Watching Carly Fiorina reproach Sen. Claire McCaskill on Meet the Press for mentioning John McCain’s age in a discussion about McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, I was struck by McCaskill’s option not to respond. It was as if there was something turning in the back of her head saying; “don’t go there”. Whether it’s silence due to political correctness or the howling of a blatent discriminatory assault, in either case we don’t get the opportunity to address what should be freely discussed, and which is also quite relevant.
John McCain’s age is a factor in this election, no less a point of discussion than Obama’s experience or his race. Age brings with it a set of potential positives that are often ignored or overlooked. The most notable is that capability we used to revere: wisdom. There can be other characteristics enhanced by age as well, such as; patience, connections, demanding respect, and compassion. Most people are more aware of the possible negatives since we (certainly those over 50 say) dread their inclusion in their own lives. Those might be memory loss, confusion, and disabling health, to name a few.
When John McCain decided to run for the Presidency at the age of 72 the nation had the opportunity to make a judgment as to his fitness for the job. Thus far he has shown himself to be up for the task and it does not appear that primary voters saw him unfit. It is ludicrous, however, to think that the ordinary limitation that we associate with age wouldn’t become evident during the race. We all need to look and come to our own conclusions, and the people, the media, the competition, or the McCain campaign itself can’t be afraid to reflect on it.
McCain himself took it one step further, however. Certainly for his opposition to suggest the disqualification of his bid for the White House based purely on age would be unethical and simply wrong. However, the age and physical condition of the candidate is absolutely fair game in the discussion of the Vice President. That’s what I wanted to hear Claire McCaskill say. When McCain chose a running mate with virtually no national or international experience he allowed his age to become topic one.
The government’s actuarial tables show the average life span of an American male age 72 is 12 years. What that means is one-half (50%) of all American men age 72 will be dead prior to their 84 birthday. If you run the numbers it means that McCain has about an 18% chance of dying during his first term in office. The percentage possibility of him ending his Presidency is greater if you add the chances of incapacity to the chances of death. Of course, this is a simple average and a wealthy, white male has better odds, but then a cancer survivor has worse odds. Besides, many have justifiably argued that an American President ages 3 years for every 1 year in office. Bottom line, without any of the variables, there is a 20% likelihood that if McCain were elected, Sarah Palin would end up running the Country and the Free World. If a 1 in 5 chance of that happening isn’t enough to scare the begeebees out of the electorate, then plan on seeing the best and the brightest start flooding the Canadian border.
Sure McCain will have his senior moments (take his recent failure to remember Spain’s Prime Minister), but face it, all of us over 50 do. The key to whether that disqualifies him as a candidate will be his ability to admit and minimize the negative value of those moments. His campaign’s response to the Spain flub, saying he meant what he said, is not the way to do it.
However, his first decision and fatal flub, the nomination of Sarah Palin, make his age reason enough not to elect McCain. That alone should garner him no more votes than Bush might get were he running for a third term. I hope the subject of McCain’s age come up and often, as the consequences of the choices politicians make need to be trucked out in the light of day.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The Palin Principal
There is an understandable complaint from Democrats, and probably many independent voters, that the Palin obsession which has gripped both the media and ardent Republicans is a distraction of major proportions. It is a distraction of course, but the complaint from Democrats has as much to do with attention diverted from Barack Obama as it does with the suspension of discussing critical issues that currently face this nation. I would argue that the affect the Alaskan Governor has had on both campaigns is an issue unto itself, not a distraction, and maybe more important (in terms of our electoral process) than the debates that have and will take place over energy, healthcare, abortion, education, and several other important domestic issues.
Lost in all the rhetoric that surrounds Presidential campaigns is the fact that the President of the United States has limited power over many of the policies they emphatically suggest will occur once they are in office. Somewhere around middle school, each citizen should have successfully learned that the President has direct control over the State Department, the Military (National Defense), and the direct spending of resources allocated to the administrative branches of government (headed by the various cabinet secretaries), and also the power to nominate the members of the Judiciary for consideration by Congress. Beyond that the President only acts as a check against legislation, and also influences national opinion from, as Teddy Roosevelt coined, the “bully pulpit”. Therefore, on matters other than foreign policy, the Presidential campaign rhetoric is like witnessing a hen house full of roosters… plenty of clucking, but not much yoke.
