In his classic presentation of the "reinforcing" idea, ("On Choosing A Vice-President"). Chris wrote:
Writing about potential Vice-Presidential selections is one of the more absurd realms of political speculation. Nonetheless, I wanted to present an idea that I hope will take Democratic approaches to selecting Vice-Presidents in a different direction than we have seen in most recent elections. Specifically, rather than choosing a running mate to create balance on a ticket for the purpose of shoring up perceived weakness in the Presidential nominee, it would be best to choose a running mate whose qualities reinforce the rationale behind the candidacy of the person at the top of the ticket.
Whatever people here may think of the Clinton Presidency, I think that Clinton's selection of Al Gore was the best running mate choice a nominee from either party has made in decades. Clinton ran on a dual platform of change, arguing that the country needed a shift away from Republicans and an older generation, and that the Democratic Party needed to shift away from traditional liberalism. He was a young Democrat proposing sweeping health care reform and a shift away from a Cold War national security budget, but he was also a DLC southerner who sought to make the party more "business friendly." Further, he won the nomination in 1992 largely on the strength of southern support on Super Tuesday and an electability argument that he could do the same in the general election. So, instead of "balancing" the ticket to compensate for his flaws by, say, selecting a member of the old, northern, liberal establishment as his running mate, he picked another young, white, DLC southerner who had run a virtually identical campaign four years earlier. Selecting Al Gore reinforced the message at the center of Clinton's campaign, rather than selecting someone who would balance and compensate for the qualities that Clinton lacked.
My proposition here is that there actually were differences between the two men, but they were relatively very minor compared to what they shared. This was immediately obvious to anyone in politics at the time, because of how it was commonly contextualized. This was a fairly simple matter revolving around cutlural identity and geographical politics.
Similarly, I would argue, the differences between Obama and Edwards are also relatively very minor compared to what they share--but this is not immediately obvious to anyone in politics today. Again, the reason for this is because of how our politics is contextualized, but it's due to a more complicated matter of contextualization. It's because our politics is so cramped, so distorted, so lacking in vision, so trapped in the failures of the past, and so out of touch with the root sources of past successes. This is essentially the same critique that the two men have shared, but they have made their critiques using different terms, different arguments, different examples, and different angles of attack.
Yet, dig down deep enough and both are saying something very similar: Our politics is deeply broken, and betrays the promise of what America should be. The things used to divide us need to be overcome and set aside, because we have important work to do together.
Thus, I would argue, the process of campaigning and showing how similar they are would implicitly serve to recontextualize our politics, so that we come to take a new context for granted in place of the old. And that context is the one that I just described above--the context that Obama and Edwards both share. In the process of doing this, the perceived weaknesses of both will significantly diminish--though of coruse Obama's perceived weaknesses are the most important.
Take, for example the sense that Obama is detached from and lacks sympathy for white working class voters, as epoitomized by his "bitter" remarks/ The problem, for Obama, was not what he said, but rather where he said it--a San Francisco fundraiser--and the detached manner in which he said it.
Pair this perceived weakness with the chief knock against Edwards this time around from the non-terminally trivial part of the media: He's just so angry! What happened to the optimistic John Edwards that we used to know? This is, in effect the explanation that the Des Moines Register gave in not endorsing Edwards this year, while they did endorse him in 2004. Of course the answer the the Des Moines Register's question is quite simple: What happened to Edwards was four more years of the Bush/Cheney Regime. What happened was not just four more years of Iraq. What happened was also Terri Schiavo, Cindy Sheehan, Katrina, the NSL and US Attorney scandals, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and much, much more. Seriously.
What happened to John Edwards was simply that he was paying attention. And his intense passion is evidence of that.
Thus, Obama's detachment in speaking of working class bitterness is reflected in John Edwards passion in articulating that very same bitterness. Their fundamnetal attitudes about the bitterness are quite similar--they see that bitterness as quite well justified. They see it as reflecting a legitimate grievance--and not just the grievance of a special interest, or a specific subgroup of Americans. No, they see it as but one specific expression of a growing universal awareness of a universal failure.
It is realatively easy to caricature and mischaracterize each of these men individually. But you bring them together, and place them in dialogue with one another--or simply let them sing a duet about how they see the world,--and suddenly it is much, much harder to drown out the truth of what they are saying with the out-of-context-gotcha-soundbite routine.
This is just one example--albeit a very significant one. But the principle has a much, much wider application. Obama and Edwards are like two talented singers, each of which has remarkable gifts, remarkable strengths, but you put them together, and you discover they have hidden gifts, hidden strengths you never realized were there before, because they draw those hidden strengths out of one another.
Of course, there is no way for me to prove this analogy. We can only know by hearing them sing together. But I think that the potential is very clearly there, for anyone who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and hopes to nurture for a brand new day in our nation's history.
[Update: Circa 3:40 PST] I've got to go to work for an editorial meeting, so I'll be out of the conversation for about an hour and a half to two hours, with just a quick peek from work where the computers are dicey. So those of you who grok my srgument, I'd appreciate it if you could take up some slack for me. |
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