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Americans just can't get enough of the candidates
Endy M. Bayuni , The Jakarta Post , Washington | Wed, 10/15/2008 10:39 AM | Opinion
How well do you know your presidential candidates?
When it comes to the U.S. election, despite more than two years of intensive campaigning, the long political rallies and the public debates that the two finalists have gone through, the answer is Americans can never get enough.
You would have thought that after more than two years of constant exposure in the news, and after going through the arduous primaries and the national convention, John McCain and Barack Obama would be well enough known that Americans could easily make an informed democratic choice on Nov. 4.
Au contraire -- with just less than three weeks before Election Day, the American media and political pundits are moving into top gear scrutinizing and analyzing the candidates, from their political visions, election promises, track records, policies, policy details, family members, personal backgrounds (especially if they have skeletons to hide), right down to their temperament, body language and even choice of clothes.
What else is there to know about McCain and Obama?
Plenty, apparently.
Turn to CNN, Fox News or CNBC any time of day and you will find the political pundits still going at it.
Those who are going through the voting records of the candidates in the Senate to look for any sign of inconsistency have found plenty to talk about. The candidates, or their spokespersons, are being tasked with explaining these inconsistencies.
With the U.S. economy heading for a tough recession, the candidates are being asked how they would respond. They had better watch what they say because one of them will have to translate his answer into real policy come January when he moves to the White House.
The candidates can no longer expect to get away with answering questions in general terms. They have to speak as if they were already the president, giving specific details on policies such as healthcare, the war in Iraq, Iran and Israel, energy and now, probably the real election clincher, the economy.
CNN runs a program to put to the "truth-meter" all claims candidates make about their opponent, and has found both sides guilty of misrepresentation, misleading statements or outright lies.
As the campaign turns more negative, such scrutiny is imperative to prevent a candidate from winning the election solely on the basis of the flaws, real or perceived, of the other.
In normal conditions, it does not take much to instill fears among American voters about Obama's credibility as their next president by playing the race card (although as one American journalist pointed out, he is as white as he is black), and by highlighting that his middle name is Hussein, taken from his Muslim Kenyan father.
Bush got reelected in 2004 partly by playing into Americans' fear of Islam and terrorism, but the American media has since matured and that kind of negative campaign and fearmongering alone won't be enough to win elections.
Nothing that McCain and Obama did or does gets past the media scrutiny.
Kudos to the American media for outwitting the spin doctors who played such a prominent role in determining the election outcomes in the past. The 2008 election will likely be won on the basis of the thorough information American voters have about their candidates.
The spin doctors are still at work obviously, but their role is now more limited.
In the Obama camp, they have kept information about the four years he spent in predominantly Muslim Indonesia as a young child out of the campaign altogether, not only because it's irrelevant, but more because it's unhelpful to his election chances.
In his acceptance speech at the Democrat convention, Obama talked about his maternal grandmother, who struggled to make ends meet in her home state in Kansas. Try narrating the story of his mother, a social activist who spent most of her time in Indonesia -- most Americans would be at a loss putting Indonesia on the map in the first place. Obama even spared Americans his story of growing up in Hawaii, a state too exotic for most Americans to see it as part of the United States proper.
Still, at the end of the day, the rest of the world will be comforted to know that Americans will be making the right choice on Nov. 4 because they will know enough to decide which candidate is the better man for the job.
Once, an American journalist visiting Indonesia said how lucky Indonesians are because we get to elect our president directly, while Americans still vote through an electoral college.
To this, I responded that I'd rather have the American system because they get to take part in the nomination of the candidate in a bottom-up process through the primaries.
With presidential elections in Indonesia scheduled for June, we still have no idea who will be nominated, although we know more than 10 people want that top job. But they don't have to explain themselves until close to election time.
Come election time, we are essentially "buying a cat in the sack", not knowing as well as Americans do what we are electing ourselves into.
If we had had the luxury of scrutinizing the candidates in 2004, we would have learned about some of the character flaws of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, including his indecisiveness, earlier.
The danger for Indonesia, if we apply the American model of scrutinizing the candidates thoroughly through primaries, is that we may end up with no candidates running for president because all have flaws that won't pass the scrutiny test.
Just think: Out of 240 million people, not even a single decent candidate.
Should Americans ditch Obama for some reason, I am sure many Indonesians would be glad to take him as our president. After all, we know more about him than we can expect to know about the Indonesian candidates.
Rudyanto (not verified) — Thu, 10/23/2008 - 9:24am
Capitalism and feudalism
As we can observe the debates between those two US presidential candidates recently, we learn about the visions and, characters and temperaments of the two candidates. In my opinion, Indonesia should follow suit since constituents need to be properly addressed and in turn they should provide strategic solutions and concrete problem solving action for their holistic well beings. As in the US what those two candidates present can be summed as follows Obama’s economic plan vs McCain’s economic plan is a clear case of capitalism vs feudalism.
As quoted from Char’s blog, Florida Women for Obama - Campaign for Change
Capitalism means providing incentive to the most people possible by creating economic opportunity and encouraging individual effort. Obama is not proposing handouts. He is proposing a more equitable system of providing more people the opportunity to get ahead. He is trying to rebuild the middle class.
The last 8 years of Bush, and McCain’s proposed economic plan going forward, to me represent a return to “feudalism”; that is, a small upper class that has economic control of the large masses of people, who are forced to serve them. Bush’s policies and McCain’s plans have not and will not promote a strong capitalist society. They have and will continue to destroy the middle class and promote a feudalistic society.
The middle class is the backbone of a strong capitalist economy. The worst thing that Bush and the Republicans have done in the last 8 years is to destroy our country’s middle class. It’s unbelievable to me that they have succeeded in doing this in so short a time, and that they do not admit that our current economic crisis is a direct result of their policies. If we as a nation do not rebuild the middle class, we will not progress. We will go backwards in every way.
We cannot afford any more of the Bush/Palin/McCain version of “spreading the wealth” or “re-distributing the wealth”, which is to take from the middle class and givie to the wealthy few. Greed is part of human nature. “Trickle down” does not work for the same reason that communism does not work. People in general are not motivated to work for the common good. They need individual incentive. We must have an economic system that encourages individual effort by the most people possible. We cannot expect to provide incentive to a small few so that they will provide jobs and income to the masses. We have seen that the wealthy would rather spend their profits on themselves than create jobs in the USA.
Do not be fooled by the Bush/Palin/McCain ticket into believing that our nation will return to a strong economy under their economic plan. Under them, we will continue our long slide into feudalism, where the many will be serving the few. Instead, we must return to our roots as a strong capitalist society, with a strong middle class, where there are incentives for the many to rise and build our economy once again.
There are many opportunities in our changing world, with climate crisis and energy issues to solve. We must have the most people possible working on these things, if we are to solve them. We cannot afford to enrich the few, who do not care about tomorrow but only about their own bank accounts and possessions, and are only willing to give the masses a low-paying service job polishing their yachts. Let’s let the middle class take back control of our economy and see a new generation of entrepreneurs rise.