Who can be my president?
I’ve been mulling over the proposal, from our friend Progressive Conservative, that we all take and publicize the Wendell Wilkie Pledge. He’s named it for the Republican presidential candidate who lost to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Wilkie’s “Loyal Opposition Speech” is a reminder that politics is about choosing the best policies rather than about personality clashes, and that one can continue to oppose a party’s or politician’s ideas while respecting the rule of law and authority of the office held. In his explanation of the pledge, he writes:
When we vote we are making a promise. A promise to honor the results. A promise to honor the office. A promise to claim the president as our own, even when we disagree with him most. That is the oath I ask you all to take. I urge you to accept the results of this election. Regardless of who you vote for in November, our country can only go forward if we give our new president our loyal support, though I am not asking anyone to blindly follow this President.
I like this idea very much, and I wish that I was writing this post to affirm my support for the pledge and call on others to join me. However, I think the circumstances of this election make that impossible for me to do. I personally support the Obama-Biden ticket, and I would of course honor the results even if the McCain-Palin ticket were to win instead, but I don’t think I could wholeheartedly refer to McCain as “my president” when he and his campaign have gone so far out of their way to specify that they are absolutely no such thing.
I confess: I’ve finished college, and I’m a graduate student. In physics. I don’t live in a tiny town in a landlocked state; I live in a big city, near a coast. (Horror of horrors — the one on the east!) I’m not a Christian. I don’t even believe in a god. Because I’m an educated, metropolitan, “East-coast liberal” atheist, John McCain and Sarah Palin are willing to demonize me and others like me in an attempt to win the votes of everyone else. Why should I pledge my loyal support to a ticket that charges me with the problems of our time?
This hateful rhetoric is not new to Palin, though she did recently refer explicitly to “real America” and “the pro-America parts” of the country. Her speech at the RNC was all about how small-town people are good people (and not-so-subtle implications that if you don’t meet the Mayberry R.F.D. stereotype, you don’t really love your country). I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the irony meter-breaking RNC speech delivered by Mitt Romney, who ripped on “Eastern elites” despite being one himself. Just recently, McCain campaign adviser Nancy Pfotenauer dismissed northern Virginia as not “real Virginia,” but merely infiltrated and contaminated by “Democrats [who] have just come in from the District of Columbia.” North Carolina representative Robin Hayes told a McCain rally that “liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” Today, McCain explained to NBC’s Brian Williams that the “elitists” live “in our nation’s capital and New York City.” (In the same interview, Palin pointed out that an elitist is anyone “who [thinks] that they’re better than anyone else,” which puts an interesting new twist on the concept of a political campaign.)
Can you imagine what would happen if Obama and Biden were campaigning in the same way? What if they repeatedly warned of what “conservatives from fly-over states” would do to the government? What if they promised to rid Washington of “Texas bigotry,” or “backwater Mississippi racism,” or “evangelical Christian ignorance?” What if when Republicans derisively referred to Obama’s Ivy League education, Democrats countered by pointing out that McCain graduated 894th of 899 in his college class, and that the best of the four colleges Palin transferred around between was the University of Idaho? I’d love to see each use of the adjective “latte-drinking” as an insult followed by a reminder that the McCain-Palin ticket is instead targeting the alcoholic demographic. Imagine if they argued, as Adam Cadre did not too long ago, that “Republican political ads spew insults — or at least epithets that Republicans think are insults — while Democrats hold out their hands and coo that ‘There is no them — there is only us.’ There’s a reason the guy who said that moved to New York after his presidency instead of back to Arkansas: New York is better than Arkansas.”
Of course, this would be outrageous. The media wouldn’t let the Democrats get away with a presidential campaign with that kind of language in it, and neither would the voters. Even though many of us do believe, deep down, that there’s something seriously wrong with states where creationism is taught in science classes, or where racial segregation is still the norm, or where everything from terrorism to hurricanes gets blamed on “the gays,” we believe that it would be both rude and unproductive to accuse everyone in an entire region of being blindingly ignorant or racist or bigoted as part of a campaign. A candidate willing to make such sweeping and divisive generalizations would be difficult to vote for, even if there were some truth behind them.
It feels like many eons ago now, but there was this time back in April when Obama, at a closed fundraiser event in California, commented that some Pennsylvanians were “bitter” about the government and the economy and as a result “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” It’s a reasonable characterization of what’s going on, and while it’s not something anyone would be happy to hear said about themselves, it doesn’t seem particularly vicious. I could even see it as sympathetic. But when his comments got out, the only words anyone remembered were “cling to guns and religion” which was interpreted to mean that Obama wants to repeal the Second Amendment and ban God. Obama backtracked, calling his statement “boneheaded.”
So then, why is it acceptable, even encouraged, for Republicans to make much worse comments in the opposite direction? I’ll set aside the obvious fallacy of assuming that everyone in New England is a liberal or that everyone in the Deep South is conservative. While that is insulting to our intelligence, it’s at least statistically likely to be true. My bigger problem here is with the divide between the supposedly good Americans and supposedly bad Americans. Republicans seem to think that the good Americans live in the small towns, with limited education, limited exposure to other countries or cultures or ways of life, and limited sobriety. They all work in manufacturing or construction or farming, and this is good, honest work. They all live in “real America,” the states or districts that are colored red on electoral maps. On the other hand, there are the bad Americans, who live in cities big enough to have more traffic lights than you can count on your fingers, tend to go to college and occasionally travel abroad, and have a wide variety of ethnic background and religious traditions. As a result of their college education, they have bad jobs in fields like law, journalism, or scientific research, which means they live in an elite Ivory Tower where they scheme about ways to ruin the lives of good Americans. Naturally, they do not live in “real America,” because their states or districts get colored in blue.
