Our campaigns have yet to stoop to the level of hypocrisy of this US presidential election.
By DAVID FORMANdavid forman 88(photo credit: )
Next week, I'll be traveling to the United States. Because I hold dual American/Israeli citizenship, I will vote in the US presidential election. Like most Israelis, I have taken a keen interest in this election, not only out of concern for the outcome's affect on Israel, but also because, as a die-hard liberal, I am eager for Barak Obama to win. Additionally, to see an African-American capture the presidency would be a great social victory for those of us who were active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
As I watch the campaign unfold, I am grateful that Israel's election campaign is not as painstakingly long as America's. For almost two years, the dominant news emanating from the US is whether John McCain is a clone of George Bush, Mitt Romney believes in polygamy, Barak Obama is a closet Muslim, Hillary Clinton is too divisive - ad nauseam.
Because America is fighting an unpopular war and experiencing an economic meltdown, political issues have understandably dominated the campaign. Most Americans blame George Bush for their financial woes, as well as McCain who supported Bush's policies. As a result, McCain is behind in the polls. Therefore, in the waning days of the campaign, the Republicans believe that their only chance of winning the presidency is to turn the race into a referendum on which candidate possesses "core family values," maintaining that a candidate's character and who he "pals around with" is what ultimately counts in leading the country. For the Christian right and its conservative cohorts, the Republican Party embodies "traditional" values, while the Democratic Party is an agent of unbridled permissiveness.
Let's examine this thesis by comparing the family comportment of John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, to Barak Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden.
McCain admitted to having multiple extramarital affairs that brought about the dissolution of his first marriage. Barak Obama's marriage and family are well intact, and there has never been the slightest hint of any licentious behavior on his part.
LET'S MOVE onto the vice-presidential candidates. Sarah Palin was chosen specifically to shore up the Republican conservative base as being a model of family propriety, as demonstrated by her opposition to abortion - even in cases of rape and incest - and to sex education in schools - apparently even in her home, as her 17-year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. To the conservatives' delight, Bristol will have the baby and marry the 17-year-old father.
Had Palin educated her child about the "birds and the bees," these kids (now high-school dropouts) might not have found themselves in such a mess. While no woman should be criticized for pursuing any career, I would ask this question of either a father or mother involved in politics: Is securing the vice presidency worth exposing one's pregnant teenager to the public spotlight, further straining the child's emotional well-being?
In the eyes of Palin and her Republican enthusiasts, it is completely justifiable, because nothing trumps the need to promulgate their sacred agenda of "core family values." Yet, if Hillary Clinton had a pregnant high-school daughter, these same conservatives would blame the pregnancy on a liberal upbringing and castigate Clinton, claiming that by seeking public office she was sacrificing her child on the altar of self-aggrandizement, thereby undermining family values.
As for Joe Biden: In 1966, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car accident. From that time on, he began commuting two hours each way by train from his home in Delaware to Washington, so he could raise his then two motherless sons and remain close to his family of 37 years. Biden's son, like Palin's, has been deployed to Iraq, even though, as Delaware's attorney-general, he could have easily avoided serving there.
By contrast, George Bush, the conservatives' darling, abused his privileged status to circumvent being sent to fight in the war in Vietnam, but unabashedly unleashed his conservative henchman during the last election to ridicule John Kerry's tours of active duty in the jungles of Southeast Asia. On the other hand, Barak Obama praises McCain's service in Vietnam. While not comparable, the McCain camp continually belittles Obama's work as a community organizer.
Having been the president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama could have landed a prize job as a lawyer, but chose instead to work on the tough south side of Chicago, which, for his generation, constituted national service. By any objective standard that measures a candidate's moral responsibility to his or her family (and country), the Christian right and conservatives, by their own chauvinistic definition of what constitutes family values, should be fawning all over the Democratic ticket.
FOR ALL the mudslinging, coalition horse-trading and petty partisan politics that exist in Israel, our election campaigns have yet to stoop to the level of hypocrisy of this US presidential election (one glance at our pitiful cast of political personalities and it becomes clear why Israelis are issue-oriented). Watching the American election would almost be amusing if the results were not so fateful.
To think that the selection of the titular leader of the free world could be dependent on a bogus discussion about family values is frightening. So, I will cast my vote based on the issues. Given the dismal foreign and domestic performance over the past eight years by John McCain's ideological partner in the White House, I am convinced that Barak Obama and Joe Biden reflect new policies that will best serve America, Israel and the international community. And, there's the added bonus of getting two people who represent good, old-fashioned "core family values."
I ALMOST forgot one crucial factor. For many Americans on the political right, the excoriation of prejudice is not necessarily central to their value system. In fact, for many voters sitting on the fence, when entering the voting booth, bigotry may blur their political compass. In an act of desperation, the McCain campaign is fueling this prejudice with McCarthyism-like tactics (and sowing seeds of hatred likened to the period in Israel just prior to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination), accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists." Playing the racist card, they tell their all-white audiences that Obama "does not see America like you do," that is, like white Americans. Ultimately, Obama could go down to defeat - not because of the issues or because of his character, but rather, as Republican strategists are hinting, because he is an upstart negro, who deserves a good "come-uppin."
So, stick around for my Stateside post-election report. In the meantime, from what I have observed, we in Israel ain't got it so bad.
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