He Said, She Said

The political race is degenerating. It is increasingly a matter of he said, s/he said. Palin says she said no to the bridge to nowhere. Obama says she said yes. Biden says he is for change. McCain says he is not. The list goes on and on. Back and forth. A tennis match, but hardly as enjoyable. There is so much at stake. Whom do you believe?

I think again. For whom are we voting anyway? Or more to the point—for what? We are voting for the candidates, yes, but really, for the parties who have nominated them, fund them, back them, and cheer for them. These candidates are where they are, in the public eye and on the public stage, because two very large networks, with critical nodes throughout our country, have put them there.

Each candidate is merely the tip of an iceberg. The race is about which conglomeration of people—which cadre of experts and advisors, rising stars and time-tested sages—will have the edge in the ongoing scrum of political debates at all levels of government. We are voting for a team, or a horde, and the candidate who wins is the one who can best sell the dream—a victory vision of who we are, who we want to be, and what this party can help us be.

This is the issue, even more than the issues. We all know that when candidates get into office, they don’t always make good on their campaign promises. The reasons are many. Sometimes acts of nature or terrorism transform the terrain; sometimes the larger political machinery blocks attempts at change; sometimes advisors prevail in a different direction, and sometimes candidates tell the people what they want to hear, knowing everything will be different once they are in office. But we who listen and seek to discern hope that the candidates are making their promises with the intention of trying to carry them out. We trust them at least to try.

Which brings me back to the dream--and the bridge. It is what some Democrats still don’t seem to get. Simply opposing McCain or Palin’s claims won’t work to deflate the Republican fervor. The opposition only serves to strengthen the terms of their arguments. For example, opposing Palin’s claims about the bridge to nowhere simply strengthens the notion that what matters is reducing government, ending earmarks, and winning a reputation as a reformer.

The opposition to her position, in other words, reinforces the very standards of value that Republicans are selling. If you buy into the Democratic rebuttal of Palin, your opposition plays right into the Republican hand, for the Republican party has succeeded—despite the facts of history—to solidify an image of itself as promoting small, fiscally-responsible government. Resistance is futile.

It is a great irony: the Republicans in office, due to their failures and excesses, have stirred in us a deep desire for Republican values of restraint and conservatism. The Republicans in office have set up the Republican candidates perfectly to make the age-old criticisms of Democrats, however off base, as guaranteeing bigger government and higher taxes. The barbs stick.

I am not taking sides here. On the contrary. My point is to understand how arguments by both parties are reinforcing the ways of thinking that have failed to provide us with what we, as citizens, most want.

So what more is possible? We must displace the discussion by offering an alternative vision of the dream. We need to honor the failures and excesses of the current administration as what our movements towards small government and low taxes are themselves creating. We need to ask which party will give us the tools that we need, the new vision we need, to learn from the pain of our current situation how to move differently. We need an experience shift, so that we can find, trust, and move with the wisdom in our desire for more.

One way to begin is to note that the value we accord to small government and low taxes hinges on the idea of individual freedom and what it takes to sustain it. Yet the fact is, as Obama has stated, the kinds of individual freedoms we prize in the United States are given to us and enabled for us by a vast network of relationships. We are free because there are people in our lives who educate us, manufacture for us, protect us, heal us, and raise us. In this light, in order to ensure our freedom, we need a government then that will support individuals in creating the relationships they need to support them in unfolding what they have to give.

Such a government may or may not be big or small, in the war or out, drilling or not. It may or may not offer earmarks. But what that government will do is evaluate all such policies based on whether or not they support individuals in creating the relationships that will enable them to thrive. It will maximize the opportunities for individuals to participate consciously in the rhythms of their bodily becoming, naming and bringing into being a world they love that loves them.

In this light, what matters about Palin’s comments on the bridge is whether she is providing us with a criterion of governing that serves our vision of the democratic good. Simply abolishing earmarks is not enough. A government without them will not necessarily guarantee our freedoms. We need to know what will.

Next week: A harder case