I wish I was making all this up. I wish I could honestly say that we can all get along, but I didn’t make this divide — I usually speak out against it. But when the demonization has gone so far that we appear to have a new Joe McCarthy in Congress, I think it’s gone beyond what I can handle in personal conversations. Republicans need to stop talking about who’s “pro-America” or “anti-America,” who lives in “real America” and who doesn’t. We all love our country; we just have different ideas on how to keep it great and make it better. If Republicans continue to characterize any and all opposing viewpoints as “anti-American,” I don’t see why anyone should be willing to be their “loyal opposition” providing respectful and reasoned debate. Unless John McCain and Sarah Palin suddenly decide to vehemently denounce this kind of rhetoric and seriously apologize for the tone of their campaign and the direction in which they’ve led their party, I just can’t see being able to call McCain “my president.”
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5 Responses to “Who can be my president?”
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Every criticsm of Obama since before he clinched the nomination has been characterized as racist. He was happy to encourage this when he told his supporters that McCain would try to point out that he looked different than the men on the dollar bills. John Murtha referred to his own district as racist. Democrats have claimed that it is racist to point out that Obama has past alliances with a domestic terrorist. The media claims it is racist to point out that ACORN is turning in false voter registrations. Obama has been so good at this that he actually managed to convince Democrats that Bill Clinton was racist.
I am fully expecting to be called a racist for the next 4-8 years because that seems to be the label given to anyone who criticizes this candidate of color. But despite all that I am willing to give him the respect his office deserves.
Despite your claim to the contrary the media has not only ignored the ridiculousness of these racism claims but have actually helped advance them. But yet you have still managed to find a way to justify hate for the next four year if McCain gets elected. Liberals seem to be very good at that.
Palin’s rhetoric has been classic populism. You might remember its last incarnation with John Edwards’ ‘two Americas’ or even Hillary’s lackluster attempt at populism this year. Historically populism has been favored more by the Left than the Right. I think maybe you’re ignoring that when you critique Palin’s campaign strategy.
One more point I’d like to make…and this is really the most important one: Wilkie specifically pointed out in his speech that the rhetoric and anger of the campaign was just that, campaigning. Anyone who bases their vote or the support of the President on a 6 month campaign verses the sum of their career is being very, very short-sighted. But again, when you want to find an excuse to hate, it’s easy to see all sorts of things.
I’m with Z on this one, and I had a lot of respect for McCain until very recently.
I don’t think any prominent Democratic politician has ever implied that anyone not voting for Obama is racist. They’ve implied that some people are, and that some racist attacks have been made (like the dollar bill comment), but that is totally true and reasonable.
Palin has gone way beyond economic populism. Economic populism is when you want very progressive taxation and social services, not when you imply everyone from one coast is fundamentally worse.
It’s one thing to attack supporters of your opponent. These attacks aren’t against liberals or Obama supporters. They’re against people who live in cities or on the east coast. No wonder those places end up voting Democratic….
I’m not willing to say everything is just campaign rhetoric. The fact that Palin makes these statements has real consequences. It means that atheists are treated differently in their daily lives. It spreads prejudice and anger that lasts long after the campaign is done. McCain probably doesn’t believe half of this stuff, but the people listening to him do.
I will definitely “accept the results” of the election, and I will definitely be loyal to the country no matter who is president. Personal loyalty to a McCain administration, though, is maybe more than I can promise. A president should be the president all Americans, no matter who voted for them, but McCain and his allies have made it clear that they care a lot less about the views and well-being of certain types of people. I happen to fall into many of those types, and it’s hard to feel allegiance to someone who excludes you and encourages others to hate you.
[...] leads to disenfranchisement, division and distrust. I wish I was making all this up. I wish I could honestly say that we can all get along, but I [...]
A,
I’ve lived in ‘middle America’ my whole life, but I’ve also traveled quite a bit, especially on the East Coast. My wife’s family is from New England, I’ve attended week-long conferences in Providence, we vacation in NH, etc. All told I’ve spent probably 30 weeks on the East Coast. Add to that plenty of other time spent in places like Chicago, Seattle, etc. Maybe I’m not an expert on geographic differences in cultural attitudes, but I do feel like I’ve seen some pretty good anecdotal moments.
Not once in 33 years have I heard someone here make a negative generalization about people living in big cities on the East Coast. But in my travels beyond my state I can name at least 10 instances where I heard negative remarks about small towns, middle America or the South. On my honeymoon I was on a ferry over to Martha’s Vineyard, two days after Bush defeated Kerry, and I heard a woman ask, “How can the rest of the country be so stupid?” When the owner of the inn we stayed at there saw a GOP patch on my backpack she said I was brave for having that around there. People don’t worry about those things where I live.
So my point is, maybe there is some truth to what Palin says. I think there are very different attitudes towards things like guns, religion, education in places like Boston than there are in places like Louisville or St. Louis or Tulsa. It’s not wrong to point out that Obama has a different set of values than many of us in the middle of this country. Is it populism? Yes. But so is a lot of what Obama says.
Some scholars today believe that the ‘working class’ is defined more by their education level and their profession than by their actual income. Accepting that premise, then when people like John Edwards talk about ‘two Americas’ he’s actually positioning a lot of non-college graduates against those more educated. So the anti-intellectual label for Palin is a bit hypocritical in that light.
I also have to reject your notion that Palin’s comments somehow make it more difficult for atheists. I think you’re giving her words waaaaay more power than they deserve.