back; perhaps she does have at least one more dirty trick up her ample sleeve, as I have predicted all along. Or maybe the demonic energy of the Clinton Machine really has run out of fuel -- in which case the refrain, "Lo, how the mighty have fallen!" should be on every pair of lips in the land.

So the Democrats are nominating a Trotsky rather than a Stalin... an idealist, not a realist... a theorist, not a pragmatist... a dreamer, not a schemer. Well, so be it, because historically, when they do this, they nearly always lose. The "vote your heart" candidates of recent history include guys like McGovern, Carter, and to some extent Kerry... and now Obama. The "vote your mind (or what is left of it)" candidates include Clinton I and Gore... and would have included Clinton II. The "vote your heart" mindset is characterized by what we used to call youthful, starry-eyed idealism, but on paunchy, sagging middle-aged convention goers starts to look more like delusional utopianism. The "vote your mind" mindset is easily confused with cynicism and an insatiable thirst for power -- since that is what it is, more often than not. The notion that there are people out there who still think that liberal programs actually work, and that they properly serve those whom they were intended to serve, strikes one as a puzzlement akin to the mystery of the "flat-earthers". How can so much evidence be ignored, for so long, by so many? Ideas that might have made some sense once -- i.e. before they were actually tried -- have now been thoroughly tried and found wanting. And yet people "cling" -- to use a term with ironic currency -- to these ideas as if their lives depended on them... which they do, at least in the psychological sense. The "audacity of hope" is more appropriately termed the "power of delusion". And yet it seems to be the life blood of so many in the political arena and their clueless supporters.

The question now is, can Obama pull a "Carter" on McCain? By which I mean, can he successfully represent such a degree of relief from what came before that people will come back from the dead to vote for him, the way they showed up at the polls to vote for Carter in lieu of Ford? Ford represented, to most people, an extension of the feared and hated Nixon presidency. I'm not sure that perception was quite accurate -- any more than Bush I was unambiguously an extension of Reagan. But that was the perception. So while people might have had their doubts about Carter, at least he wasn't Nixon, or Ford, or a Republican. So what does McCain represent? All indications are that the foreign policy baton will be passed from Bush II to him without the slightest drop in momentum -- which basically means four more years (at least) of catastrophe. On the domestic side, he doesn't represent anything very radical one way or the other... except for the possibility of extending McCain-Feingold to a total prohibition of all political speech at all times, including not even being allowed to mention the names of the candidates in any upcoming election. Oh yes, and lifting all restrictions on immigration. That kind of stuff. But nothing ground-breaking. Obama, on the other hand, will give us the usual liberal dithering in the foreign policy arena -- call it Carter Redux -- and very possibly also emulate Carter in the areas of economic self-immolation and military auto-castration. In the meantime, we will be treated to a new New Deal/Fair Deal/Great Society which will make Lenin's Five Year Plans look like a bit of pastel-tinted nostalgia. The good news about Obama is that the Evangelicals (the white ones, at least) will be driven out of Washington at the point of a flaming sword. The bad news is that Joycelyn Elders will be called back from the public housing where she is living and made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Oh yeah, it's gonna be fun either way.