Missing Paul Wellstone and Why Hillary and Barak Don’t Get It
The current field of candidates has me so depressed. I must admit that the prospect of a woman or an African-American is compelling, so much so that the first presidential candidate that I ever supported was Shirley Chisolm, who would have killed those two birds with one stone. The problem is that, unlike Shirley Chisolm, I don’t really admire Clinton or Obama (okay, I hate Clinton and am uninspired by Obama).
Rolling Stone declared that John Edwards is the real liberal in the crowd, but the $400 haircut and 28,000 square foot house make running as a populist underdog and uphill battle? Who cares about that stuff? Well, the house and the haricut have made bigger headlines than anything else Edwards has done in his entire campaign. At least, though, Edwards says he made a mistake in voting to authorize the war in Iraq and that he failed to do due diligence in looking at the justifications for war. I could conceivably vote for him.
Hillary’s appeal utterly escapes me except for the “make history and put a woman in the White House” aspect. Personally, I pledge never to vote for Hillary until she changes her position on her vote to give the president authority to use force in Iraq. She says the president misled the American people. That’s just a pure bullshit excuse. He didn’t mislead me. I never believed it nor did most of my friends. For that matter, neither did my father, a career military pilot who, during the Cuban Missle Crisis, was sitting on the tarmack, engines running, nuclear warheads in the underbelly of his fighter interceptor, ready to take to the air and drop his payload wherever he was told. Even he wouldn’t have voted to approve the use of force based on what we knew at the time. Let’s forget all that, though.
Even more fundamentally problematic is that Hillary’s assertion that she was mislead by the president indicates that she does not understand the basis of the American system. The European systems of justice, for example, are typically inquisitorial, meaning that an investigative judge sorts through the evidence to decide whether or not there is a valid case, looking equally for incriminating and exculpatory evidence. Despite the connotations the word has from the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, it is not an inferior system by nature, but it is not our system.
Our system is commonly referred to as an “adversarial system” of justice, in which two adversarial lawyers are responsible for presenting only one side of the case each. In many ways, this adversarial approach to justice is mirrored in our political system. Presidents of all stripes have tended to try to increase exective power, while the legislative branch, especially when faced with a president fron the opposing party, tries to limit exective power. Finally, the judiciary is a third brake on the whole process, defining what constitutes a legal extension or limitation of executive power.
As a lawyer, Hillary should have known this and she should have approached evidence in favor of going to war in Iraq as being part of the adversarial system, that is, an attempt to extend executive power. Her job as a senator was to sift the evidence for holes and verify that the case presented by the executive had merits. In the same way that the defense attorney does not take on faith the evidence and, above all, the interpretation of the evidence put forth by the prosecution, we elect our senators and representatives for the express purpose of vetting the arguments put forth by the executive branch. Failing to do so, they have failed us in their appointed duties. So John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are, in essence, guilty of negligence and dereliction of duty. Edwards admits it. Clinton does not. Her whining about being deceived by the president is like the defense whining that the prosecution presented a one-sided case in its closing statement to the jury. Hillary just doesn’t seem to get it. She won’t admit her mistake because some strategist has said that doing so will ultimately hurt her in the general election. Until she fesses up for negligence, she can’t get my vote in any election. I don’t care if the Republicans end up nominating Dick Cheney.
Now, one candidate did not vote for war in Iraq. I think most of us suffering liberals were mesmerized by Obama when he appeared on the scene at the Democratic National Convention. And then he took the right stance on Iraq. Though it was easier to do when not a senator, I still think Obama would have been among those who did not vote for war. Like Clinton, he has a great (in fact virtually indistinguishable) laundry list of good causes: health care reform, restoring America’s reputation abroad, energy policy, environment, poverty etc. But since his stirring early speeches, every time I hear Obama, I have to slap myself to stay awake. I thought Obama might self-destruct for many reasons, but I didn’t think boredom and a lack of humor would be his undoing (can you say Bob Dole?).
And that got me thinking about how I miss having Paul Wellstone around. Unlike Obama, I knew Wellstone would never have a chance at the White House. Aside from his too-liberal-for-the-Bible-Belt politics, he spoke more like a professor than a populist. Since he was a professor, that’s no big surprise, but that doesn’t really move people. Wellstone was one of those people who looked better on the radio than he did on TV and sounded better in print than he did on the radio. But, with a few exceptions, he was always there on the right side of the issue. During the 2002 campaign, he was trailing the challenger by a couple of points when he was faced with the decision of whether or not to vote against the war in Iraq. He knew in his heart that he did not believe in it, but he was in the midst of a tight race and he knew it would cost him reelection. In the end he made a professorial plea against the war in Iraq (I would say impassioned, which it was, but he reminded me more of an academic conference speaker than FDR at the podium). After his vote he called his wife to say that he thought he had just cost himself the election (though in fact, he immediately pulled ahead in the polls after his vote). Shortly thereafter, we lost him in a plane crash.
Wellstone would never have made it to the White House, but from his election to his death, when someone asked, “If you could elect anyone, who would it be?” I could think wistfully about a country in which Wellstone might be a credible candidate (professorial is better than red neck isn’t it, even if it isn’t exactly FDR and “the only thing you have to fear”). Now, I don’t know. I’d like to see someone with Wellstone’s vision and Reagan’s easy political savvy. Obama, unfortunately is not it. If he’s going to get in the game, he has to shake of his uptight exterior and become more like Reagan.
Remember when Reagan, backed against the wall by Jimmy Carter who had him on the facts in what was still a close race said with a laugh “There you go again!” Reagan made Carter look like a fool, but Carter’s facts were actually correct and Reagan was wrong. Nobody cared. Remember in the next campaign when he was showing signs of Alzheimer’s and Mondale was looking to make a Reagan’s age an issue and, before Mondale could get off the ground with that, Reagan magnanimously opened the debate with “I just want it known that I will not hold my opponent’s age and inexperience against him” (Mondale was 56 years old, a two-term senator and a former vice-president; Reagan had been governor of California). Reagan may not have been the brightest bulb in the White House, but he had political savvy and if I didn’t hate his politics so much (can you say “Peacemaker Missile” and “James Watt”), I would have loved Reagan, the only truly charismatic president in my life (though I supported Carter and Mondale). Just once in my lifetime I’d like to see someone with Wellstone’s politics and courage, Reagan’s easy affability and FDR’s inspiration running for the White House. Just once.
For now I’m still looking for someone to support this time around.
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