Does that make “debate” worthless, or worse…deceptive? Not at all. Foremost is the fact that foreign policy is much more important than the average American believes or understands, and that debate needs to take place. The importance of foreign policy in this shrinking and dangerous world, which includes the Military, cannot be understated, but that does not relate to the affects of the Palin nomination. Leave it to say that if a series of plausible events took place leaving Sarah Palin as President of the United States, the detriment to our foreign policy would make George W. Bush look like Winston Churchill. Her semi-candid description of our relationship with Russia, for example, quickly throwing military action on the table left me to believe that she has no concept of “mutually assured destruction”, by which both our countries survived the 40 year Cold War. She is a small town mayor and short term governor in a state where her understanding of Russia is based, she says, on its physical proximity. Perhaps Alaska’s lack of proximity to the continental United States explains why she is challenged by US foreign policy. Bottom line is we shouldn’t be expecting anything more.
The Palin issue is not about foreign affairs or even her competency to take the highest office in the land; it’s about how today the collective psyche of this country decides how we choose our leaders. It is an issue of determining what governance over ourselves means. Sarah Palin is not the first, but I can’t recall when a candidate has exposed a certain national mindset of leadership approval so quickly, so clearly, and so completely. Therefore, I herewith forever dub it the Palin Principal (and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that or some similar phrase eventually finds its way into our lexicon).
In listening and observing the Palin Principal I have been struck by the fact that she not only usurped the attention Obama had successfully cultivated with the media, but she also blew past McCain in popularity almost immediately. In fact, to hear at one point on the road McCain’s address to the audience being drowned out (rather rudely) by chants of “Sarah…Sarah…Sarah”, was the motivation for me to write this article. She is clearly the first choice between the two candidates representing the Republican faithful.
Sarah Palin was virtually unknown nationally prior to September 18th for a reason. There was nothing this woman had accomplished in her life that elevated her to a level of national attention… period. So why then was she accepted by so many people as being a person for whom the mantel of leader of the Free World could rightfully reside? Why was she accepted by so many people…fully accepted, when they knew practically nothing about her, and were not particularly interested in learning more? That’s what the Palin Principal looks like, but what exactly is it?
Definition: Palin Principal – The immediate acceptance of an individual to political leadership based on a perceived emotional empathy by the constituents.
The idea that an individual could garnish a following by things as simple as gestures, appearance, swagger, emotional issues (abortion) and simple language (lipstick and pit bulls) is hardly new, quite the contrary it is ingrained in our anthropology. In the purest sense we often call such followings cults. But leadership derived from intangibles is not only common, it is also appropriate. Barack Obama would be hard pressed to make his case for leadership based solely on his historical background and one must consider his knowledge and skills for leadership. Still in most all cases there is a courtship, a growth period where a bond is developed and a rationale for leadership is merged with more basic emotions. That is true even when there is the commonality of religious beliefs or social activism. That is not, however, the Palin Principal. Why is it then that Sarah Palin was accepted quickly, so quickly in fact that within just a couple of days of her coming out the Republican base would have replace John McCain with her without (as Sarah puts it) blinking an eye?
I believe the Palin Principal is different than the ascendency of past political leaders because the reason for it did not exist in the past. The Palin Principal has been born of Information Technology and the new demographics, our new ability to use lightening fast communications to invite someone into the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and then, just as fast, reflect on the emotional reactions of a subset of those people. That subset may only be a fraction of the population, but when the original numbers are in the hundreds of millions that fraction can still represent a huge number.
In the case of Sarah Palin she was trucked out one day and by the second most all of us had seen her attractive demeanor, her folksy charm, fed the generalizations of her record (80% approval rate, etc), and (most importantly) listened to the unflinching and excited approval of a small group of people. However, the size of the crowd whooping it up is not perceived as small. For those whom an emotional identification with Palin could be made, those devotees being broadcast on TV and internet represented the millions of people with which they identified. The problem of course is there wasn’t millions of people, but because of rapid communications, within days or even hours that small group of people, like a nuclear reaction, mushroomed into a national following.
