Covering Obama

I don't mind a little political mudslinging, mostly for my own entertainment value. After all, most of the attacks that draw breathless media coverage are too stupid to merit serious consideration, and are often ripe for humor.

Unlike most media critics, I cracked up when I first saw the recent New Yorker cover satirizing the Obamas as actually living up to every ridiculous caricature they've been assigned in this campaign.

One of those caricatures is that Barack Obama does not know how to "lead the country", whatever that means. So, the big headline news of the moment is Obama's big trip abroad, where he supposedly will pick up those missing credentials. The fawning media coverage of the event comes in sharp contrast to John McCain's recent trips to Mexico, Canada, and Colombia, which were largely ignored. I guess it's a much more compelling story to report on the legions of Europeans who are gripped by Obamamania.

[Aside: It's nice to learn that polls indicate the French and Germans--by ludicrously lopsided margins--want us to make history and elect our first minority president. Well, their opinion (for what it's worth) is noted, and any reduction in Bush-inspired America-hating would be welcome. Yet it seems hard to ignore the obvious fact that these same European countries have their own work cut out for them with regards to making progress in electing minority candidates.]

The longer this election season drags on, the more I agree with the characterization of Barack Obama as a Rorschach test--both his supporters (at home and abroad) and detractors have manufactured their own image of him that isn't accurate. Critics think he is a zealous ideologue and dangerously inexperienced, when actually, he's a pragmatic politician. And while he does have a short tenure in public service, he is a smart guy capable of thinking about the problems facing this country and offering plausible solutions.

On the flip side, and this is important, I don't get where the prevailing image of Obama as a transcendent political figure has come from. If I had a nickel for every time someone described his "post-partisan" politics....I'd be a rich man. But of course, that's an empty label. There's no way to prove that he'll have an easy time of forging bipartisan compromise while President.

And the idea of a candidate claiming to heal divisions is far from new. Then-Governor George W. Bush, before the 2000 election, also made much of his claim to be "a uniter, not a divider". Remember that?

Is It November Yet?

Sometime last week my roommate and I were discussing our election fatigue--how tired we were of the endless parade of meaningless political stories dominating the news. Maybe, I wondered, because we're both only 21, we can't recall that the previous presidential elections in '04 and '00 were just as full of inanity.

Were we were too young to recognize it then? Did we not know that an election is an interminable popularity contest interrupted by the occasional gaffe made in a speech by the candidate, a candidate's staffer, or random supporter of that candidate? For variety, throw in the occasional rumor attributed to "the blogosphere" or "offensive" statement made by anybody.

I haven't turned cynical--I still think choices matter. You want to pick someone competent and hard-working, someone who can empathize with others and make decisions while handling conflicting opinions. Personality matters, not just because the president needs to "work well with others" to govern effectively, but because they are also a living, walking advertisement of our country, broadcasting a message to us and the world.

But I worry that the way campaigns operate and the way the media reports on them leads voters to:
a) make a decision based on factors that don't matter
b) misunderstand what the president actually does and what he directly affects
and c) fail to realize that differences between candidates aren't that significant in a practical context.

Especially with regards to that last point, it's always amusing to hear the country's-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket spiel each side claims will happen if the other is elected. In the event of something like a major crisis, chances are whoever's sitting in the Oval Office is going to respond in a similar way. And practicality, with regards to politics, media coverage, and just the weight of actually being president means that no one, despite their professed ideology, is going to do anything too radical. (Post-9/11 governmental excesses against the Constitution, one hopes, are the exception, and temporary at that.)

So for example, you can hold McCain's lack of economics expertise against him, but as president he just has to be able to understand his advisory council of PhD economists, his Treasury secretary, Ben Bernanke, or a good newspaper--and make decisions accordingly. You can criticize Obama for saying he would talk to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but if elected he wouldn't allow Iran to use nuclear weapons to threaten the safety of the U.S. or our allies.

Then again, who wants a sober, rational analysis of the candidates? Surely it's only a matter of time before Obama doesn't wear a Stars-and-Stripes lapel pin while giving a speech in France, and John McCain exiles another close surrogate whom 99.8% of voters couldn't pick out of a police lineup anyway.

...Ugh. Only about 15 or so weeks left to go!