I’ve avoided writing about the upcoming presidential election. As is often the case in politics, the two candidates have entered a complicated game of rhetoric. The recent political tit-for-tat makes it increasingly difficult to know what McCain or Obama actually stand for on a number of problems the nation is facing. The conversation has shifted from substantive issues to questions about the candidates’ character. We are encouraged to vote for the candidate who is best suited to lead the nation on the basis of their personality and personhood. Who is the most patriotic? Who can identify most with the average American’s economic woes? Who is “tough enough” to deal with in foreign policy issues?
Obama is now being painted as an elitist who is out of touch with average Americans; inexperienced; not “tough enough;” his upbringing too eclectic for the “average American.” The candidate is scrutinized to the nth degree: What does he eat? How does he dress? Where did he receive his education? What songs does he have on his iPod? Where does he vacation? Is his wife too radical? In a smart rhetorical ploy, the McCain campaign is portraying Obama as a shallow “celebrity” who has no business meddling in the affairs of running the United States of America. (Of course, no one is recalling that two of the Republican Party’s brightest heroes—Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger—were both actors.)
Since he has vowed to run a positive campaign, Obama can’t very well point out character flaws in the former prisoner of war who is after all, his elder. The media rarely asks McCain nitty-gritty questions about his private life. We don’t know where he went to college, what he eats, what church he goes to, or where his wife gets her hair done. The absence of a counter-offensive on McCain’s character has allowed McCain to portray himself as a patriotic war-time hero who is more in touch with Americans than Obama. This is a remarkable achievement in political rhetoric given some of the things McCain has recently said. Contrary to the expert opinions of economists and suffering average Americans, McCain declared that the economy is ‘fundamentally strong.’ Meanwhile, when asked how many houses he owns, McCain declared that he did not know. (He owns seven, by the way). Hardly a comment someone in touch with the average American would make.
The character war—which McCain is currently winning—rather than a debate about different approaches to substantive issues, has led to a stalemate between Obama and McCain in the national polls. Presumably, if the election was being staged on the basis of issues, one would expect Obama to be much further ahead. With George W. Bush’s approval ratings as low as ever, the economy facing major crises, the dollar down, the War in Iraq unpopular, and the international community calling for the end of “America the Bully” in foreign policy, one would think that the Democrats were heavily favored. But then, elections are never logical in America.
Why isn’t Obama doing better, then? Is it because people actually believe he is elitist? Is it because he is too well-educated for the average American? Is it because his views are too liberal, or too far to the left? Is it because some Democrats are still mad that Hillary Clinton wasn’t elected as the presidential nominee? Is it because of the false rumors that Obama is Muslim? Is it because Obama eats arugula instead of regular lettuce? Is it because he’s Black?
Let’s take one issue at a time, even though the motivations are entangled. Are Obama’s views too far to the left for the majority of Americans? Obama has declared repeatedly that he wants to ‘unify’ the nation, which is a code word for being centrist, not leftist. The misperception that he and his wife Michelle are “radical” began with the overplayed and drawn out Rev. Wright controversy. Yet nothing Obama has said about his policy plans suggests anything but centrism. The most ‘leftist’ proposition he has made is to re-introduce taxes for the most rich in order to replenish the federal budget emptied during the Bush years, when the richest Americans were given the greatest tax breaks in history through the incremental elimination of the estate tax. (According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, making the estate tax repeal permanent for another ten years after it sunsets in 2010 would shortchange the federal budget by $1 trillion from 2012-2021). His “universal health care” plan does not even come close to resembling the state-subsidized health care plans available to Europeans in France or Germany. In fact, such a ‘leftist’ health care plan would probably be impossible in the U.S., since Americans are vehemently against raising taxes.
The claim that Obama is an ‘arugula-eating elitist’ who is out of touch with average Americans strikes me as an incredible fantasy-projection. Did anyone ever declare that George W. Bush was ‘elitist’ because his father had been president, his brother was a governor, and they owned most of the big oil business in Texas? Here is a candidate who had all historical odds against him to become the presidential nominee. He is biracial, was raised by a single mother who lived abroad and a grandmother, and has hardly any American legacy of importance. Additionally, even though social scientists have incontrovertibly documented that people of color face more adversity in education, housing, and employment than whites—in a remarkable rhetorical reversal—Obama is declared to be the privileged one in this election!
And now for the elephant in the room... the question of race. There are two general camps when it comes to how Obama’s racial identity affects his chances of being elected. One camp will not vote for Obama simply because he is Black. These are white working class and rural voters in conservative states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania. They have vowed to vote for McCain simply because they cannot fathom having an African-American president. For this camp, bigotry is alive and well, and they are not afraid to say so. One of their national spokesmen, Rush Limbaugh, recently played the racist “Barack, the magic Negro” song on his radio show. In short, there is a faction in the American public for whom evidence and well-phrased arguments will not make a difference because the logic of racism prevails.
A second camp—made up of independents, centrists and liberals—will never openly declare that Obama’s race impacts their opinion of him. They will declare that they are not prejudiced, and that they too have a Black friend, but they have worked for liberal and progressive causes. They are purportedly “color-blind” and declare that America is a post-race society. Yet as law professor Patricia J. Williams wrote in last week’s issue of New York Magazine, “There is an interesting kind of cognitive dissonance at work in the American psyche. We rejoice in the warm symbolism of interracial bliss, particularly in the idealized and thoroughly mythic sphere of celebrity existence: Tiger Woods’s Pan-racialism, Brangelina’s adoptions, Steven Spielberg’s handsome brown son… At the same time, there’s terrible ambivalence on the ground. Does one really want “the race card” living next door, or being your boss? Do you really want your child marrying outside his race?” To add one more question, do you really want “the race card” to be your president?