What this Country Needs

I was sitting on a barstool having a beer with my friend Peter.  We had just ambled away from a guy at the bar who who was most assertively telling us that what this country needs to do is close it's borders--seal them shut to keep those foreigners from succeeding their global plot to ruin America.  We had nodded and smiled and ambled away from him.

"Close our borders," I wondered at Peter,"What does he have against Canadians?" I hope that guy finds his medication. But that got Peter and I thinking and talking. We're both politically pretty moderate, but raised in Massachusetts, making us genetically Democrats. We both wince when we think of the campaigns and candidates our party has served up in recent memory. Our candidates run on checklists of positions on myriad political issues, but the American people seem to vote for who they think is the best leader.  Our last two presidential candidates could easily have won (you could argue that one did, but certainly not easily), but their campaigns both failed to give the people a reason to vote for them

Please note: A reason not reasons.  We can't seem to lift ourselves above the finger-pointing of our ranting associate it the bar. He thought the problem with America was them.  Those people who cross our borders and do the jobs that most Americans don't want at wages we can't afford to take. Call that bigotry. Call it anti-globalization. 

But Democrats have their own version of them--rich people. We try to get everyone else to unite against them failing to realize that most of us would very much like to be them, failing to realize that prospering is an essential tenet of the American dream. We just want a fair shot at making it big and we resent those who cheat to get there. I've known people at all levels of the socio-economic demographic spectrum and the ratio of asshole to good fold tends to remain a constant.  So does ethics.  As Woodie Guthry sang: "Some will rob you with a six gun... others do it with a fountain pen (they didn't have keyboards in his day)."

If Democrats are to win, no, if Democrats want to deserve to win, they need to get above checklists and blame placing. They need to demonstrate the spirit of Jack Kennedy who kept repeating, "I say we can do bettah," in a way that people believed. We need a single, global platform--one that is simple enough for everyone to understand, powerful enough for everyone to want to follow it.

Peter asked me what I thought it was, and I was surprised at how fast I answered.

"Decency," I said.

Peter thought for a minute, then told me he thought it was pretty good. But we couldn't think of a candidate who could credibly champion in it.

We ordered another round and drank silently.

Comments

[Tim Jackson- Masiguy]

Shel,

I think it may have been Franklin or Jefferson who once said (and I paraphrase poorly); the person most qualified to lead is the least likely to run. "Decent" people seem far from interested in politics, helping people maybe, but being involved in the process is too distasteful.

We Democrats are faced with a major identity crisis at the moment. We are not the far left radicals, nor the centrist conservative liberal. We are all of those things, but we are forced by the system to select a more singular voice. That one voice is certainly doomed to offend more people than it appeals to.

We have a flawed system, but it has so far proven to be the best one we are able to come up with. Look at the rest of the world- it's really no better, no matter how much we might like to think it is. I've been plenty disenchanted over the years and thought of fleeing to some other politically appealling section of the world, but the more I see, read and hear the more I realize that we are not alone.

It is my strong desire, as a liberal, to see the Republicans run out of the capitol. However, I know it won't happen. The truth of the matter is, if you look at most of the polls and opinion surveys, the bulk of the population is somewhere in the middle. If either party finds that candidate, they should win. But then what? The power holders on either side of the aisle will fight to keep what they have.

I feel that it is just a waiting game for the next political climate change. We had Clinton for 8 years and he polarized too many people to the right. Now Bush II is polarizing too many of us over on the left. Our time is coming back again- I sincerely hope.

[Chris Keene]

I have wanted for a good part of my adult line to be able to work that Woodie Guthrie line into something that I wrote but you beat me to it.

Garry Wills wrote about "the answerable call" in his book about leadership, Certain Trumpets. The call for decency is really a plea to return to centrist positions dictated by a respect for other people's views.

The question is, how do you get two sides talking to each other once they have gotten used to finger pointing (and when they're not pointing the fingers they're sticking them in their ears and humming loudly to make sure they don't hear anything they don't agree with).

I hope our current collective disappointment with where America is in the world -a country that wants everybody to play by the rules it defines but won't play by those rules itself - opens up an opportunity for a new dialogue.

Maybe that's just an overly optimistic view from Paris, where they are burning a 1000 cars a night or so just to watch them burn as far as I can tell.

[orcmid]

Well it looks like having It Seems to Me be about how It Seems to You is a great idea. Keep it up! Thoughtful post. Thanks.

[shel]

Dennis (Orcmid)! Good to hear from you. It's been a while.

[Rich]

You made mention of Jack Kennedy. During his brief Presidency, JFK and brother Bobby authorized the wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King. Not one of their finest moments, and it was dispicable. LBJ continued the wiretapping after his boss was assassinated. So, not all of the bad things in America is the fault of the Republicans. BOTH SIDES HAD A HAND IN IT IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER.