A quick follow-up to my spot on XM this morning -- something I wanted to elaborate on slightly:
While talking to Scott Walterman, I joked that only in America can you find a presidential candidate (in this case, Barack Obama) giving a quasi-required speech on how patriotic he is, while a bona fide war hero with unassailable credentials (in this case, General Wesley Clark) is castigated by the media for making a comment that's 100% true.
Over the past 24 hours, Obama's been forced to distance himself from Clark's wholly legitimate statement that being shot down over Vietnam doesn't necessarily qualify someone to be president.
The question, though, is -- why?
Clark isn't in any way officially associated with the Obama campaign; at this point in time, he's really nothing more than a guy who's speaking for himself, who happens to support Obama. So why for God's sake should Obama be called upon to repudiate Clark's statement? I support Barack Obama, and yet I make about ten comments a week on this site that Obama would probably not only want to distance himself from, but which might very well cause him to call for my immediate deportation. The thing is -- I'm speaking for myself. I don't pretend to be a proxy for the candidate I happen to support, and yet that seems to be what the media want and the various political camps expect from those who publicly back one politician or another.
I don't have to be a candidate -- or be just like a candidate -- to publicly throw my support in his or her direction. I'm speaking out on behalf of what I believe he or she can do in terms of the greater good; I'm not speaking out on behalf of that person.
In other words, the media can toss the word "surrogate" around all they want, slapping that already-tired label on anyone and everyone it deems necessary in order to create bullshit conflict where there likely is none. All it does is further stupefy the process and burden the rest of us with the immense and unnecessary responsibility of personally agreeing with every single thing the people we politically endorse do and say -- living up to his or her example, as it were.
And besides that, wasn't Clark right?
Does anyone really think that getting shot down in Nam automatically qualifies someone to lead the United States?
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Surrogate Mothers
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11 comments:
Wasn't there a point in time in this country when being shot down over Nam and being tortured and interrogated by Communist captors meant you were tainted goods and not capable of being president?
Just sayin' is all...
I want to be angry at Obama for being so quick to distance himself from anyone making a comment that, while certainly true, can possibly, maybe be used to sway people - at least those who aren't paying attention, which is probably 90% of eligible voters. But the fact is McCain has already accused Obama's "camp" of taking the low road for this comment so HE is the one that is lumping Clark with Obama. Plus, Obama already tried the just-because-he-supports-me-doesn't-mean-he-speaks-for-me argument with limited success so, unfortunately, this is what he has to do. It's all such BS!
Wow. I couldn't have said it better than Thomas there. I'm not saying 'nam vets are tainted goods (and I'm sure he isn't either), but it does raise an excellent point about how easily an entire culture's viewpoint can be changed with a little PR.
Clark is absolutely right: Enduring torture and being a POW does not automatically correlate to having the ability to lead, much less lead an entire nation. To simplify it: If I spend the first part of my life as a bank teller, and one day I am held up at gunpoint and I survive, does that make me capable of running the entire corporation? Hell no.
In fact, I would say that those things might make McCain too subjective--not diplomatic. And intelligent, aware, and enlightened diplomacy is what this world really needs right now.
It gets even more ridiculous when you consider the question asked by Bob Schieffer immediately leading up to Clark's 'controversial' statement:
SCHIEFFER: Can I just interrupt you? I have to say, Barack Obama hasn’t had any of these experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.
CLARK: I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.
c/o balloon juice
I was thinking the same thing myself when I read this story yesterday. I understand what Clark was saying, and agree with it. Just because you were a P.O.W. doesn't mean that you're qualified to run an entire country. As Clark also pointed out, the "experience" that McCain is using to justify having the ability to lead is that he commanded a squadron...but that squadron was not a war time squadron. So, does that mean that every guy in the military that's ever lead any sort of squadron is automatically more qualified to be President? How absurd does that sound?!
As Boo said above, we need diplomacy, and it doesn't seem to me that having a man with a quick temper and the experiences of a P.O.W. that might make him hate some of the countries we deal with, would be the best person to fill that role. I have a very, very hard time believing that he could play nice, as diplomacy requires.
"Wasn't there a point in time in this country when being shot down over Nam and being tortured and interrogated by Communist captors meant you were tainted goods and not capable of being president?"
Quite true. There was also a point in time in this country when smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine and engaging in other "risky behavior," even if you later admitted it and blamed it all on your struggle for racial identity, also meant you were tainted goods and not capable of being president.
Times change, society changes (not always or in all ways for the better), and sometimes even McDonald's has to hire whoever is willing to work.
No, I'm not a candidate either, so please let me make my own apologies.
The better question is this: When the hell did the truth become so unacceptable in this country? Clark didn't even say that McCain isn't qualified to be president, just that getting his ass shot off doesn't qualify him to be president. I would argue that wartime experience does almost nothing to prepare one for the presidency. If you're going to use military experience as the measuring stick, Clark, by virtue of his time as NATO commander, is far more qualified to be president than Obama OR McCain.
I'd say that getting shot down doesn't even qualify McCain as an especially good military pilot, much less president.
That's a joke by the way -- and one of those things that Barack Obama would have to distance himself from.
I would argue that both McCain and Obama have qualities which definitely qualify them as exceptionally poor presidential candidates, although for each candidate respectively those qualities fall on different ends of a broad spectrum.
If I could have a Ron Paul/Hillary/Obama bastard child presidential candidate.....yeah...That would be my preferred mix of ideals, smarts/gall/experience/lies, and charisma, respectively.
Slightly off topic, but did anyone else see McCain's interview on Good Morning America this morning? I had to turn it off before I threw up my breakfast...
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