The day after the Sarah Palin gave her first speech the Friday before the Republican Convention, my 86 year old mother (a lifelong Republican) called me. She said with great animation in her voice, “I’m so excited. I wasn’t sure I was going to vote for McCain (she’d been mulling about it for weeks), but now that he’s picked Governor Palin I’m definitively going to vote for him”. I asked her what she knew and liked about Palin (note: I talk to my mother gingerly on political matters). She knew virtually nothing about Palin except that she sounded great, the cheering was wonderful, and how dreadful the Democrats were in claiming Palin’s Down syndrome child was really her daughter’s.
I’m not sure how much risk the Palin Principal represents to the American people. When something or someone like Sarah Palin is placed on a pedestal made of ice cream, it doesn’t take long for even modest heat to make a rather unsightly mess on the floor. Given her first interviews it’s very hard for me to imagine that she will retain any but the blindest of devotees. But it is not a principal for us to taken lightly. In a free democracy in this day in age, a given set of circumstances might elevate someone to control this nation and, quite literally, have the ability to alter the face of the planet. If the reasons that place an individual in a position of authority don’t have the time to self-correct through public awareness (or enlightenment), then Representative Democracy will have lost its way from the beginnings of the American experience, the ability to accurately reflect the will of people.
Lost in all the rhetoric that surrounds Presidential campaigns is the fact that the President of the United States has limited power over many of the policies they emphatically suggest will occur once they are in office. Somewhere around middle school, each citizen should have successfully learned that the President has direct control over the State Department, the Military (National Defense), and the direct spending of resources allocated to the administrative branches of government (headed by the various cabinet secretaries), and also the power to nominate the members of the Judiciary for consideration by Congress. Beyond that the President only acts as a check against legislation, and also influences national opinion from, as Teddy Roosevelt coined, the “bully pulpit”. Therefore, on matters other than foreign policy, the Presidential campaign rhetoric is like witnessing a hen house full of roosters… plenty of clucking, but not much yoke.
Does that make “debate” worthless, or worse…deceptive? Not at all. Foremost is the fact that foreign policy is much more important than the average American believes or understands, and that debate needs to take place. The importance of foreign policy in this shrinking and dangerous world, which includes the Military, cannot be understated, but that does not relate to the affects of the Palin nomination. Leave it to say that if a series of plausible events took place leaving Sarah Palin as President of the United States, the detriment to our foreign policy would make George W. Bush look like Winston Churchill. Her semi-candid description of our relationship with Russia, for example, quickly throwing military action on the table left me to believe that she has no concept of “mutually assured destruction”, by which both our countries survived the 40 year Cold War. She is a small town mayor and short term governor in a state where her understanding of Russia is based, she says, on its physical proximity. Perhaps Alaska’s lack of proximity to the continental United States explains why she is challenged by US foreign policy. Bottom line is we shouldn’t be expecting anything more.
The Palin issue is not about foreign affairs or even her competency to take the highest office in the land; it’s about how today the collective psyche of this country decides how we choose our leaders. It is an issue of determining what governance over ourselves means. Sarah Palin is not the first, but I can’t recall when a candidate has exposed a certain national mindset of leadership approval so quickly, so clearly, and so completely. Therefore, I herewith forever dub it the Palin Principal (and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if that or some similar phrase eventually finds its way into our lexicon).
In listening and observing the Palin Principal I have been struck by the fact that she not only usurped the attention Obama had successfully cultivated with the media, but she also blew past McCain in popularity almost immediately. In fact, to hear at one point on the road McCain’s address to the audience being drowned out (rather rudely) by chants of “Sarah…Sarah…Sarah”, was the motivation for me to write this article. She is clearly the first choice between the two candidates representing the Republican faithful.
Sarah Palin was virtually unknown nationally prior to September 18th for a reason. There was nothing this woman had accomplished in her life that elevated her to a level of national attention… period. So why then was she accepted by so many people as being a person for whom the mantel of leader of the Free World could rightfully reside? Why was she accepted by so many people…fully accepted, when they knew practically nothing about her, and were not particularly interested in learning more? That’s what the Palin Principal looks like, but what exactly is it?
