|
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
America elects the better
man--at long last!
of TheColumnists.com
I really didn’t
believe he could be elected as our head honcho, even though he
possessed all the obvious trappings of a winner:
* He exhibited a keen intellect.
* He had written a best-selling book.
* He possessed an exemplary education (Harvard).
* He generated enough charisma to give any red state the blues.
* He surrounded himself with advisers as smart or even brighter than he.
* And he boasted so much political savvy that it belied his relatively young age.
Young, still in his 40s, he would not become the youngest president ever. (That honor goes to Teddy Roosevelt.) Athletic and handsome with a charming wife and two beautiful children, he proved an indefatigable trouper on the stump and mesmerized audiences--particularly young people--with his eloquent message of hope for the future.
Despite the fact that he was carrying some religious baggage, he upset a more experienced U.S. Senator to win the Democratic Party’s nomination and then defeated an experienced Republican to win the presidency.
I am one of those young people who voted for him. Two months out of the Army, attending college and working part-time at my local newspaper--The Santa Cruz, Calif., Sentinel--I was, at age 24, casting a ballot for president for the first time.
That was 48 years ago--we had to be 21 to vote then and I was only 20 during the 1956 election year--and the Democratic Party candidate I voted for was Massachusetts Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was, of all things, a Roman Catholic. Incredulous and ludicrous as it may seem today, fearmongers erupted with a raucous hue and cry across America about his religious affiliation:
Would JFK’s first allegiance be to the American people or to the Pope?
Not since 1960 have I been so enthusiastic about and inspired by a presidential nominee as I have been this past year by now President-elect Barack Obama. I didn’t vote for the Illinois Senator because he was African American, just as I didn’t vote for JFK because he was Catholic. I voted for them because each, in my opinion, was the best candidate for the job at the time.
Frankly, I wasn’t totally unhappy this year with GOP candidate John McCain--at first. If we were to elect a Republican again, he was the only one I, and maybe a lot of other more-to-the-center Democrats, could feel comfortable with. That comfort zone disappeared presto when the Arizona Senator picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
Like McCain, I’m 72 years old and am quite aware that the days are dwindling down to a precious few. In no way could any thinking person, regardless of political persuasion, picture Palin just one heartbeat away from the Oval Office.
Whatever claims McCain had to his self-proclaimed moniker as a maverick, they dissipated faster than Republican voters would in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Nov. 4--once his vice presidential choice started speaking out.
Obviously, McCain selected her to bolster his religious-right base and to attempt to pick off some disappointed Democratic women who were sore that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wasn't their party’s nominee.
And that was the difference in smarts between the two parties’ candidates: Obama picked Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden to be an added asset in running the nation’s highest office. McCain picked Palin solely to shore up his presidential campaign. It didn’t work.
I think it’s time to add a new word to Webster’s, the reflexive verb “to palin oneself.” First definition: “to be hoist by one’s own petard.” Second definition: “to shoot oneself in the foot.“
My new word is short and to the point and certainly won't require anyone to thumb through the dictionary to find out what a petard is. “To palin oneself,” on the other hand, will be understood immediately by everyone, and future presidential nominees hunting for a qualified running mate will be more astute in the vetting process so they won‘t “palin” themselves like McCain did in 2008.
I guess we centrist Democrats are an unusual breed. Until talking a few days ago to my sister, Marcia, I hadn’t realized just how unusual it was to vote for the best person, regardless of party. Marcia, her husband and their son and daughter, all are Democrats like my wife and me and our son and daughter, although my sister and I have both voted for Republicans a couple of times.
She so informed one of her neighbors, a staunch Republican, that she occasionally in the past had voted for a Republican presidential candidate.
“You Democrats,” the neighbor chastised, “will do things like that.”
Yes, we will! But better the better person in the White House so we never again must endure eight years--or even four years--similar to what we’ve suffered since January, 2001.
In a true democracy, I learned in a college political science class some 50-plus years ago, the majority in power is obligated to protect the rights of the minority. The current administration seems to have never learned that lesson.
I remember in 1975 when syndicated newspaper columnist Jack Anderson was asking his readers to come up with a slogan that would best epitomize the United States as we prepared for our bicentennial in 1976. One reader’s contribution has stuck in my memory ever since:
“We’re not perfect, but we haven’t stopped yet.”
On Nov. 4, 2008, we moved one step closer to perfection.
©2008 by Len Klempnauer. This column first posted Nov. 10, 2008.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Len Klempnauer. To send an email,
click here and don't forget to mention Len's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|