Dan

Calabrese

Read Dan's bio and previous columns here

September 15, 2008

No, Democrats, Obama Really Was Your Best Option. Pathetic, Isn’t It?

Buyer’s remorse is afflicting the Democratic Party. Many are wondering how they could have nominated an empty suit like Barack Obama when they could have had Hillary Clinton.

Ah the recriminations that inevitably accompany frustration and increasingly likely defeat.

Someone needs to save the Democrats the trouble of hitting themselves in the head with hammers. They did not make the wrong choice. Their problem is that no choice available to them was much good.

Democrats do not nominate good presidential candidates because Democrats do not make good presidential candidates. The problem starts with Democrats’ complete lack of understanding of what the nation desires in a leader. It is compounded by the fact that, for a Democrat, the building of a successful political career requires a litany of actions that will make you unattractive as a candidate for president.

Americans like their presidents strong, decisive, patriotic and unapologetic about what he or she plans to do with the office. Republicans can vow with pride and confidence to keep the military strong, taxes low and the size of government under control. Once in office, they typically succeed at the first, have mixed success on the second and fail miserably at the third. But a Republican can claim plausibly to want all three, and for the most part, the country wants all three as well.

A Republican can also speak the language of American exceptionalism – the idea that America is a unique country set apart, a beacon of hope and freedom to which others can aspire – and sounds like he or she means it. Most of the country feels this way too.

Democrats cannot do any of this. They can’t speak of their desire to keep the military strong, keep taxes low or limit the size of government, because no one will believe them. They can’t very well speak the language of American exceptionalism, because there is probably a video somewhere of their saying exactly the opposite during a speech to some left-wing advocacy group.

The longer your track record as a Democratic politician, the easier it is for Republicans to portray you as what you are – weak on defense, enamored with government as the solver of problems (all of this funded by higher taxes, of course) and possessing a sense of patriotism that is, er, “complicated” rather than proud and straightforward.

This is the problem Democrats face in every presidential campaign. So they try to couch what they really believe with carefully chosen words and phrases. Unless the candidate is a master triangulator, and has help from a third-party independent of questionable sanity, this doesn’t work and the Democrat loses. They make matters worse for themselves when their opponents call them on all this, and they whine that they’re being smeared. Because people can see that they’re not.

Hillary Clinton would have had the same problems, plus more. No one has based a political career on pretending more completely than she has. No one has more problems with the truth than she has. Just because people now love Sarah Palin doesn’t mean Hillary would have escaped all these problems.

The dream Democratic candidate would be one who has proudly, over the course of many years, exclaimed his or her liberal beliefs – and not only that, but also turned them into action steps that were popular with the American people and impacted people’s lives in a positive way. Where is that Democrat? Exactly. He or she does not exist.

That’s why Democrats get stuck nominating someone like Obama, whom they hope will so dazzle people with his speaking ability, it won’t matter that he has no track record, or that his policy prescriptions are not to the liking of most of the electorate. He does OK in the polls for a while, because he seems inspiring and different.

But when people start really paying attention and examining his life and his record, the thought of such a person actually sitting in the Oval Office, making the impossible decisions presidents have to make, doesn’t seem so appealing. And the thought of yet another Republican president, even if he isn’t new and exciting and can’t give inspiring speeches, doesn’t seem so bad.

Obama wasn’t the wrong choice for the Democrats. He was the perfect choice. He is an avowed left-winger who is determined to pretend otherwise in order to maintain his political viability. He has never accomplished anything positive for the American people, but neither have most other Democrats who have been in Washington much longer than he has.

If a proud, accomplished liberal with a track record of positive achievement had been in the running, then it would have been a mistake to nominate Obama. But there are no such liberals – running for president or otherwise – so hey, you might as well go with the empty suit. You can’t blame him for the pathetic fact that he really was the best you had.

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

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