Definition: Palin Principal – The immediate acceptance of an individual to political leadership based on a perceived emotional empathy by the constituents.
The idea that an individual could garnish a following by things as simple as gestures, appearance, swagger, emotional issues (abortion) and simple language (lipstick and pit bulls) is hardly new, quite the contrary it is ingrained in our anthropology. In the purest sense we often call such followings cults. But leadership derived from intangibles is not only common, it is also appropriate. Barack Obama would be hard pressed to make his case for leadership based solely on his historical background and one must consider his knowledge and skills for leadership. Still in most all cases there is a courtship, a growth period where a bond is developed and a rationale for leadership is merged with more basic emotions. That is true even when there is the commonality of religious beliefs or social activism. That is not, however, the Palin Principal. Why is it then that Sarah Palin was accepted quickly, so quickly in fact that within just a couple of days of her coming out the Republican base would have replace John McCain with her without (as Sarah puts it) blinking an eye?
I believe the Palin Principal is different than the ascendency of past political leaders because the reason for it did not exist in the past. The Palin Principal has been born of Information Technology and the new demographics, our new ability to use lightening fast communications to invite someone into the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and then, just as fast, reflect on the emotional reactions of a subset of those people. That subset may only be a fraction of the population, but when the original numbers are in the hundreds of millions that fraction can still represent a huge number.
In the case of Sarah Palin she was trucked out one day and by the second most all of us had seen her attractive demeanor, her folksy charm, fed the generalizations of her record (80% approval rate, etc), and (most importantly) listened to the unflinching and excited approval of a small group of people. However, the size of the crowd whooping it up is not perceived as small. For those whom an emotional identification with Palin could be made, those devotees being broadcast on TV and internet represented the millions of people with which they identified. The problem of course is there wasn’t millions of people, but because of rapid communications, within days or even hours that small group of people, like a nuclear reaction, mushroomed into a national following.
The day after the Sarah Palin gave her first speech the Friday before the Republican Convention, my 86 year old mother (a lifelong Republican) called me. She said with great animation in her voice, “I’m so excited. I wasn’t sure I was going to vote for McCain (she’d been mulling about it for weeks), but now that he’s picked Governor Palin I’m definitively going to vote for him”. I asked her what she knew and liked about Palin (note: I talk to my mother gingerly on political matters). She knew virtually nothing about Palin except that she sounded great, the cheering was wonderful, and how dreadful the Democrats were in claiming Palin’s Down syndrome child was really her daughter’s.
I’m not sure how much risk the Palin Principal represents to the American people. When something or someone like Sarah Palin is placed on a pedestal made of ice cream, it doesn’t take long for even modest heat to make a rather unsightly mess on the floor. Given her first interviews it’s very hard for me to imagine that she will retain any but the blindest of devotees. But it is not a principal for us to taken lightly. In a free democracy in this day in age, a given set of circumstances might elevate someone to control this nation and, quite literally, have the ability to alter the face of the planet. If the reasons that place an individual in a position of authority don’t have the time to self-correct through public awareness (or enlightenment), then Representative Democracy will have lost its way from the beginnings of the American experience, the ability to accurately reflect the will of people.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
It's All About Abortion
The confounding choice of Sarah Palin to the Republican presidential ticket has created a firestorm of news, both critical and supportive for the VP nominee. It was speculated from the outset that part of the reason for her choice was to, in a sense, dominate the debate by dominating media attention. One might as well assume such since it has turned out to be so successful. After just 5 days one might wonder if Obama and Biden are on an extended vacation or for that matter if McCain is still with her on the ballot. During her announcement speech August 29th she referred to John McCain as “my running mate”, a title normally reserved for the VP slot, but no one appeared to notice or even question the reference. Perhaps that was telling. Certainly, in this brief window of the campaign, the question of who is going to be the next President seems to be rising and falling with swells caused by this little know political figure.
