BARACK Obama’s victory — I’m writing this on Tuesday local time, Election Day eve in the states — will be seen differently by different people. Reading some of the commentaries from different countries about this election, reminded me of the proverbial blind men touching the different parts of the elephant and coming up with different names for the same animal.
A lot believe, for example, that Obama represents something new and will bring America toward an unchartered — i.e., more left-wing — course. Some said they support Obama because he stands for peace. Another said only “massive cheating” — “like what happened in 2000 and 2004” — could prevent an Obama victory.
I’ve to ask myself, Am I on the same planet?
My liberal and leftie friends, I’ve to admit, continue to be appalled at my right-ward drift that started after 9/11 when I suddenly realized that the best thing that ever happened to humanity — civilization — was being threatened by the merciless, bloodthirsty forces of evil.
But that is my opinion and now I know that our political views are shaped mostly by our personal experiences and the extent of our curiosity. Once we settle on a belief, we’ll cling to it — hence the popularity of we’re-right-they’re-dead-wrong commentators, books and TV shows. We prefer to read and listen to opinions that reinforce our beliefs.
There is, however, nothing new about all this. Obama himself is not new. The only novelty about him is his ethnicity. Take that away and you’re left with yet another intelligent, cunning and charming politician who’ll tell you what you want him to say. He has, like all politicians, a conscience — that “still, small voice which tells a candidate that what he is doing is likely to lose him votes.”
He was liberal when he represented a liberal district in Chicago, and became a centrist after clinching the Democratic nomination for president. His political instincts are as good and finely honed as any politico I know or have read about — he knows how to win an election, the single most important talent that a politician must have. Memo to the CNMI’s reformists: Honesty, integrity, sincerity, etc. are useless if you can’t get into office.
In foreign policy, in any case, Obama will be another American president who will want what is best for his country. And if that means kicking butt in Pakistan or Iran then he’ll do it. It is likely, in fact, that he’ll be more bellicose than Dubya or McCain — Democrats always have to prove they’re not wimps in foreign policy. One of the first actions taken by the last Democrat to become president was the bombing of Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate Bush Sr.
And what is new about the Democrats’ domestic policies? They still want the productive members of society to be punished for their productivity. They want government to solve things that government, time and again, has repeatedly failed to solve. The Democrats will tax and spend. And they will try to cut the military budget and put activist judges on the bench. All this is well-known for those who pay attention to history. At least for two years, the Democrats will try to shove down the American people’s throats one liberal program after the other. But Obama, as president, would want to win re-election. So there is hope that he would govern as a centrist.
And hope was the magic word in this election.
My candidate, in contrast, is a real hero whose character, as California’s governor earlier said, “has been tested as no other presidential candidate in the history of this nation. He has spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war. He has been tested under torture, under temptation, under deprivation, under isolation. He has proven what kind of a man he is. John McCain has served his country longer in a POW camp than his opponent has served in the United States Senate.” A real action hero with a splendid record of bipartisanship and centrism. A doer not a talker. And when he talks, a straight talker. A maverick in the party of conservatives. He knows who are freedom’s enemies and how to deal with them. He believes that the key to American prosperity is to reward enterprise, creativity and productivity. He trusts in individual initiative and the ability of citizens to make their own personal decisions without the government telling them what to do.
Despite eight years of Republican rule, despite Iraq and high fuel prices, the Mac could have won — if only September happened after Nov. 4. Indeed, the Mac lost not to The One, but to the Dow.
But what a campaign he waged. Given the political environment he was in, he did his best despite what the Monday quarterbacks are now saying.
The Mac’s last stand reminded me of his hero, Hemingway’s Robert Jordan, the badly wounded freedom fighter who insisted on staying behind to provide cover to his retreating comrades — to take on, alone, the better armed, far numerous band of fascist troops who were pursuing them. That was how “For Whom the Bell Tolls” ended. With the hero about to die a heroic death. It’s the Mac’s favorite novel.
For those ruing the election results, my advice is to seek comfort in history. Remind yourselves that politics, like the economy, runs in cycles. That the Democrats themselves looked more dead than the Republicans now 14 years ago. That the fundamentals of the GOP’s political tenets remain as sound and as viable as they were in 1980 and 1994. And that, to extend my Hemingwayesque trope, the sun also rises and one day, it will be, as the Mac’s other hero once said, morning in America again.
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