Door County Election News: A Democrat’s Take

We offered the heads of the Republican Party of Door County and the Democratic Party of Door County 750 words to make their case for the upcoming election. Here is the Democratic response.

Candidate John McCain has refused to withdraw the negative ads that Republican Senators Olympia Snow of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota find damaging to Republicans. He claims they are "true."

The word must mean something different to him than it does to me. Any elements of truth in these ads are dwarfed by the distortions they contain. This campaign may even be worse than 2004; then, at least, Bush arranged for others to do the "swiftboating." This time the Republican candidates are doing it themselves. The false allegations about Obama that fill the airwaves, the robo-phone lines and slick brochures are what we used to call libelous before our high court ruled that issue ads do not need to meet the standard of truth.

True: To understand Obama’s qualifications for the job, we need an accurate job description. The next President will have to 1) provide leadership to resolve the massive economic crisis caused by reckless deregulation in the American financial sector; 2) restore fiscal responsibility and pay down the debt that creates a huge tax liability for our children and grandchildren; 3) reallocate resources from an ill-conceived war to rebuild our infrastructure and achieve more appropriate foreign policy objectives; 4) reinvent the ways we finance health care in this country – if not on a European model, then on a new one – in order to contain health care costs which will otherwise continue to bankrupt families and other institutions; 5) re-think the ways we provide and use energy, how we market our food and how we use our water supply; 6) convince our nation and the world to decrease the devastating emissions of carbon into the earth’s atmosphere; 7) ensure that all Americans get the best possible education in order to compete for jobs in a new economy; 8) and re-create viable international relationships.

True: We are a great country, but we will not remain so for long if we cannot solve the problems that have disrupted our way of life at home and our reputation abroad. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by five million since 2001! The Bush administration’s treatment of our veterans has been shameful (McCain gets a "D" from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for his voting record on veterans’ issues). And we need Teddy Roosevelt’s model for trust-busting and protecting natural resources – not for carrying a big stick.

True: The breadth and depth of these problems requires someone with extraordinary qualifications. Someone who is well and broadly educated so that he can resist ideas that will provide only a short-term fix, and work well with experts in many fields both here and abroad. Someone who is cool under stress so that he can examine many options and come to a responsible conclusion in a reasonable period of time. Someone who can convince the world that the U.S. is not a nation of cowboys shooting from the hip, preoccupied with winning at any cost. Someone who will make the federal government solve problems (such as affordable health care) that are too great for states or private industry to handle effectively. Someone who can ensure that government once again serves the interests of all citizens.

True: Obama has these qualifications and more. He has been thoroughly vetted in the longest primary in our history, and he has emerged from the debates as not only a gifted politician but a strong and principled statesman. He not only knows the Constitution backward and forward, but he has pledged to apply it to the executive branch, which under Bush/Cheney has become alarmingly presumptuous. And because of his life experience between families, cultures and continents, he has that increasingly rare capacity for empathy with people like you and me. With him in the White House, we will not be out on a limb by ourselves – "on our own."

True: We do not have the luxury of time to discriminate against a man’s race, hold him guilty by association, focus on one social or religious issue, or borrow outlandish fears out of thin air.

As Jonathan Schell said particularly well in The Nation, Obama is (like Franklin Roosevelt) a "remarkably unideological" man, "a true pragmatist," an "outstanding judge of people and circumstances," and an exceptionally good manager. In addition, "He inhabits a degraded public realm with grace" (The Nation, 287, #14, p. 24).

Obama deserves your vote. The world deserves an Obama Presidency. Americans will rise in the world’s estimation if we recognize once again that "truth can set us free."