It's the most important story of the year.
No, I'm not talking about the Rays in the World Series.
I'm talking about Election '08.
To help you make your decisions, we've put together a roundup of opinions from Tampa Bay residents about the presidential campaign; a sample ballot listing our picks in this year's races from president to property appraiser (see info box to the right); and a timeline of the George W. Bush presidency.
Looming over everything else, of course, is Obama vs. McCain. The race has not a little in common with the Rays/Phillies battle: upstart vs. vet, never-been-there vs. might-never-get-there-again, improbable dream vs. impossible dreamer.
Interestingly enough, it's been in the interest of both presidential teams to portray their candidates as underdogs threatened by powerful opposing forces. Warnings about the so-called Bradley effect (in which white voters tell pollsters they're going to vote for a black candidate, but change their minds in the voting booth) are useful to Obama's people, motivating committed voters to come out in force to offset any possible racial backlash. Reminders that McCain is behind in the polls ensure that the Republican base will vote with a vengeance. This kind of storytelling goes with the territory.
In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Robert Draper described another aspect of political narrative: the push to define a presidential nominee in a pundit-ready sound bite. McCain's campaign, the story made clear, has struggled to find the single idea that will sum up why we should vote for him. Maybe it's the absence of such a cohesive argument that has driven McCain supporters to a more desperate alternative: lies, lies and more lies.
I liked McCain once. He seemed to be the one Republican least likely to deal in innuendo and fear-mongering, if only because he'd experienced it at the hands of Bush/Rove in 2000. So what do we get? A virtual tsunami of innuendo and fear-mongering, with rhetoric that should have died sometime in the 1950s. Obama's a Socialist. He's not a real American. He pals around with terrorists. The message: Obama is not one of us.
There are concerns about Obama, to be sure. I met a businessman at a dinner the other night — we'll call him Sam — a guy whose small, creative, tech-centric downtown Tampa company is exactly the kind of enterprise the city is pinning its future on. He's worried that his taxes will go up under Obama, and that as a result he won't be able to grow his business. I didn't ask him how much salary he drew himself; it's possible that he's over the $250,000 mark, in which case his personal taxes will go up under Obama. But the Obama platform offers ample evidence that small-business taxes will not go up under his watch; for instance, Obama supports tax credits for companies that provide health care to their employees and that create high-tech jobs, both of which Sam's company does.
But he hadn't heard about those programs. He'd heard only the latest in the McCain campaign's barrage of lies. Sure, politics thrives on hyperbole, on stretching the truth, on taking quotes out of context — but what are we to think of a campaign so bereft of substance that untruths are its primary currency? When we've just endured eight years of a presidency who betrayed our trust on an appallingly regular basis?
When considering the Obama candidacy, I return often to the speech he made in response to the Reverend Wright flap. It was a remarkably honest appraisal of race relations in this country. Pragmatic without pandering, he spoke candidly about past prejudices and present hopes. He did us the favor of assuming we want more than sound bites, that we are adult enough to understand nuance — that everything is not black and white, good and evil.
Coming from a man who might be president, that was a refreshing change. And now, considering the debacle the McCain campaign has become, it seems more urgent than ever that Obama is the man we elect.
One more note about lies and liars:
The proposed gay marriage ban, Florida Amendment No. 2, does absolutely nothing to "protect" marriage in Florida. Same-sex marriage is already forbidden by law in Florida.
What this amendment does do is open the doors for legislation that would threaten anyone — heterosexual or homosexual — in a civil union or unmarried domestic partnership. In Michigan, where a similar amendment was passed, the state's highest court ruled that as a result it was now illegal for public universities and other entities of Michigan state government to provide domestic partner benefits to the partners of gay employees.
The leader of the Yes-On-2 brigade, demagogue John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council, claims that nothing of the kind would happen in Florida.
Don't believe him.
VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT 2.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2008.