Johnny Cash: Was it the gospel, or the way I sing it?
Sam Phillips: Both.
Johnny Cash: What’s wrong with the way I sing it?
Sam Phillips: I don’t believe you.
- Sun Records producer Sam Phillips to Johnny Cash on his gospel singing from the movie “Walk the Line.”
That certainly was a super Tuesday. The day proved anticlimactic for me in one sense, because I voted early. My horse was already out of this race by the time I punched my e-ballot on Jan. 31. I wanted to back John Edwards, but he quit the race the day before I voted. Edwards’ somewhat angry, populist message resonated with me. I think the most honest thing I can say about why I supported his candidacy is that I believed him when he spoke.
Edwards was never regarded as either the polished orator Barack Obama is, or the campaigning machine Hillary Clinton is. In any election year in which a woman and a black man weren’t running for president, Edwards probably would have done better than he did, but it’s hard this year to run as a campaign for change as a white southern male candidate.
For reasons that are two numerous to count, but that include the Iraq war mess and the fact that all the candidates on the Republican side are either religious zealots of one denomination or another or war-pushing sellouts, I’m voting Democratic in November. That means I’m left to choose between Clinton and Obama. I haven’t made up my mind yet. My problem is I don’t believe either one of them, not right now, not in the way I need to in order to give one of them my vote. Hillary’s message seems to be “I’m not George Bush” and Obama’s message seems to be “I’m not George Bush OR a Clinton. (Oh, and by the way, I didn’t vote for the war.)”
I know that a lot of Democrats wet their pants every time Obama speaks, but I have not found him to be a convincing, or a even particularly stirring, orator. It’s a personal thing, but something about his tone, or his mannerisms … something is conveying to me that he’s just reading good speeches; he doesn’t believe them. This is heresy among Democrats, who have anointed Obama the second coming of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., all rolled into one person. I listen to him speak and I hear generalities and good one-liners. I don’t get goosebumps.
Clinton gives me the same feeling: like every word has been measured and carefully placed to elicit a particular reaction. She’s overly packaged. I see her and I think she looks like someone who would prefer they just let her into the White House so she can get to work; she already knows the issues, she knows what she’s going to do and so why bother with all this handshaking and “listening” when she already has all the answers. I sort of expect that from her, though, and it’s good to exude that kind of confidence. Unlike what Mike Huckabee tells me, I don’t want my president to be like the people I work with, like an everyday guy (or gal). I want my president to be the smartest fucking person in whatever room he or she happens to be in, I want to be intimidated in his or her presence, I want gravitas. The folksy, “look-at-me-I’m-functionally-illiterate-just-like-you” approach hasn’t worked so well the past seven years.
I get that sense from Obama and Clinton. But like I said, I just want someone I can listen to and believe. Obama talks about everyday folks funding his campaign, but he’s also taking money from lobbyists and holding giant fundraisers for the Democratic elite. He talks about a “new kind of politics,” but he’s endorsed Machine candidates like Richard Daley and that nitwit Todd Stroger (who have also endorsed him). He’s the same politics in a new, more exciting wrapper, it seems to me.
Hillary is just old school to the core. There ain’t nothing new there, and she’s not pretending to be new. She’s a known quantity; we know what we’re getting with her and she knows that. She’s just betting that a) we know she’s better than what we’ve gotten the past seven years, or stand to get the next four with one of the Republican candidates, and b) we prefer the devil we know.
I’m hopeful that sometime before the convention, one or the other of ‘em will throw the switch and start speaking with real conviction. I don’t want platitudes, clichés and soundbites; I want honest, from-the-gut, passion.
I don’t want to have to hold my nose when I cast my vote in November. Is that too much to ask?
The Indignant Citizen
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