A Pilgrim’s Digression

The debate last night between the three Democratic primary contenders had to be one of the most relentless, bloodthirsty debates I have ever witnessed. I think it is difficult to say that either Clinton or Obama came out on top, due to the harshness of their attacks. Edwards was the only one of the three who remained above the fray, but whether that translates into support or not is difficult to say.

Speaking for myself, if I were an uncommitted South Carolinian, I would be giving Edwards a hard second look. Clinton and Obama both came across as intensely angry at each other, whereas Edwards seemed to be more preoccupied with the economic concerns of voters than the accusations of his opponents.

But as an Obama supporter, the debate was disappointing more than it was satisfying. He came across as far too defensive and even nervous. I don’t think I have ever heard him more stumbling in his speech patterns, to the point that he seemed inarticulate. The only thing I can attribute it to is his anger. I don’t think he is by nature an angry man, but he felt the need to respond angrily as a way of showing that he is not going to be trod down by the Clinton attack machine. He does not appear in the best light as an angry man, and I don’t think that anger is the kind of passion people have been responding to in him.

To begin a critique of specifics, there was the matter of the debate topics. Like many Democratic debates, this one was at its heart wonky. It was about domestic issues, probably the most boring subject on earth, but a subject that favors the already wonkish Clinton. There were few opportunities for Obama to hit the high notes of rhetoric to which we have become accustomed with him. He floundered again and again when asked to defend the specifics of his proposals, such as why his health care plan is not “universal.”

Clinton, on the other hand, knew her policy by heart and recited it chapter and verse, ad nauseum. Edwards, too, landed a few good blows against Obama, specifically on his voting record–the reported 100-odd “presents” that he voted instead of a “Yea” or “Nay”–and on the subject of whether his plan covered everyone. Obama seemed very disingenuous on the question of who will be left out of his health care plan, but what I took away from his response is that he believes that a truly universal, state-mandated health care plan is not compatible with human liberty and not capable of being funded. This is in fact a very conservative point of view, as Edwards was correct to point out. The question is whether Americans will agree with him, assuming they understand the issue. As Obama said, if a poor person is forced to adopt a health care plan they cannot afford, and then fined by the state for not paying their premium, how does that help the poor person? Government mandates just as often harm the poor people those mandates are intended to help.

Edwards response to this point was a slick bit of doublespeak as well, suggesting as it did that Obama did not want to cover everyone, rather than attacking his actual point, which is that maybe some people should be able to opt out or else receive subsidies to help pay their premiums. Edwards said that he, in contrast to Obama, believed that everyone in America is “deserving” of health care (as if anyone, least of all a liberal Democrat like Obama, could conceivably believe that not all Americans are deserving of health care benefits).

As so often when I hear Democrats speak, I found myself wondering how any of them propose to pay for their “packages” and “proposals” and “stimulus plans.” I can’t criticize Democrats alone for that, though, because Republicans are just as bad about making financial promises to consumers which they have no ability to keep, even after taking over the purse strings of government. As usual with politicians of both parties, the specifics of financing their ideas are secondary to their good intentions.

That’s why I personally don’t pay a lot of attention to the specifics of policy issues. I don’t believe specific policies matter much in the long run because there are too many variables that influence whether those policies are enacted or not. More important is a candidate’s philosophy or ideals, character, and background. When my wife asks me why I dislike Hillary Clinton so much, I have to refer to these points about her: that her integrity is in question because she has stayed with a lying, cheating husband, probably because of the access to power that he has provided her; that she has repeatedly shifted her positions to accommodate her political ambitions, much as Mitt Romney has done on the Republican side; and that at heart, if you scratch away the semi-conservative gloss of her hard-line foreign and domestic policy, she believes in a kind of nanny state whose function is to take care of everyone–which means to impose the will of the state (meaning her will) on every ordinary American. She is a product of the sixties; she is just another of those baby boomers who has failed and disappointed all of us time and time again with their shameless self-promotion and preoccupation with their own desires.  And yet she wants to be our national mother, attending to our every want and need.  No thanks.

Part of the reason why I am attracted to Obama is that he is not of that baby boom generation. There is also the fact that I seriously do not want a dynastic Presidency ruled by one or two families for generations. I think it is incredibly unhealthy for our country to have the Clintons back in the White House, especially when one of them would essentially be serving a third term as President without being specifically chosen by the American people.

On the other hand, I am the first to admit that Obama looked unsteady last night. Callow might be the right word for how he acted. His angry flare ups and inability to effectively deal with his Democratic opponents did raise questions in my mind about how he would deal with Republicans. Yet Republican attacks could hardly be more vicious than what he faced from Clinton last night. Her charge that he represented a “slum lord” during his first years as a lawyer was one of the most over-the-top personal attacks I have ever heard expressed in a political campaign, making Obama’s supposedly inflammatory charge that Clinton had served on the corporate board of Wal-Mart seem ridiculously naive.

This is the major leagues, and the Clintons know how to play ball. They have had the politics of personal destruction used against them, and they have used it against their opponents. There is no doubt they are out to destroy Obama because he stands in the way of Hillary’s ascendency. Obama needs to come up with a more effective way of striking back, or else appearing to stand taller, without making half-hearted attacks on Clinton as a supporter of a retail store at which everyone shops (but no one will admit it).

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on one’s point of view), his nice guy facade is no facade at all. He is a nice guy, and when he tries to be something else, the sight is not pretty. Hillary can be as witchy as she wants to be, because no one expects anything more of her.