Hell yeah!

I didn’t want to play Jinxy Jane yesterday, but I’m glad that I can now, without reservation, say that Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States! I was asked at the party I attended last night, with all possible apologies and courtesy for the question, what Obama’s win meant to me, a black woman. And I have to say, I’m not sure whether I am approaching this from a place of racial pride. I have a lot of things going on right now. For the first time, the presidential candidate who I voted for won. I would have been happy if the new president-to-be could simply speak English, and instead we got somebody who is a captivating speaker, capable of raising people to almost religious levels of fervor and devotion (I think that sometimes it’s overdone, but it probably isn’t his fault that he is so charismatic). Plus, it’s exciting to know that the country will be run by a young guy, one who is certainly at a very different place in his life than I am, but who hasn’t been alive in eight different decades.

I find it moving to watch really committed Obama fans from all walks of life expressing such jubilation at his win. Walking back to Port Authority last night from Murray Hill, I saw so many people who were practically vibrating with happiness. On 5th Avenue, in front of the expensive stores, people spontaneously raised cries of “Obama” and “Wooooo!” People were so happy, and even the cops were smiling! I didn’t see one place where there was even a hint of trouble or unease. Everybody was too joyful to cause any sort of problem. I watched white people, young and old, cry tears of joy over the election of a black president. I looked at Obama and thought, “In a little over three decades, that could be my nephew.” I don’t believe that this proves that anybody in American can be anything, but I believe it moves us closer to that point than we have ever before been.

The one where everybody lies

I was talking last night to a good friend who lives in Virginia, when she brought up the election. I know that she’s usually pretty indifferent to politics and her husband are generally skews right, so I wouldn’t have introduced the subject at all. But once she asked me who I was voting for (Obama) and whether I vote in every election or just presidential (all of them, baby), I felt comfortable asking her the same. She said that she was as yet undecided, which was kind of monumental for her. Usually she just votes for whoever her husband supports, so the fact that she has not definitively decided to do so made me realize that she was actually kind of invested in this election. So I told her the specific reasons for my choice, and phrased it in such as way as to say why I was not voting for John McCain, rather than why I was voting for Obama. I think that enough people can enumerate all the rah rah explanations for their choice of Obama, and I didn’t want to appear too partisan. So I stuck with the policies of McCain that I don’t like, such as his support for continuing Guantanamo Bay, his tax plan, his reversal of his initial stance against torture, his health care plan (this is a big one, as she is in the health care field), and his pick of a running mate.

Surprisingly, my friend wasn’t too big on Palin, either. I somehow thought she might be into her, but thankfully this isn’t the case. I said that Palin seemed to be unable to separate her personal religious beliefs from other peoples’ rights, and that I did not want my life to be governed according to Palin’s understanding of Christianity. My friend, whose husband is religious but is herself actually atheist/agnostic, seemed to understand where I was coming from with this one, and furthermore brought up Troopergate. I don’t think that Palin did herself any favors with that one. We agreed that Palin does not seem to have the kind of temperament that one would want in a (vice)president, and that John McCain, with his frequent expressions of intense anger doesn’t either.

Then we finally got to the part of our conversation that, to me, illustrates why we are such good friends: we are in complete agreement that politicians are pretty much lacking in something (integrity, decency, honesty, some essential human thing), and that there’s probably something wrong with you if you want to be one. Probably. I do know a couple of people who have expressed an interest in entering local politics, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it gave me pause and made me reevaluate my opinions of them. You pretty much have to sell your soul to participate in American politics.

The thing that we all have to remember is that politicians will say anything. It’s better now that we have youtube and cell phone cameras and whatnot, because they can’t just go around saying whatever they want without fear of being held accountable, but still… As a politician, you learn that not only will you compromise, but you will do so in key situations and at some point go back on your word. You are a professional liar, hand-shaker, and meeting-attender. Why would anybody sign up for this? Because there’s something fundamentally wrong with them, that’s why. I know that we need politicians and, anyway, politics are a great way to funnel all the self-promoters into a job that 1) gives them the recognition they crave and 2) allow us to identify them on sight and avoid them, 3) sometimes results in good things happening for the rest of us.

I’m really into politics because I care what happens in this world, and I want to feel like I have a say in the direction of my life, but I know that this is a flawed, flawed system. Maybe I should run for office and fix it.

Kidding.

