Obama, McCain, the Infomercial
I write as I watch, listen, and mull over Obama's Infomercial, today, at midnight of Thursday, October 30, 2008.
Obama is an amazing politician and an eloquent and intelligent man. He may well win the election. If he does, his victory will be a testament to his talents, and to the mood of a country that seeks great change.
McCain is an unimpressive politician and a man of great grit and commitment. He, too, may win the election. If he does, his victory will be a testament to his tenacity and to the mood of a country that is unsure of the promise of great change.
This election is about the nature of a promise that Obama makes and McCain does not.
What is that promise? It is a promise of
- the gifts of government. Government will solve the ills that beset us.
- healing. Because our country is--in his view--ill, sick. Its citizens are ill. Its politics is ill.
- hope. Hope against the backdrop of despair. Because Obama despairs of America as it is. Because America and its people are all suffering and there is nothing to celebrate.
- isolation. Because the world is not our friend (it steals our jobs) nor really our enemy (if we can focus on Afghanistan and befriending Russia, our enemies will cease to trouble us).
- equality.
What does Obama leave out?
- freedom
- liberty
- the power of personal initiative
- humility
- engagement with the world--friendship in trade and vigilance in defending our civilization against its enemies.
- love of America for what it has accomplished--and not just for what it might accomplish.
Obama shows great empathy for Americans who suffer, and little for those who succeed by the sweat of their brow. His stories of America are stories of setback. In a word, his message is pessimistic. To the core.
How does Obama redeem his country? How does he manage to convey a message that so inspires? He manages to do so because he asks one to believe:
Obama's message is religious in its garb. He reminds me of a pitch delivered by an evangelical university student who described the human condition as that of a man who has been given a death sentence. Then G-d offers him a reprieve, if he accepts a certain faith. Obama has painted a similar picture for us: our civilization has been given a death sentence. We must believe in him and through that faith be redeemed.
So, Obama's campaign is a messianic one, as I have written in a previous post. Obama's language has often been messianic in tone:
His messiahship is steeped in the traditions of American civil religion. It is a secular messiahship.
This explains much of the fervor, the hope, the passion, the excitement, around his campaign, and markedly so among highly intellectual and secular Americans . One wants to have a piece of him, to adulate him, to bask in his glory, to be transformed by his being, and to take him for one's own. In the language of his website, one wants him to be "MyBO."
America beyond November 4, 2008
What if Obama wins? I fear an Obama presidency, not because I mistrust Obama, but because I take him at his word: "Change we can believe in." He may well be able to carry out his program with the support of a strongly Democratic Congress (and, perhaps, a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate). He may, indeed, not be the leader in this process--Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may become the most powerful person in America. Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader, would be a partner in transformation (see the Senate Democrats' Issues).
In terms of domestic policy, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team would seek to put into place the following program:
- increase taxes
- redistribute wealth
- punish those who succeed in personal enterprise
- discourage personal enterprise
- politicize the economy even beyond the current state of affairs
- discourage trade
- reward the elderly, the sick, and the young of today at the expense of the elderly, the sick, and the young of the next generation
- transfer even greater powers to the Federal Government
- attenuate even further the private sector in the USA
- arrogate even further the responsibility of the Federal Government to be the moral center of the country
It is very clear to me that the real losers of this program would be enterprising individuals, families, and communities, and institutions that either remain independent of the Federal Government or that seek a smaller role for it in line with the vision of the country's founders and its Constitution.
What of foreign policy? In this area, I worry perhaps even more. For the president is Commander in Chief and the executive branch is the locus of foreign affairs. Obama does not believe that America and her honor are worth defending against foes. Believing in his own wisdom, he feels that America's enemies would be pacified by the power of his peaceful words. Believing in the personal nature of conflict, he sees himself as the American man who can take out the only enemy he seems to recognize--Osama bin Laden. Obama will remove Osama and peace is to reign in the world, so he seems to hope.
Obama believes that America must make it up to the world (read, Europe; also the Middle East?). He seems to show no awareness that enmity of America is visceral; that it exists; that it cannot be sweet-talked or imprisoned away.
I worry, then, that Obama is an American Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1937-1940), of whom the following has been written at Wikipedia:
A Vote for McCain
Hassagot supports McCain. Why?
- Because of his love of the United State of America and its accomplishments? Yes
- Because of his approach to foreign policy and the world? Yes
- Because of his approach to free trade? Yes
- Because of his essential confidence in
- liberty
- freedom
- personal initiative and enterprise? Yes
- Because he will be a counterbalance to a Democratic Congress? Yes
- Because of his economic policies? No. However, I hope that I have made it clear that I do seek in legislative government the solution to our economic travails.
- Because he is not a messianic figure? Indeed, yes.
McCain does not paint a picture of redemption like Obama's, for McCain does not think that America needs the president to provide it with redemption.
The relative limitedness and modesty of his vision is linked to his deep faith in his country. He does not present the promise of solving all ills for he does not despair of our country.
A vote for Obama is a vote to condemn America and an expression of despair in the capacity of its citizens. Obama concludes his infomercial with the following words--
With these words he expresses his view that it is only through the people's participation in government--by which he means his government--that Americans can take part in their democracy.
McCain's humbler vision is truer to the foundation stones of the republic and so much more hopeful about the capacity of its citizens.
-- H. A. Massig
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