Is that the reason McCain made the pick? Of course not, despite the effective strategy. If not then, why was she chosen? Even Republican leaders at the Convention (amazingly) took no exception to the report that McCain had wanted Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, actually confirming the report. It was communicated in a public fashion that if one of those individuals was chosen there would be a floor fight during the Convention. So McCain succumbed. I heard one Republican leader say later during a radio interview, “(McCain) may have had his bones broken as a POW, but it didn’t affect his hearing”. So why did this “maverick” so quickly decide to run with herd? It’s simple...it’s all about abortion. As far Right as Palin is on other social issues; creationism, Christian orthodoxy, welfare, gun control, and healthcare for example, it is her strict, no exceptions stand on abortion that created the collective sigh of relief from the Republican base when she was picked for the VP spot.
What is it about this “issue” that engenders such divisiveness in our culture and which doesn’t have an equivalent anywhere else on earth? Barack Obama made only one reference to the abortion question during his acceptance speech and it was bi-partisan. He essentially said that the debate is not going to end and perhaps will never end, but at least there should be an effort by both sides to come together and commit to a common goal, that being to reduce the number of abortions. I believe John McCain would like to say the same thing, but he can’t.
I think the entire abortion debate is pretty much divided into 5 Groups; (1) those for whom the elimination of abortion is a showstopper, where there is no consideration of any other issue until that one has be accepted, (2) those who agree with the right to life philosophy, but accept that it is a social issue not shared by a great many people who are, on the whole, very nice people, (3) those who believe that women have both the God-given responsibility and burden to make decisions about what happens within their bodies, (4) those who think that the effort to pass laws which would restrict a woman’s right to choose is no more than the attempt to violate female civil rights, and (5) those who don’t give a flip, one way or the other.
Essentially all politicians fall in Groups 2 or 3 (with perhaps a smattering in Group 5 - the truth be known). In order for anyone to reach a position of governance they must address the priorities of the offices they seek and that forces them to look beyond the abortion debate once they’re elected. However, it’s the individuals in Groups 1 and 4 who drive the debate, and for the Republicans, spearheaded by evangelical Christians, the folks in Group 1 are currently holding sway. They have provided the springboard for other politicians, George Bush being the most recent major beneficiary, but nothing comes close to the power they wielded on the selection of Sarah Palin to (possibly) become the single human being in this country to lead us and the free world should her 72 to 76 year old, cancer surviving President become incapable of holding the office or die (check ordinary actuarial tables if you want to see how high the chances of that happening is. I doubt McCain could get life insurance – fortunate for him he doesn’t need it).
The reason that the extreme wing of the Republican Party forced this hand is because she is one of them. Where in their heart of hearts they know loyal politicians basically give them lip service (those in Group 2), with Palin they’re giddy when expressing that she’s the “real deal”. I think they’re right, that they now have on the national stage an authentic Group 1 politician. The fact that she is also a woman, a mother five times over, delivered a child she knew would be handicapped, talks of Jesus like he was the 4th branch of Government, and has a 17 year old daughter that neither embraces abortion, adoption, or (apparently) birth control is just icing on the cake.
The primary difficulty I see in this abortion debate is that the Group 1 folks have boxed themselves (literally and emotionally) into a corner from which they can’t emerge. They cannot separate their own personal belief from the controversy; that to live in a society that allows abortion is an unacceptable compromise to that belief. Ironically, their defiance to simply work for the common good (i.e. reduce abortions) radicalizes their position and assures that a significant subset of the population (probably a large majority) will never provide support. They feel, understandably, that this is a life and death position they defend which must be attained through legislation. They fail to see that the debate is really about decision making and, more amazingly, they fail to see that such decision making by the individual, choice itself, is totally consistent with Christian teachings.
The pro-choice people (Group 4) also often fail to understand and communicate that the burden of a life and death decision by a child-bearing woman was given by the same Power that created the woman in the first place, and not by the wise benevolence of a free society. As such they lose an ability to share the tragedy, dehumanizing their position. However, their position does allow them to look beyond the issue and place it in its proper context as it relates to governing a nation. Had they not and were forced to satisfy some some extreme wing of their party, we might be looking at the mayor of some other sheltered municipality of 7000 a heartbeat away from running this country of 300 million should Barack Obama become President. Once again, a collective sigh of relief.
