Pointless presidential posturing:Four topics that should be tabled

My column this week, which will be posted on Thursday, will focus on the relentless noise that has been obscuring real debate this presidential season. Here are four topics of discussion that have served to do little more than distract us:

1. The experience question:
While Sen. McCain has been touting his resume — former Navy pilot and prisoner of war who has served in Congress for 26 years, the last 22 in the Senate – implying that his opponent’s is a bit thin, there is nothing about his experience that would suggest that he is better qualified for the nation’s top office than Sen. Obama.

After all, we are not talking about some novice who woke up one day after owning a baseball team and decided to seek office. Sen. Obama has served in government for 11 years four in the U.S. Senate and seven in the state legislature in Illinois, and has worked as a community organizer, civil rights attorney and constitutional law professor.

The simple fact is that there is no experience that can prepare someone to be president. After all, President Ronald Reagan, by way of comparison, served eight years as governor of California and was an actor and corporate pitchman before that. And conservatives didn’t seem at all concerned that the experience of their candidate in 2000 — the current president — paled in comparison to his opponent, a sitting vice president who had served more than two decades in Congress.

Experience is a convenient argument to trot out when you have little else to talk about. The question, in the end, is not experience but vision and how the candidates’ pasts might shape their work in the White House. So let’s talk about vision and leave the resumes for the human resource people to peruse.

2. Flips and flops:
In 2004, Republicans tagged U.S. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, as a flip-flopper because of his vote on the funding of the Iraq War. Sen. Kerry voted against an $87 billion funding bill for the Iraq War in 2003, while proposing an alternative bill that would have provided the money but tied it to a repeal of some of the Bush tax cuts.

It was a standard legislative maneuver, but one that was easily painted as trying to have it both ways. And, thanks to a masterful advertising campaign by the GOP — along with attacks from outside groups — Kerry looked weak and ineffectual.

Fast forward to the 2008 race and it difficult to see how either candidate can benefit from raising the specter of the flip-flop. Both candidates have taken what charitably can be called “nuanced positions”: McCain on the Bush tax cuts, the torture ban, public financing, Jerry Falwell and the Religious Right; Obama on the FISA vote and public financing.

This is to be expected, however, given that both have spent the bulk of their public lives as legislators whose primary job is to compromise to get things done. Compromise, however, doesn’t play well in the current, 24-7 cable/blog culture.

3. Religion and the preacher question:
Both candidates have used religious affiliations to enhance their political viability – Obama proclaiming his faith publicly and endorsing faith-based public programs, McCain by reaching out to rightwing preachers after calling them “agents of intolerance.” They’ve also both experienced blow-back because of their connections to pastors (the Revs. Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger for Obama; the Revs. John Hagee and Rod Parsley for McCain) that should offer enough incentive to leave religion out of the debate.

4. Patriotism:
Arguments over patriotism in a presidential contest are about as useful as arguing over which sports teams the candidates support. Both candidates are patriotic Americans and this little pissing contest demeans both and the concept of patriotism in general.

Enough of these issues. Let’s talk about the economy, the environment, health care and the war.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Race and the race

Do not let anyone fool you. While Barack Obama is doing well in the polls, there is a significant portion of the electorate who sees him as nothing more than a black man — not as a Harvard graduate, former community organizer, lawyer, state legislator or U.S. Senator, but as a black man.

That, in their eyes, makes him different than the rest of us, than white America. That’s the subtext of much of what the Clinton campaign’s late strategy was and why we are witnessing a full-out focus on Obama’s middle name, the flag pin, the Muslim rumors.

And we shouldn’t expect it to die off anytime soon.

I was at a barbecue today when the conversation turned to politics. I opted to remain in the background today, mostly because the tenor of the conversation lacked any real substance, building on innuendo and ad hominem attacks to take the discussion nowhere.

On one side were a couple of 18-year-old Obama supporters, who hit all the candidate’s buzzwords — change, McCain’s 100-year war — while on the other side were the generally older McCain supporters touting his experience and Obama’s lack thereof.

It was an amusing display, including a side-argument over abortion and Catholics (I may have been the only non-Catholic there) that featured the canard about falling African-American birth rates due to abortion.

The 18-year-old –I’ve decided not to name anyone because it was just a graduation party and not a political caucus — said that he thought there was a racial element involved, that some McCain supporters were backing the Republican because of his race. He said that many of his family members — erstwhile Democrats — were planning to vote for a Republican.

His uncle chimed in that he would never support Obama because “next thing you know, you’d have Sharpton in the White House,” proving the kid’s point.

The conversation, while amusing, was also disheartening, revealing the undercurrent of racism that remains out there. I’ve not had any illusions about this, but it really hits home when you confront it straight on like this.

What I’m hoping, at this point, is that the racism is out in the open — or at least accounted for in the polling and that we don’t have what is called the Bradley Effect (polls showing a black candidate leading because many respondents were afraid to say they wouldn’t support him; Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder and New York Mayor David Dinkins all experienced a variation of this). I don’t mean to imply that this is the only way McCain can win but, if it did play out this way, it would be particular divisive and call into question all the progress we’ve made on race relations over the years.

My hope is that the candidate who is most in tune with voters’ beliefs, who best understands their concerns and offers the most forward-looking plan will win and that race won’t be the determining factor.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Saturday reading: A perusal of the op-eds

Some worthwhile reading today:

  • Colbert King, The Washington Post, “Two Speeches, Two Truths About America“

    • It makes you wonder how Independence Day orators 150 years from now will look back upon this Fourth of July.

    What will they make of freedom-loving people who, at the dawn of America’s fourth century as a nation, question the patriotism of a U.S. senator because he doesn’t wear a flag pin in his lapel or because he has a name that doesn’t sound like theirs?

    What will they say about our professed fidelity to religious freedom when they find out that many of the Americans who thank God for their religious liberty are also ready to turn their backs on a candidate if they think he is a Muslim or Mormon?

    Or because he’s black?

    What, come to think of it, would Frederick Douglass think?

  • Bob Herbert, The New York Times, “Cause for Alarm“

    • The U.S., with its enormous economic and military power, is still better-positioned than any other country to set the standards for the 21st century. But that power and leadership potential were not granted by divine right and cannot be wasted indefinitely.

    Patriotism has its place. But waving a flag is never a good substitute for serious thought and rolling up one’s sleeves.

  • The Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, The Record, “Presidential candidates should stop misusing religion“

    • The candidates have sought the endorsements of clergy, and both McCain and Obama are now having some buyer’s remorse. But candidates cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to use clergy for political gain and then discard them when it no longer fits their agenda.

    The problem is not that these presidential candidates incorporated religion into their campaigns. The problem is that the candidates have used religion as a divisive tool, instead of a unifying power.

    Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.