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They Are Just Politicians
Posted by Kevin

I watched the first hour of the presidential debate last night and thus got to see most of the attacks first hand. People have been calling it the nastiest debate of the cycle, and, from what I saw, they might just be correct. I am not terribly bothered by that. The GOP will not hold back any piece of slime, mud, dirt, or excrement they can get their grubby little paws on long enough to fling and how a candidate deals with that aspect of campaigning is important. More than that, though, there are real differences between the candidates. Their health plans are not the same. Their plans for Iraq are not the same. Even where they agree on the broad outlines, such as the stimulus plans they discussed, they still differ substantially on the details. There are also differences in temperament and in priorities that hard questioning and heated discussion can bring that information to light. So some nastiness and tension in a debate, even an intra-party debate, is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the followers of the campaigns don’t allow themselves to become bitter over the process.

That significant groups of people would become so embittered by the primary process as too drop out is the one worry I have when the candidates go after each other. When you have two candidates who are historic and another candidate who is the first serious candidate who is also a populist in about a generation, its natural for their followers and supporters to become even more emotionally invested in the head of the campaigns than normal. But these people are just politicians. There is nothing wrong with being a politician. It can be a noble calling and I think ofr the three candidates on the Dem side and even a good chunk of the GOP side, it has been a noble calling. But they are politicians, not demi-gods ready to leap astride their white horses and lead us all to the promised land. They aren’t going to save us all with a well timed legislative victory and a cheery wave to the camera. Every single one of them will, at one point or another, betray something you consider vitally important to get somehting else, usually something you think is ridiculously over-valued. That’s becasue we live in a democracy with a diverse population. Compromise and deal making is how things get done, it’s how a democracy was designed to work. If you want to change things, if you want to have someone “save” us, then you have to look to your fellow citizens. It’s not the job of politicians to save us, its the job of citizens to save themselves.

At the end of the day, our candidates are politicians, nothing more and nothing less. They aren’t meant to be leaders, or heroes, or saviors. In a democracy, we are supposed to save ourselves. That’s sorta the point of the thing.

January 22nd, 2008 General, Politics | one comment