Is that the reason McCain made the pick? Of course not, despite the effective strategy. If not then, why was she chosen? Even Republican leaders at the Convention (amazingly) took no exception to the report that McCain had wanted Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman, actually confirming the report. It was communicated in a public fashion that if one of those individuals was chosen there would be a floor fight during the Convention. So McCain succumbed. I heard one Republican leader say later during a radio interview, “(McCain) may have had his bones broken as a POW, but it didn’t affect his hearing”. So why did this “maverick” so quickly decide to run with herd? It’s simple...it’s all about abortion. As far Right as Palin is on other social issues; creationism, Christian orthodoxy, welfare, gun control, and healthcare for example, it is her strict, no exceptions stand on abortion that created the collective sigh of relief from the Republican base when she was picked for the VP spot.
What is it about this “issue” that engenders such divisiveness in our culture and which doesn’t have an equivalent anywhere else on earth? Barack Obama made only one reference to the abortion question during his acceptance speech and it was bi-partisan. He essentially said that the debate is not going to end and perhaps will never end, but at least there should be an effort by both sides to come together and commit to a common goal, that being to reduce the number of abortions. I believe John McCain would like to say the same thing, but he can’t.
I think the entire abortion debate is pretty much divided into 5 Groups; (1) those for whom the elimination of abortion is a showstopper, where there is no consideration of any other issue until that one has be accepted, (2) those who agree with the right to life philosophy, but accept that it is a social issue not shared by a great many people who are, on the whole, very nice people, (3) those who believe that women have both the God-given responsibility and burden to make decisions about what happens within their bodies, (4) those who think that the effort to pass laws which would restrict a woman’s right to choose is no more than the attempt to violate female civil rights, and (5) those who don’t give a flip, one way or the other.
Essentially all politicians fall in Groups 2 or 3 (with perhaps a smattering in Group 5 - the truth be known). In order for anyone to reach a position of governance they must address the priorities of the offices they seek and that forces them to look beyond the abortion debate once they’re elected. However, it’s the individuals in Groups 1 and 4 who drive the debate, and for the Republicans, spearheaded by evangelical Christians, the folks in Group 1 are currently holding sway. They have provided the springboard for other politicians, George Bush being the most recent major beneficiary, but nothing comes close to the power they wielded on the selection of Sarah Palin to (possibly) become the single human being in this country to lead us and the free world should her 72 to 76 year old, cancer surviving President become incapable of holding the office or die (check ordinary actuarial tables if you want to see how high the chances of that happening is. I doubt McCain could get life insurance – fortunate for him he doesn’t need it).
The reason that the extreme wing of the Republican Party forced this hand is because she is one of them. Where in their heart of hearts they know loyal politicians basically give them lip service (those in Group 2), with Palin they’re giddy when expressing that she’s the “real deal”. I think they’re right, that they now have on the national stage an authentic Group 1 politician. The fact that she is also a woman, a mother five times over, delivered a child she knew would be handicapped, talks of Jesus like he was the 4th branch of Government, and has a 17 year old daughter that neither embraces abortion, adoption, or (apparently) birth control is just icing on the cake.
The primary difficulty I see in this abortion debate is that the Group 1 folks have boxed themselves (literally and emotionally) into a corner from which they can’t emerge. They cannot separate their own personal belief from the controversy; that to live in a society that allows abortion is an unacceptable compromise to that belief. Ironically, their defiance to simply work for the common good (i.e. reduce abortions) radicalizes their position and assures that a significant subset of the population (probably a large majority) will never provide support. They feel, understandably, that this is a life and death position they defend which must be attained through legislation. They fail to see that the debate is really about decision making and, more amazingly, they fail to see that such decision making by the individual, choice itself, is totally consistent with Christian teachings.
The pro-choice people (Group 4) also often fail to understand and communicate that the burden of a life and death decision by a child-bearing woman was given by the same Power that created the woman in the first place, and not by the wise benevolence of a free society. As such they lose an ability to share the tragedy, dehumanizing their position. However, their position does allow them to look beyond the issue and place it in its proper context as it relates to governing a nation. Had they not and were forced to satisfy some some extreme wing of their party, we might be looking at the mayor of some other sheltered municipality of 7000 a heartbeat away from running this country of 300 million should Barack Obama become President. Once again, a collective sigh of relief.
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