CE Week #6: “Luke Skywalker v Darth Vader”
The Times
February 29, 2008
Sadly the presidential contest between Obama and McCain is being ridiculously caricatured
Gerard Baker
Bill and Hillary Clinton are miffed that the American media have fallen in a collective swoon for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama. You can’t blame them.
The tone and even the content of so much of the verbiage that pours from television and newspapers on the subject of the man seems to channel Rodgers and Hart, via Ella Fitzgerald:
I’m wild again, beguiled again,
A simpering, whimpering child again
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered…am I.
In fairness, though, the beguiling of the American liberal mind by this first-term senator from Illinois looks like sober contemplation compared with the ecstasy he has induced in the synapses of the rest of the world.
The Germans call him, without irony, the Black JFK. The BBC evidently thinks he’s the best thing to come out of America since, well, in their rather limited worldview, since Jimmy Carter. If you listen carefully you can hear grown men wandering the corridors of London, Brussels and Berlin, crooning as they ponder an exciting new future:
I’ll sing to him, each spring to him,
And worship the trousers that cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered …am I.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that all this excitement is going to be repaid in the devalued currency of disappointment. Mr Obama’s ego is certainly writing cheques his body can’t cash. There’s an expectation that a President Obama will change everything in America’s relations with the world. But my guess is that, for all his campaign rhetoric and for all his genuine intent, the facts on the ground won’t change much.
He will be able to do little or nothing new about Iraq. And in return for all those nice commitments he is going to make about multilateralism, global warming and international law, he will, if anything, step up America’s demand for hard European action in the fight against terrorism – especially boots on the ground in Afghanistan – something Europeans are not going to want any part of. If he is half-serious about some of the things he has said on trade, he is going to pit the US against the rest of the world in ways that might make diplomats yearn for the tranquil days of George Bush.
And yet there’s no doubt he has a view of the world that is closer to European attitudes than anything we have seen in the past seven years and it is this that keeps Obamania in full swing. The effect is heightened, of course, by the identity of the Republican nominee.
The same morally simple narrative that hails Mr Obama as Luke Skywalker, bursting out of America’s Death Star, is beginning to portray John McCain as a kind of Darth Vader. Mr McCain is already, in the media’s account, the grumpy old white man who emerged from a field of grumpy old white Republicans.
He was once regarded, even by opponents, as a man of exceptional character, a war hero with a heartbreaking story of courage, who came to Washington to reform government. But that version is steadily being replaced by a new one. This is McCain the Hypocrite. Last week’s shockingly uncorroborated and salacious hit job on him by The New York Times was a case in point. Here he was, we were told, the man railing at the special interests in Washington by day and getting into bed with them by night.
The rest of the world can fill in the blanks of the rest of this morality tale – rich, white corporate warmonger versus fresh new, African-American embodiment of hope and change.
If it’s a caricature that takes hold, it will be a great shame and a great disservice to American politics. Mr McCain has at least as large a claim to be welcomed by America’s critics as does Mr Obama.
He is deemed a foreign policy hawk. It is true that he has insisted that the war in Iraq be fought to a successful conclusion. But it’s not even clear he would have taken the US to war in the first place. If he had, you can be sure he would not have done so in such a disgracefully ill-prepared way as Mr Bush did.
For those around the world who worry about these things, Mr McCain is very Euro-friendly on a number of important issues. He is deadly serious about climate change, favouring an aggressive cap and trading system. He is sharply critical of US detainee policies and wants to close Guantanamo Bay. When he opposes torture by the US, he does so from a position of authority, having for five years been on the sharp end of torture techniques in a Vietnamese hellhole. Mr McCain has a long and almost unique track record of taking on powerful corporate interests in Washington.
What marks him out from Mr Obama is not his age or his race or his party, but that he has achieved so much of what Mr Obama merely promises to do – tackle the role of money in politics, work across the political lines and promote an image of the US in the world that is in keeping with the finest traditions of American democracy
The problem is that there’s a danger that the presidential contest between Mr Obama and Mr McCain will become not a debate but a silly battle of conflicting icons. You can be sure that, in the eyes of the rest of the world, and much of America, if Mr McCain wins it will be not because of his superior experience or the quality of his ideas, but because America is irredeemably racist.
Instead of being the welcome break with America’s recent past that he truly is, he will be painted as a continuation of it. Worse, that that, he will have won by vanquishing Hope and Peace. He will be for ever The Man Who Shot Bambi.
I know I post on McCain articles almost exclusively, but it’s a subject I know about, and I want to. So bugger.
It would be sad to think that McCain’s Presidency, should he win it, would be marred by the fact that he was elected over a black man. But at the same time, I believe that it would be a form of racism. To assume that McCain is the same as all the other grumpy-old Republicans (who mostly dislike him) would be disregarding his views and experience based on the color of his skin. So yeah, it would be.
This is the argument against affirmative action, isn’t it? The Liberal opinion is generally in favor of requiring businesses to allow opportunities for minorities to get good jobs in areas that typically favor white people. True in this situation? Yes.
Conservatives, adversely, believe that affirmative action often forces a business to hire a minority member when there is a more qualified white person available. True in this situation? Yes (at least I think so).
Affirmative action hasn’t really been a top issue in the election thus far, and technically, there shouldn’t be a reason for it to rise to the surface. But the way I see it, the two parties are just itching for ways to distinguish themselves from each other. The Democrats are looking to reclaim some of the Liberals McCain has charmed away, and McCain is just looking to prove that he’s a Republican. Not that being racist is Republican.
