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BEHIND THE DISGUST OVER THE DEBATE
04/19/2008
ABC, Charles Gibson, and George Stephanopolous seemed surprised at the spontaneous anger towards them for their handling of the Wednesday night "debate" between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. That is the essence of the problem: the MSM and the Clinton campaign just don't get it, and they don't get Barack Obama or his supporters.
I was reading the blogs that night because the debate was tape delayed in California and the outrage began online before the debate was even televised here. In fact, it started in the first fifteen minutes of the telecast on the East coast. By the end of the debate it had reached a fevered pitch and there were phone numbers and email addresses for ABC news posted on many websites. The next day, Stephanopolous and a few other apologists defended the debate for reasons I will discuss below.
A lot of pundits (god, I hate that word almost as much as I hate the people to whom it applies) said after the debate that Obama supporters felt the questions were unfair to Obama and that is why they made such a fuss. (Hillary Clinton said the same thing.) Again, the pundits and the Clinton campaign don't get it.
The reaction of Obama supporters to the debate had nothing to do with questions being unfair to Obama, although a good argument can be made that they were unfair to him. Obama never complained about unfair questions either, no matter what Hillary said. In fact, the next day he said the debate was what he, as a presidential candidate, expects.
Stephanopolous and others, including the increasingly silly David Brooks, defended the questions for two reasons: 1. Obama is unknown and any questions that help the voters know more about his character are good questions; and 2) the Republicans are going to ask him all these questions in the general election and therefore this is good practice for him, sort of "pre-emptive" questioning in preparation for Rove, inc.
Of course, this last point is silly and dishonest. To accept this argument, one has to believe that the media and Hillary are only trying to help Obama, which is nonsense. Hillary is trying to destroy him, thus doing the Republicans' work for them, and the media is trying to get ratings (and perhaps also destroy him on behalf of their corporate masters.) The first point is equally ludicrous. After nearly 15 months of campaigning, the people certainly do know Obama. Furthermore, you don't help voters get to know someone by bringing up things other people have done or said, people that Obama knows tangentially or – in the case of Rev. Wright – people he knows well, but over whom he has no control. And you don't help the voters know someone by asking them why they don't wear a piece of jewelry.
Now that we have dismissed the rationale (given after the fact) for the ridiculous debate questions, let's look at the real reason why Obama's supporters were outraged.
Obama's supporters are fundamentally different from supporters of Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Hillary and McCain are running traditional campaigns, willing to go negative, willing to trash their opponents, willing to do whatever it takes to win, and their supporters support those tactics. Each of these candidates believe they have "earned" the right to be president, McCain by virtue of his "military hero" status, and Clinton by virtue of her having been the First Lady, and having been treated so abysmally by the opposition all through the nineties. Though she has only been in the Senate a few more years than Obama, she claims to have vastly more experience than he does, and she resents someone 14 years her junior having the "audacity" to oppose her. Thus she believes any attack on him, however distorted, dishonest, or irrelevant, is justified. Her supporters agree.
Obama has no such inclination. He does not feel he deserves the presidency, nor does he think he has "earned" it. He is willing to work for it, but he is attempting to work for it by campaigning in a whole new way. Unlike Hillary and McCain, he does not just see the presidential campaign as a game. Sure, his strategists have to look at it as a game, because, like it or not, he finds himself on the field. So while he is there, he must try to make moves that will help him win, but he doesn't relish the ugliness that some engage in, and he doesn't want to use dirty tactics to demolish his rivals. That is one of the reasons he didn't attack Clinton with the same ferocity with which she attacked him at the debate. It is why he didn't jump on the Bosnian sniper fire story she was asked about, even though she jumped on every swift boat style question he was asked.
Obama's supporters are drawn to him not just because he is charismatic and a wonderful speaker, which he is. They are drawn to him because he represents a new type of politics, the type of politics that Howard Dean represented before he was shoved out of the race in 2004. Obama's politics are issue oriented, hope oriented, change oriented, but they are so much more than that. They represent a mature, adult, and sophisticated approach to the voters, one in which the people are not manipulated or looked down upon, but in which they are lifted up to see something better in themselves than the Republicans (and Hillary Clinton and the media) see.
Obama doesn't want to appeal to people's fear or prejudice or anger. He doesn't want to get people riled up to vote against their economic interests because they have been led to believe a candidate will take away their guns or their bibles. He doesn't want them to be so fearful of another terrorist attack that they are willing to vote to continue to send their children to die in the desert. He doesn't want to appeal to their fear of illegal immigrants or their prejudice against people who are of different faiths or colors or races.
Barack Obama believes in people, in their goodness and their ability to reject the dog whistle politics of Republicans. That is why he said what he said in San Francisco. He was trying to explain why so many white, blue collar workers in Pennsylvania are reluctant to vote for him. His explanation was that they are hurting and they become bitter and they are manipulated into voting on the basis of things that actually have nothing to do with the problems that need fixing. He didn't say it as clearly as that, but he was speaking spontaneously, and things don't always come out as well when one is on the spot.
Obama was not looking down on people, as Hillary asserted, but he was explaining to his supporters that he sees something better in people that they cannot perhaps see in themselves. He was urging his supporters not to give up on them, to understand them and work to lift them up, to help them move past fear and prejudice, to help them believe in themselves again.
Hillary Clinton's accusation of elitism and looking down on people was the exact opposite of what Obama was doing, and the opposite of what his campaign is all about. Obama, unlike the Republicans and the increasingly Republican Hillary Clinton, is not pandering to fear and hate in people, but trying to lift them up and appeal to what is best in them. He is not using trivial issues to distract nor appeal to ignorance and fear, but trying to educate people to see the world and their country in a new way, to help them understand they can go beyond fear, move past the old, and open themselves up to new ideas and new ways of approaching politics. This is what good leaders do.
That's why he excites people. That's why whenever he is able to spend enough time with voters, they fall in love with him, not as a person, but as a new kind of leader, a new kind of candidate, who wants to lead them and partner with them, not pander to them, or fool them, or play to their fears and prejudices. That's why nearly 40,000 people came to hear him Friday night in Philadelphia.
So what happened at the debate was that the old politics, the politics of pandering and gotcha, was on display from the first moment and continuing on for 50 minutes and Obama's supporters said "enough!"
Interestingly enough, that's what Moveon.org (the activist organization Hillary Clinton is now attacking) was saying at its founding during the Clinton administration. Founded to urge the Congress to simply censure Bill Clinton for his behavior and "move on," the organization was supporting the Clintons and pointing out that the impeachment nonsense was a politically motivated distraction from what should be going on in Washington.
Even more interesting, that's what Stephanopolous was saying when he worked for Bill Clinton. He said Clinton was trying to move past the distractions and non-issues that come up in campaigns. Now he is the one bringing up the distractions and non-issues. By bringing up issues unrelated to governance, and totally irrelevant to either candidate's ability to be president, George and Charlie returned politics to the old and the tired. They did the work of Republicans, pandered to Hillary, and allowed her to attack Obama with the swift boat tactics that so angered Democrats four years ago. They were playing a game where they threw balls at his head, he tried to get out of the way, but Hillary picked up the ball and threw it at his head again. It was obvious Barack didn't even want to be in that kind of game, but it was their rules and their ball and bat and so he had to play as best he could. And by their rules, he lost. But what Barack's supporters know is that he isn't interested in playing that kind of game with those kind of rules.
Barack and his supporters are tired of the games, especially rigged games with dishonest and unfair "rules." In fact, they don't want politics to simply be a game. They want honesty, integrity, and seriousness in the contest to choose the nation's leader. This is more than a game to them. This is life vs. death, mere survival vs. prosperity, clinging to a failed past vs. looking hopefully to the future, and it deserves better than to be treated as a game by media hacks and Democrats who act like Republicans. If that makes Obama and his supporters elitist, then we are elitists. I remember a time when the American people looked to their leaders to know more than them or to be more educated than them, so that they could trust their leaders to make wise decisions.
Obama supporters look at the current president and know that he got into office on the basis of a myth: that he was "just plain folks," that he would be comfortable having a beer with them (even though he was an admitted alcoholic), and that he was a godly but simple man, an ordinary and decent American who would care about them.
After nearly eight years we see that this mythical nonsense is responsible for an administration that is leaving the country worse off than it was eight years ago in every respect. The economy is in recession. Gas prices are at $4 a gallon in California. The army is in shambles. We remain in a quagmire in Iraq that is costing hundreds of billions and has no end. We have lost jobs to China and India. We are at record budget and trade deficits. Health care is more expensive than ever, with more Americans losing access every day. Poverty is on the rise. And we are no safer from terrorists. We realize now we would have been far better off had that elitist Gore, or that elitist Kerry been president. Instead, Swift boat style politics, the politics of fear, lies, and distractions, is what got us eight years of Bush.
We Obama supporters, however, don't just want to put an intelligent person in the White House. We want an intelligent person who will also change how we do politics.
Obama promises not just to change policies. Even Hillary promises that.
Obama promises not just to change Washington. George W. Bush promised that.
Obama promises to change the nation. He offers us a chance to move past racism, fear, prejudice, anger, and the pettiness of our old way of doing politics.
That is why we support Barack Obama. That is why we have turned against Hillary Clinton. And that is why the debate offended us.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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