You remember the movie Groundhog Day, of course. How every day was the same in Punxsutawney, PA for Bill Murray's newsman. So it is now, after three weeks in the foothills of Central Pennsylvania, for Hillary and Obama. The same blueplate special (meatloaf most days) at the Somerset Dinner. The same three former steelworkers or coal miners showing up at the VFW luncheon chat. The same motels with moldy carpetting and a leaky window. I lived here for part of my life. I travelled back and forth across this terrain for the next forty years. Nobody wants to richocet along the turnpike and through those mountain tunnels too often unless you're born to the life. Newcomers lose too much oxygen. The relief in hitting Philly or Pittsburgh is palpable.
After a while in Central, PA, any outsider would say stupid things. You might claim you went hunting with your father and the right to bear arms is pretty damned important. You'd talk about bitterness and clinging to your gun and church. After all, churches and hunting are the primary recreational options here. They become part of your speech pattern. You forget a world beyond this one exists.
And the other candidate, the one who cares not an iota about these people, speaks of elitism. But nobody takes him up on it. Nobody says how out of touch he is. The Battle for Pennsylvania makes him look reasonable--which he is not.
Come out of the foothills, Hillary and Obama. Remember that Central Pennsylvania is just a state of mind. Just leave that gun behind.
12 comments:
Patti, you're too kind. Huntin' Hillary and Bitter Obama are the Real Fake Thing. Just like Maverick McCain. Anything to grub a vote, or grubby the opponent's. Let's not pretend otherwise.
It makes no sense to offer up your heart to careerists. Just try to pick the one that represents you least badly.
But had the press's relentless coverage made them this way?
Nope.
Easy vest pocket: They've both been looking for their fathers' approval all their lives (and I think McCain isn't too far from this, either), and couldn't ever get it...so, let's become Big Daddy, and whatever that takes, Lets Do.
Hard truth: They're professional politicians. I'm listening to a discussion of how pros shouldn't speak so unvarnishedly as BO did. But, I'll suggest, the problem wasn't so much that he told the truth, but that he told the incomplete truth in such a way as to stroke his private San Fran fundraising audience. "You and I know how deluded they are," rather than, "We haven't made the case to them that we actually intend not just to feather our own nests."
It's funny, in any other field you'd want professionals. In politics, we want amateurs.
It's been a minor scandal in France that almost all recent politicians attend the same diplomatic grad school, a place designed to produce professional politicians the same way a medical school or MBA program is designed to produce professionals.
It's interesting to look at America from another country and see politicians contort themselves to try and appeal to such a wide range of people. It really is an impossible task, combining the, "aw shucks country bumpkin," with the sophistication needed to run the biggest power in the world.
It makes the rest of us pretty nervous.
And well it should, John, cause who knows which you're getting.
It's not that I want amateurs...but I don't want people to buy into the Aw shucks. To reiterate a close paraphrase the best thing I've heard this season, from Noam Chomsky--we should be ashamed, in a supposedly democratic society, to seek leaders, as opposed to representatives, of our interests. Aw shucks, of course, is pretending to represent.
The idea of a leader does not sit well with the rest of the world because it reeks of American exceptionalism.
One thing that's true around the world is people really only care about their own interests. So the only reason people care what goes on in America is because it will probably have some impact on them.
And, democracy came later to most other places in the world and was phased in more slowly, so it happened as things like public education came on board.
America is pretty much the only country that tried to bring in democracy before widespread public education. And, America is one of the few industrialized countries in which there is no party that claims to represent "working people" exclusively. Makes it tough.
And too bad that it does have impact on them. It's time for someone else to lead. Or better yet, a joint body like the U.N.
It's true. Democrats tend to represent those who think the world owes them, and the Republicans represent those who already own everything. There is no "common" party.
The only thing that gives me relief is the knowledge that our president really doesn't weild much power. Most of their job is to look pretty and veto bills they don't like. It's rare for a president to be able to make a decision on their own. If you want real power, become a house speaker.
Actually, that's what gets me about all this "When I'm elected I'll...". No you won't. The president doesn't have that power. You can try to influence laws, but guess what? You don't make them. And so many Americans just don't understand that.
Unfortunately when the President has an event like 9-11 to respond to and when his party occupies both houses, he has significant power. Clinton after the 1994 elections was held in check by the Republican congress. But Bush was unbridled.
Patti: isn't that the movie where Bill Murray says: Don't drive angry?
Maybe that should apply to politics: Don't run for prez angry.
Yup, it's getting pretty weird on the campaign trail.
I almost thought I'd clicked on the wrong bookmark. Sure looks different around here. I think one of my most nerve wracking moments came when I clicked on the "change/update template" button on blogger - a long agonizing wait on dial-up till I saw everything bloggy survived intact.
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