Supporters of
one Democratic
candidate or another may insist that their man or woman won last Monday’s debate
in South Carolina, but in their hearts most viewers could only have been
disappointed by its childish tenor and puerile content. Unless those viewers
happened to be Republicans, of course—in which case they could only have been
delighted.
With a worried nation edging toward financial panic and
dragging down the world economy, the Democrats seem strangely preoccupied with
petty “snarking.” A debate is supposed to be a discussion of policy, but this
last one was nothing more than a blather of insults. It diminished both Sens.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while former Sen. John Edwards only emphasized
his irrelevance with glancing blows at both contenders.
By focusing on
obscure votes in the Illinois legislature and old corporate ties, Sens. Clinton
and Obama showed that their differences on real issues must be narrow indeed.
Their attempts to besmirch each other’s character and commitment were
distasteful, especially because those attacks could so easily be mirrored
against the attacker. Consider the nastiest moment in their confrontation, when
Obama responded to accusations that he praised Ronald Reagan and Republican
ideas. Turning to Clinton, he retorted that while he was “fighting these fights”
against Reaganism and its ill effects on American workers, “you were a corporate
lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.”
“I was fighting against those
[Republican] ideas when you were practicing law and representing your
contributor [Antoin] Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city
Chicago,” she replied tartly. Now it is true that Clinton sat on Wal- Mart’s
board—but it is also true that Obama’s wife, until last year, sat on the board
of a food company whose profits (and the compensation of its directors) depended
heavily on Wal-Mart, its largest customer. Michelle Obama resigned not long
after her affiliation with that company began to draw critical scrutiny because
of the Wal-Mart connection, inflated management salaries and a controversial
plant shutdown in Colorado.
It is true that Obama did legal work for
Rezko housing projects in Chicago that ended up in very bad condition, both
physically and financially. Those deals lost money for taxpayers and harmed
tenants, but enriched the owner—a sleazy guy, since indicted, who was an Obama
friend and contributor. But it is also true that, years ago, Clinton performed
legal work for one or two questionable businessmen in Arkansas.
Where’s the Substance?
That
ugly exchange revolved around the more substantive issue of Obama’s attitude
toward Reagan and Republicanism. Having told a Reno newspaper’s editorial board
that the Republicans have been “the party of ideas,” and having said that the
country was ready for the “transformative” Reagan presidency in 1980 because of
the “excesses” and government expansion in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Illinois
senator realized he had to back away from those remarks. The Republicans, he
emphasizes now, are the party of bad ideas.
But why is Obama’s pandering
to Republicans so much worse than what Bill Clinton tried to do, back when he
told the nation that the “era of big government is over” and “triangulated”
between the Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill? Those were savvy
strategies for stopping Republican advances. Obama is a smart politician who has
figured out how to attract independent and even a few Republican voters. In
short, both senators were corporate lawyers, and both have enjoyed happy
connections in the corporate world (as did that budding populist, Mr.
Edwards). Both the Obamas and the Clintons realize that drawing support
from the center is the only way to win elections in America. More importantly,
however, both have also displayed considerable idealism and commitment to the
poor. And each of them knows that the other is not a hypocrite or a fraud.
So why do they pretend to dismiss each other with cheap canards?
Whatever the reason, they should fulfill their earlier promise to leave those
tactics behind and treat each other as honorable competitors, whose goals are
not so different. They should stop describing each other in terms that would
make an endorsement seem impossible, or at best insincere, next November.
What voters want to hear—in every debate—is what they talk about when
the other isn’t present: how they propose to improve our prospects in an ominous
time. 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc. What’s your take? Write: editor@shepex.com.
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