Wait, really?

I haven’t spoken about the Biden – Palin debate that took place the other night, which is a rather glaring omission. This was likely the most-watched political event EVER, and it definitely bears some consideration. I will say this: it probably wasn’t the debate that most people were expecting to see. It wasn’t a train wreck. Sarah Palin’s performance was neither crash-and-burn bad, nor did it reach the levels expected by those who believed that she was lulling Biden into complacency and setting him up for a massive trouncing. This actually bears repeating: it wasn’t a train wreck, but there were signs of a less-than-stellar performance by Palin. She pretty much immediately pitted herself against Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill, so that if and when she did not fully answer their questions, it would appear to be intentional and not due to ignorance. She stuck like glue to her talking points, but did it in such an obvious way (repeating the same MAVERICK! phrases ELITE! a lot WASHINGTON INSIDER!) that she did not come across so much prepared to debate as she did rehearsed to perform.  Biden did a good job of answering the questions put to him without looking like a bully, which is impressive, since he came across that way a bit when he was responding to Obama during the Democratic candidate debate. On the whole, I doubt that either candidate influenced anybody who wasn’t already inclined to be on his or her side. A transcript of the debate can be found here.

Today, I ran across this funny chart a couple of times, and thought I’d share it:

If you’d like to read more from the man who created this flow chart, click here.

Here they go again

In advance of tomorrow’s vice presidential debate, Gwen Ifill, the moderator, is being attacked for a book that she wrote called Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. This book is being published in 2009, and is not available to be read, yet some people have exercised their powers of precognition to determine that she is somehow biased in favor of the Obama-Biden ticket, and cannot possibly be fair. Now, to be honest, it’s not impossible to believe that personal biases or loyalties can influence how one moderates a debate; just ask George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson. I don’t think that anybody who was paying attention has forgotten how awful they were when they moderated a debate between the Democratic candidates earlier this year. They asked stupid questions, soft-balled Clinton (at least Stephanopoulos did), and took almost an hour to get to substantive questions regarding Iraq, Iran, and other issues meaningful to voters.

So, it’s not impossible to believe that a debate moderator can be too much for one side or the other. But it seems insulting to insinuate that, because she is a known supporter of Democratic politics, Gwen Ifill won’t be able to attain the level of fairness and bipartisanship required of a good moderator. Maybe the questions about Ifill are warranted and come from people who are genuinely concerned about witnessing a fair debate. But maybe not.

Let’s give a moment of though to what else could possible be fueling these speculations about Ifill’s fitness as moderator. Could it be fear? A lot of the furor over this issue has been raised by Republicans and others on the right. Perhaps concern about Sarah Palin’s prospects in a debate has also contributed to questions about Ifill’s commitment to a fair debate. Let’s face it: during her interview with Katie Couric, Vice Presidential nominee Palin did not shine. In one of the most difficult exchanges to watch, she demonstrated that she did not understand the causes of the current economic collapse, and could therefore offer no cogent or even coherent answer regarding what the country’s next steps should be. Maybe it was nerves, or maybe the slowing dawning realization that she’s totally unfit for the job she’s in the running for, but Governor Palin’s miserable performance definitely did not win over anybody who wasn’t already aligned with her.

Actually, pretty much every televised appearance by Sarah Palin that has followed her energizing, successful, nasty, and entirely scripted coming out party at the Republican National Convention, has shown her to be completely out of her depth. Like the current president, she has shown herself not to be a convincing, confident extemporaneous speaker. Like him, she also seems to have trouble grasping the details and nuances of issues of great national and global import.

Unless her peformances during the month of September were part of a carefully-orchestrated Machiavellian strategy to sharply lower expectations and lull Joe Biden into a false sense of security, she is in big trouble tomorrow. And what better way to negate unflattering day-after assessments in the press than by deflecting attention onto the moderator, before the debate even begins! If Ifill asks tough questions that Palin cannot answer intelligently, then this will be used as proof of Ifill’s supposed biases, and she will be called a bully. If the bruhaha makes Ifill ask easier questions that Palin can answer in a way that makes her seem more aware than she has in any of her recent appearances, then the right will be able to say, “Look! We told you that she know what she was talking about.”

I would love to be excited to see a woman excel on a national stage at such a high level in politics, but nothing I’ve seen so far has convinced me that Sarah Palin is going to be that woman.