2 Responses to “A Centrist Laments”

1. gerryf Says:
   June 27th, 2008 at 7:32 am

   Yes, the bloom is indeed coming off the rose for each candidate, but why?

   Mr. Abel seems to think it is the tone both candidates are taking, but sometimes I wonder if the problem is not so much the tone of the candidates, but the tone of everyone else around them.

   Certainly, supporters of misters McCain and Obama are not going to agree with everything the two espouse and that is OK. For many people, as we learn more about the candidates there are more and more positions they find they differ on from the presidential aspirants.

   That will certainly overcome the early euphoria we felt when these guys were fresh and new.

   In my case, the things I liked about McCain are still there, but after watching him for more than a decade I find there is more I dislike than I did.

   As for Obama, his time in the limelight is much shorter, but after almost two years of campaigning it’s got to be more than the audacity of hope.

   But even more to my point, as the two parties have galvanized around the presumptive candidates we find many of those partisan irritants that we centrists hate coalescing around them. The far right and far left political pundits and blogosphere with all their ugliness have to pick a side and now–despite a firm belief that people ought to not be guilty by association, somehow are.

   How can they not be tainted by it?

   And as the media — paiticularly television and radio, but sadly the newspapers and magazines, too as they continually evolve into the kind of sound-byte infotainment deliverers that an attention-span deficient society calls for — focuses its attention on the two from the many, thoughtful positions get sliced and diced into tasty, but empty morsels.

   And finally, we need to look in the mirrors. Someone said long ago that we get the kind of leaders we deserve. Unfortunately, we also get the kind of election process we deserve because for too long, we have not demanded more.

2. mw Says:
   June 27th, 2008 at 8:34 am

   Well written comment Gerry. I agree with the analysis but just don’t feel that same sense of malaise over the inevitable nature of a contest for the most powerful role in the most powerful country on earth. This is, in the end, still a contest about seeking power. Part of the problem for Centrist/Independents, is they continue to labor under the illusion that they are a majority of the electorate. They are not. It is not even close. At least 80% of the electorate are solidly partisan (regardless of how they identity themselves to pollsters or in registrations). That shapes the nature of the contest to determine who among us will have greater access to power.

   As far as Pete’s post, I am tempted to go over to TMV and just tell him to suck it up. In fact, I think I will. [TIME PASSES]. There, I feel better now. This is the comment I posted over at TMV:

   Suck it up Man! This ain’t no garden party. This is a contest for the most powerful role in the richest most powerful country on the earth. For most of the history of our species on this planet, this kind of contest could only be settled with blood. We have a system in place that only the toughest political street fighters could survive, and as the last two surviving combatants emerge you are surprised that we are not having a platonic round table discussion about the future of the country?

   This is not a new phenomena. Our system has branches of the government pitted against each other by design. Internal conflict was the goal of the founders, as that is the only way to limit the excesses of government.

   By the standards of most of US history, this presidential campaign is positively genteel:

   “During the nation’s first contested presidential election in 1796, supporters of Vice President John Adams charged his challenger, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, with atheism, sexual improprieties, and dangerous revolutionary intentions. For their part, Jefferson backers accused Adams of plotting to establish a monarchy, crown himself king, and ally the country with its foe, Great Britain.”

   “In the election of 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson was tarred as an agent of the French Revolution…”

   “Opponents of Andrew Jackson accused him of murder, while Old Hickory’s men whispered that his rival John Quincy Adams had been, while U.S. minister to Russia, a pimp for the tsar..”

   “In 1864 the Lincoln reelection campaign equated opposition to the president and the Republican party with disloyalty to the Union…, depicted the Democrats essentially as traitors.”

   “Democrats also got personal, characterizing Grant as an alcoholic, uncouth, simple-minded, unprincipled, Negro-loving tyrant… ”

   “After the Civil War the Republicans would “wave the bloody shirt”-that is, associate the Democratic party with secession and opposition to the Union war effort-in every presidential election into the 1880s. The 1868 Democratic presidential nominee, Horatio Seymour, was an especial target of the “bloody shirt” because while New York governor in 1863 he had addressed the New York City draft rioters as “My friends.” Others labeled his links to the Peace Democrats as the equivalence of treason.”

   “Democrats accused Rutherford Hayes of stealing the pay of deceased soldiers while he was a Union general, opposing citizenship for all immigrants, and income tax fraud. One Democrat encouraged the Tilden camp, to no avail, to investigate the question, “Did Hayes shoot his mother in a fit of insanity?”

   “An Oct. 26 headline in the New York Times: “President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascists’ Tool.”

   And of course there is the particularly divisive 1860 election, when we as a country, actually decided to spend the post election environment literally shooting and killing over 600,000 of our fellow citizens.

   One is tempted to suggest that unity, political civility, and polite debate in a presidential campaign is downright Un-American.

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