I should… I should stop now.
I don’t think that Luke vs. Vader is a fair simile.
I don’t think Obama is America’s young dashing hero with a cheesy smile. My true opinion of Obama is that he’s a fairly intelligent man, and that I wouldn’t mind reading more of his books. I like his writing. It’s well done. What can I say.
Also I guess, that I was in the boat of thinking McCain was just a plain old boring white candidate. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. It just proves that American voters are really looking under the skins and genders of the candidates at their minds and what they are saying. It’s true. Human instinct dosen’t allow us to go much further than skin deep without forcing ourselves into it. Why else would we assume that the country will have a cow if we elect a woman/”black” man/same old white republican?
Who can say?
This article sounds to me to be a little one sided for McCain. The author does make some good points though. “What marks him out from Mr. Obama is not his age or his race or his party, but that he has achieved so much of what Mr. Obama merely promises to do – tackle the role of money in politics, work across the political lines and promote an image of the US in the world that is in keeping with the finest traditions of American democracy.” Obama does seem to promise a lot of things and McCain’s background is promising. America will probably vote for the young Democrat Obama because he promises change, however the older more experienced McCain has proof of knowledge in dealing with similar situations that America is encountering, not to say that Obama doesn’t. If Obama becomes President his role, as Chief Legislator will probably gain a lot of support from the Democratic Congress, as opposed to McCain who is Republican. I think that America is tired of the current situations and stage that America is on and with the motivation of Obama’s words he seems likely to get the votes. Hilary seems like she had faded from the spotlight, but you never know. She could have a comeback.
This man Gerard Baker likes to make some odd “connections?” First off, Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader? Making Obama Luke and taking McCain’s side seemed a little reverse since you yourself wrote him as the “bad guy.” I wonder if that in fact is because you couldn’t refer to Obama as Darth Vader because they are both black and in America with our narrow minds would accuse you of being a racist by making some odd connection (I make the connection, I don’t accuse you of being a racist). Secondly, the Bambi reference? I’m sorry but this article was intended to be in favor of McCain but making him the bad guy and “The Man Who Shot Bambi?”
If anything it seems as if he is “talking up McCain” but really having hints of Obama support. With says like, “Bill and Hillary Clinton are miffed that the American media have fallen in a collective swoon for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama. You can’t blame them.” Or “The rest of the world can fill in the blanks of the rest of this morality tale – rich, white corporate warmonger versus fresh new, African-American embodiment of hope and change.”
I do see some very good points about McCain’s decrepit self that Barker made clear. Like McCain’s experience. Experience like this has always played out as positive and helped ones candidacy. However, the fact that he is old (and will probably die in office if elected) and Obama is the “new change” people like. Being in the televised era has changed the way people view the candidates. The fact is that people vote a lot on appearance and make up can only do so much. So this has really put McCain at a disadvantage and given Obama a boost. As they say he’s “the Black JFK” and how can a old man beat looks like that in American politics today?
-Caitlin Barschig
“What marks him out from Mr. Obama is not his age or his race or his party, but that he has achieved so much of what Mr. Obama merely promises to do – tackle the role of money in politics, work across the political lines and promote an image of the US in the world that is in keeping with the finest traditions of American democracy.” This is a perfect quote explaining the main difference between Barack Obama and John McCain… experience. It’s one of the main decisions Americans contemplate each day. Do I take John McCain and his experience, or do I take Barack Obama, who doesn’t have the experience of McCain, but promises change? I ask myself those same questions along with many other people my age. I like the idea of Barack Obama being portrayed as the next “Black JFK.” We need change in the White House and not a continuation of the same, questionable leadership and policies of the past. That baloney, my friends, had us looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none to be found. Barack Obama is the answer to all those questions we as Americans ask ourselves.
So now we’re playing the “too old” card and are looking at McCain as an old man who will not be able to live throughout his presidency. Caitlin brought up this point, that during this era of television and appearances, Obama has the look of young change, while McCain has the look of experience, although he may not be able to live through what he wants to change. As much as I think it’s true that people look at candidate’s appearance as a means of strength or weakness, I think it’s interesting to bring up Obama and McCain. Both of these candidates have something different about their appearance that is new to the presidential race. Obama is the first black man to run for president and McCain is 72, one of the oldest men running for president. So looking at both of these different factors of appearance that could affect people’s votes, I don’t think there’s one candidate that you can point fingers at and say “tough luck, but that will most likely be a disadvantage to your election.” I think at this point, either of these candidates can have this to worry about. Voters could not vote for Obama because they are not ready for a black president, but they could also not vote for McCain because they think that he is too old and won’t be able to live through his presidency.
I disagree with how the article was “one sided for McCain.” This article compared McCain and Obama. Gerard Baker told us what other countries think of Obama and how he is young, but doesn’t really have experience. McCain, on the other hand is the candidate with experience, but is older and is not liked as much. I think that Baker tried to compare the candidates as fairly as he could, but as of now McCain has more experience and has done more. Obama, I think has succeeded so far based on the fact that he is charismatic and young. Rather than having experience and already making some sort of a change, he is very believable in saying that he will make change for America. McCain has already made change and “has achieved so much of what Mr. Obama merely promises to do- tackle the role of money in politics, work across the political lines and promote an image of the US in the world that is in keeping with the finest traditions of American democracy.” It is very true that Obama isn’t as experience and doesn’t have as great of a track record as McCain, so Baker compared the candidates on things that he could-Experience and the likability factor.