In a recent post, Donklephant’s Alan Stewart Carl’s correctly takes down the McCain campaign for their latest ad which blames Senator Obama for high gas prices. I don’t have a problem with going after McCain for an ad that was grossly unfair. What piqued my interest was his last point:
Increasing domestic drilling is definitely an issue we need to debate and McCain used to be a guy you could trust to talk about such matters seriously. Now he sounds like any other politician looking for an advantage rather than looking out for the nation’s interests.Emphasis mine.
Commentators have lobbed the same thing whenever Obama has stepped away from his self-assertion as an agent of change.
Maybe I’ve been around enough to become cynical, but I sometimes wish that the public would just accept that the people running for public office are politicians and not would-be messiahs. And I also wish politicians would stop fashioning themselves as “little Christs” that claim to bring this nation salvation.
There are those who wanted to see McCain as the “straight talker,” the “maverick” that would shake up the establishment and bring real change. Others want to see Obama as the person who will bring a “new politics.”
Centrists especially want people who seem to be above the rough and tumble of politics and who can magically bring change to our world. We want them to be selfless people who don’t think of trying to win, but want to do things for the greater good.
This is all nice, but it is far from realistic. The thing is, even though they are both different kinds of politicians, they are politicians and anyone running for office wants to win. Yes, the do have higher goals of helping the greater good, but let’s face it: the reason they are putting themselves through this rat race called campaigning is because they want to win all the marbles and because of this, politicians will sometimes throw and elbow or two.
I’m not saying that what McCain did in his commercial was okay, I’m just saying he did that because he does want to gain some advantage, just like Obama does when he claims McCain wants a 100 years of war, even though that was not what McCain meant.
In the end, we aren’t electing a god, but a fallible human. For the most part, we have two men that want to do what’s best for this nation. But politics isn’t a debating society, it’s a rough sport.
The other part of Alan’s statement is that we desire someone who will tells us the truth and not demonize. While I agree, I tend to think that we don’t really want to hear the truth. We want a good answer, not the truth.
Take high gas prices. Yes, it is easy for McCain to blame Obama and encourage offshore drilling. But if he said what was the truth, that Americans need to conserve more, akin to President Carter’s energy speech of 30 years ago, how do you think Americans would react? How did it work for Carter? Not very well, if I remember.
Ten years ago, my current state of Minnesota elected Jesse Ventura as its governor. We wanted someone who was above the two party system and in the end, what we got was a disaster. Ventura wasn’t all bad, but he didn’t realize that politics was a rough-and-tumble game and, in the end, the public was disenchanted and Ventura, upset at the press, left the political scene.
At the end of the day, McCain and Obama are two politicians. They will do what it takes to win. But in the end, I am not looking for someone who is going to ride in on a white horse and save the day, I am looking at who will best lead this country. Which of these two fallible beings should be the President of the United States.
So in the end, I’m not expecting miracles from these two. I want to know what their policies are and vote accordingly. It’s high time for politicians and the public to get off their high horses of expectations.