December 16, 2006
American Dardanelles
By David Shribman
This is the quiet time in the political cycle -- a quiet period on the news front, but one full of consultations among candidates and advisers, calculations among political professionals, contemplation by men and women who, in the next few weeks, will decide whether to upend their lives in the frantic drive of a presidential campaign.
This is, to be sure, an odd quiet time, it being full of conversation and speculative talk. The talk, however, is not of Iraq, of the alternative minimum tax, or of global warming -- or of the financial markets either. It's about personal matters, and how much a man or woman is willing to be hurt, and whether a person who has chosen politics as a profession has done, or said, something that will hurt an innocent family at home. That kind of calculation kept Bill Clinton from running in 1988. It will keep some political figures from running in 2008.
Because presidential elections aren't only about the big issues that choke the history books -- issues like how and whether a country should impose its will on others, or what is the fair balance between tax revenues and tax incentives. They are also about smaller things, small things that have a way of becoming big issues and that affect a nation at its dinner table and on its living room couch as much as in its high councils and in its economy.
Just as the Dardanelles is the meeting point between Europe and Asia, presidential elections are the Dardanelles of American life, where the waters of culture and politics meet and mix. In the 1988 campaign, when Gary Hart was forced from the Democratic race because of the furor surrounding his relationship with a young model, the country considered the ancient question of private behavior and public performance. In some ways that exercise was more wrenching than the eventual election itself.
And so, as the men and women who would be president make their quiet decisions, here is a look at some of the ancillary questions -- not Iraq, not taxes, not energy -- that may well occupy our conversation between now and the 2008 election:
Is America ready for ...? You can fill in the blanks. The possible presidential candidacies of Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, a black man, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a woman, will inevitably launch thousands of conversations beginning with those very words. The nation never has had a black or female president, but in the lifetimes of many of us there was a time when it hadn't had a Catholic president either. In the last campaign, Sen. John Kerry's Catholic faith was hardly an issue at all, and in 2000 the novelty (and in some people's minds) the threat of a Jewish vice president, prompted by the nomination of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, faded fast. Perhaps before 2008 is over the Democrats will contemplate a ticket of a black AND a female -- let them fight about who leads the ticket -- and throw America a challenge for the ages.
What is "black enough"? Sen. Obama is the descendant of an African, but not of an American slave -- his father was a Kenyan -- and this question is sure to become part of the American debate. Most black Americans are the descendants of slaves. Mr. Obama has said he is a member of the "community of humanity." There may be immense discomfort over this question in the next several months.
What is the statute of limitations on guilt? Nearly two decades ago, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. left the 1988 race in the wake of cutting and pasting into his stump speeches whole sections of remarks first made by Neil Kinnock, the one-time British Labor leader, and controversy over some other academic incidents. Since then he has labored tirelessly if a bit loquaciously on foreign-policy issues. Has he earned redemption, or will the furies of past fury continue to surround him? One of the questions this raises is how forgiving the nation is. And speaking of forgiving ...
Why do Democrats treat their defeated nominees so shabbily? Bob Dole lost the 1996 presidential election but never lost the respect and affection of Republicans. Former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John F. Kerry lost the 2000 and 2004 elections, respectively, by substantially smaller margins and are reviled in the Democratic Party. Both men are potential candidates for 2008, both are more experienced than anyone else in the field, and both have seen their warnings (about climate change, about the war) bear fruit. But can the Democrats get over the fact that they didn't win the first time?
Is it so bad to be a stiff? New question, same principals. Both Mr. Gore and Mr. Kerry are not exactly Gumby on the campaign trail. But this is not exactly the easiest period in American history either. Is it possible that the seriousness and intelligence both men brought to bear on vital issues could be an advantage in 2008, even though they may not have been in 2000 and 2004?
Does religion matter? Here we go again. That question, which many Americans thought was resolved in 1960, has taken on a new life with the likelihood that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts and a Mormon, will run for president. Many of these questions surfaced in 1968, when his father briefly ran for president. It's time they disappeared.
Copyright 2006 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
