Mensch
After my preferred candidate’s departure from the presidential race, this is going to look like a feel-good version of sour grapes—“I didn’t get what I want, so what I got instead must be even better”—but it’s not. Someone called my attention to this story last weekend, before Edwards bowed out, and it earned a thumbs-up then; I just wanted to discuss other things first.
Bill Richardson uses this anecdote about a bad moment in a televised debate to portray Obama as a mensch:
"I had just been asked a question—I don't remember which one—and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, 'So, Governor Richardson, what do you think of that?' But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus.
I smile to note that one mark of a seasoned politician is an ability to respond to unheard questions given only a topic. But Richardson is right; Obama could have thrown him under the bus, and didn’t. I can’t believe this had anything to do with carefully plotted tactics (“If Richardson stays in, he’ll draw some votes off of Clinton until after New Hampshire…” etc., etc.); it was simply the decent thing to do, and Obama did it.
The ills we’ve visited upon ourselves through our elected officials for the past generation are the product of a fundamental lack of decency: writing off the working class for a quick buck, raping the obviously endangered environment for another, invading small nations because we can, disposing of civil liberties out of expedience. Wouldn’t it be nice for once to have someone in the White House whose reflexive reaction is basic decency, instead of looking to twist every event, no matter how small, into political capital?
Clinton is a scrapper. Maybe the Democrats need at long last to get a scrapper. Certainly, we’ve lost some major elections recently by sticking to the high road, while the neocons have won through vicious and downright illegal campaigning. Clinton could win by adopting their tactics, polarizing the nation as hard as she can, then snatching a deciding sliver of independents.
On the other hand, this may be precisely the wrong moment to get nasty. The neocons never won a mandate; they only pretended they did. If Clinton does win with neocon tactics, it will be with 51% of the vote, through selective, targeted campaigning, in the very fashion she’s running her primary bid, and the way Gore and Kerry lost their general elections.
By contrast, Obama and his supporters are campaigning everywhere, fighting for votes whether or not they expect to win any. It makes good political sense; seven years of Bush have at long last generated widespread dissatisfaction with his party, and a big tent strategy is likely to pull in practically everyone in 2008. It’s also the only way to get the majority we’ll need to reverse the damage the country has suffered. Disaffected voters aren’t going to join the big tent in droves if faced with a choice of assholes, but they will if they see fundamentally decent at the podium.
Richardson’s story needs wider airing.