Not Infrastructure

Try as I might I find myself unable to ignore the Presidential election campaigns now running at full speed. After seven plus years of the worst President in my lifetime (stretching back to Roosevelt), there is a feeling that this particular election is very important.

As a consequence of the younger Bush's administration and the knee jerk Republican Party, the prestige of the United States is at a low ebb, our economy is in serious jeopardy, our multiplying enemies are emboldened, and our people are fixated on the personal foibles of witless celebrities. This last is important because many many of our people don't care about the rest of the world, think they'll win the lottery soon, and believe we can and should smash our enemies, widely viewed as the females and non-whites of the world, any time. Meanwhile they're off to Wal-Mart or checking out the latest with Brittany.

Right now the presumptive Republican candidate is Senator John McCain of Arizona who is running on the notion that he was one of the few Republicans who occasionally opposed Bush and that he was a Prisoner of War for some five or six years during the Viet Nam war, which we are encouraged to think noble of him. In fact he is a conventional Republican, very closely attuned to the corporate agenda including lower taxes, particularly for the well-off and the corporations, strong doses of imperialism, free trade when it suits his corporate friends' needs, and reduction of government services so government policing can be increased. He will pay lip service to the so-called conservative social agenda which means opposition to any significant change in the patriarchal status quo. One senses that he's pretty indifferent to the latter, however.

McCain can be counted on to appoint judges who are not interested in protecting individual rights, to cut taxes for the well-off, and, by the way, to continue and expand our imperial incursions into the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere. I believe he will run on pretty much the Bush agenda but promise competent management of it. He will likely jettison some of its more ludicrous aspects such as the environmental degradation and stifling of scientific inquiry the Bushies are so fatuously proud of. But he will run against Bush, not his program.

The Democrats on the other hand have reached an interesting point in their history and, I would suggest, will likely die as a national party if they don't win this one. First off, their nominee will almost certainly be either a woman or a black man, two categories of individuals thought impossible to elect a short generation ago. Both will start off with a sizable number of people who will vote against them strictly on the basis of their gender or racial identity. That's a good reason to think they'll lose in November right there.

But the two are engaged in an extremely close chase to the nomination, closest since Kennedy/Johnson in 1960, that feature what we might call the old party and, just maybe, the new. The old is represented by Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, the woman. Her claim to fame is being the wife of Bill Clinton, the President immediately prior to Bush the younger. She has also been in the Senate since 2000 where she has pretty much established herself as a separate entity from her husband. Even so, if elected she will probably be a lot like Bill, triangulating on key issues, moving cautiously into new initiatives. She will appoint safe judges and play the imperialism cautiously. Corporations do not fear her.

The new is represented by Seator Barack Obama of Illinois. His father was a black African, his mother a white from Kansas. He has established himself as a charismatic speaker during a meteoric career which includes a lot of high achievement both inside and outside of politics. How he would govern is not clearly predictable due to limited experience in Washington. His campaign has been long on ideals and short on particulars. He has promised an end to divisiveness and the old class warfare rhetoric. His followers (full disclosure - he's my choice) are very enthusiastic over his intelligence and charisma. He has built a staff that has proven quite capable.

Who ends up with the Democratic nomination is truly anyone's guess at this point. It is entirely possible that the decision will not be made until the convention, so a compromise or brokered candidate is also possible, although unlikely. It's odd because you'd think the Republicans would be in total disarray given the Bush disaster, but they're looking good right now. So the question becomes, will we miss the national Democratic party? And can we survive four more years of a Republican President?