Dan

Calabrese

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July 28, 2008

Obamapalooza: Choosing a President? Or a Hallmark Card?

We have strong indications that America is about to pick its president in the same way it picks out Hallmark cards.

“Oh, this one just makes me feel good. I just like it. This will give her a warm feeling.”

What is a President?

Clean and serene

He connects to my pain

Fresh yet alive

His words far from plain

The hope of our land

He seeks to renew

I feel such a thrill

O what will I do?

Barack Obama is young, fresh and eloquent. His body language and his inflection exude empathy, intellectual depth and a deep, emotional connection to the common man. He is new and exciting. He inspires people. Or so we are told.

What does any of this have to do with the job of president of the United States? Not a thing as far as I can see, but in order for that to matter, the electorate would have to take seriously the fact that a president is elected to perform certain functions. The electorate is showing no such seriousness.

Left-wing blogs and message boards make clear that the dyed-in-the-wool, ideological left preferred Obama over Hillary Clinton because they consider him to be the more reliable ideological liberal. There are contingents of the electorate – one at each end – for whom the only thing that matters in a president is ideological purity. The more he agrees with me, the more likely he is to get my vote.

There is another segment of the electorate that just wants something different. These people are tired of the Iraq War, tired of President Bush or both – and/or feeling emotional fatigue about lots of other things. I would not imagine most of these folks are ideologically aligned, but they can get cranky after seeing the same face for eight years, and they don’t want another face that will say many of the same things because, well, those things are the same!

I understand that politics, much like advertising, is about emotional connection and personal comfort as much as substance, if not more so. I can be like that. My last five cars have been Nissans. Why? I’m used to where the buttons are. Are they better cars than this brand or that? I have no idea. I just don’t want to have to re-learn the buttons. It would make me cranky.

Silly, perhaps, but if that’s how I want to choose my car, that’s my business.

The fact that we entertain such silliness in the choice of a president, however, suggests to me that we really don’t think about what the president does. Once in office, it will matter little how much he agrees with you, as opposed to how skillfully he makes appointments, deals with Congress, issues executive orders and chooses political priorities.

As to how he makes you feel? He may “inspire” you, but to do what? Are you going to change the way you live your life because some guy who will never know your name sent a chill down your spine? What will happen when you get tired of him? If you expect the president to inspire you to greatness, perhaps you should reassess and look within yourself.

The president of the United States has to manage a gargantuan and unruly bureaucracy, make impossible national security decisions (often between a bad choice and a worse one), choose spending priorities that are guaranteed to make people mad and constantly try to assuage the egos of political blowhards who are all convinced they could do his job better than he does it.

What are the personal qualities required in order to be able to perform these functions? Youth, freshness and high oratory don’t really come to mind.

There’s nothing wrong with Americans casting their ballots for the person who makes you think, “Oh, I just love him!” The next time a new season of American Idol starts, you do that. As for the election of a president, perhaps between now and November we could all start taking the stakes just a little more seriously.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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