The Audacity of Change

I’ve seen this show before.

A person is anointed and crowned. The Leader of the Free World is Chosen. It always happens this way. No matter what. New Hampshire did not make Bill Clinton the “Comeback Kid.” George W. Bush was never The Outsider. John Kerry was never going to be the President.

No matter the parlor games that are played inside the Beltway or in a studio or newsroom in Midtown Manhattan, people always know who is going to win, who will be president. Without a doubt, in 1992, George Herbert Walker Bush was not going to be re-elected to the presidency. Bill Clinton saw his meteoritic rise from the 1988 Democratic Convention where he was the keynote speaker to the 1992 Democratic Convention where he accepted his party’s nomination for president. He was unstoppable. He was never down and out. No scandal would stick. He was Teflon. He was Bulletproof. And he was going to dispose of Bob Dole in 1996 without breaking a sweat and speaking about building the bridge towards the 21st century. But people wanted others to believe that we had a real honest to God race out there. We didn’t.

In 2000, after eight years in exile, the Republicans crowned the heir apparent, the Governor of Texas, the son of the defeated ex-president. And no matter the insurgency that McCain would mount in New Hampshire, everyone knew that George W. Bush was going to be his party’s nominee. And going into election night, everyone knew that he was going to win, no matter how close the polls said the race was. During the post-election meltdown, everyone knew that no matter what the courts deliberated, they would always rule in his favor. Brokaw said on election night “George W. Bush is the president-elect.” And nothing was going to change that.

The same thing happens to those who don’t win the big prize. In September 2003, Time Magazine ran an article exulting Gov. Dean’s lead in Iowa. The Republicans kept on spinning knowing full well that there was no way in Hell that he was going to win this one. John Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts was dying a merciless death in the wheat fields. The Democrats were waiting for Gore to come back and challenge the presidential pretender. In January Dean howled and Kerry triumphed. And that was it, the end of the primary. The Bush camp dumped an immediate Ad War against Kerry framing him in the eyes of the voters: flip-flopping Liberal New England elite who married into money. And there was no doubt that no matter what, George W. Bush would accomplish the one thing that had eluded his father: re-election.

I’ve seen this show before.

***

The good old days never were.

The floor fights at the conventions never transpired. Lyndon Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek nor would accept his party’s nomination for president. A month before the sitting president was defeated in New Hampshire by Sen. McCarthy who was running on an anti-war campaign. With Johnson out the establishment gave it to Humphrey, the sitting vice-president. Humphrey battled McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. History of course has a way of being cyclical. With Kennedy’s assassination in June, the stage was set for Humphrey’s coronation amidst the police riot in Chicago, in one of the most nauseating episodes in American political history. There was no doubt that Humphrey was going to win even though we didn’t wish for that. We wanted Bobby. We wanted what was taken away from us. He would bring us together. He would give us the audacity of change. Ted White and Kennedy myth-creator Arthur Schlesinger Jr., always argued that Bobby would’ve won it in Chicago and that the protests and Daly-terrorism would never have happened. The politics though would’ve given it to the establishment. Humphrey had the delegates and McCarthy was never going to quit. Kennedy would never have won a majority to break the stalemate, and the delegates would propel Humphrey to the top. When Bobby died in Los Angeles, Humphrey already had 150 more delegate votes than Bobby, and 300 more than McCarthy. Bobby wasn’t going to be president, assassins’ bullet or not.

In Miami Beach the Republican Party was coming around to the idea that the Southern Strategy would guarantee victory—Bill Clinton remains the only Democratic president re-elected since the implementation of the Southern Strategy. And there was a faux split that was being presented but was never actually there. The Liberal wing of the Republican Party headed by a Governor of New York and a Mayor of New York City—both running for president—battled California’s favorite sons, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, for the direction of the party. This was a victory for the conscience of the Conservative. And no matter what happened Nixon was going to win. And he was going to win the presidency.

There’s no point anymore in thinking about counter-factuals. Even when we try to romanticize the what-ifs, the possibility of changes in history, we come back to the facts. Nothing was going to change it.

The good old days never were.

***

We now have the courage to pursue the audacity of change.

And that’s the real reason why this presidential race is so fluid. Take me for example, by this time in every presidential election cycle I already know who the winner is going to be. At this time during the 1992 campaign I wasn’t yet interested in politics, but by this time in 1996, I knew that Clinton was going to win re-election. Even though there have only been three presidential elections that I have followed and have correctly prognosticated who has won—this track record of mine is going strong now for a dozen years. And I’m at a loss right now. I just don’t know. Something tells me that Giuliani is going to emerge past Huckabee and Romney and confront the Clinton war-machine and win. Something tells me that this is what is supposed to happen and that it indeed will. The re-run in my head tells me that this is it, that it is indeed, déjà vu all over again.

This same show tells me that no matter how many Stadiums Oprah and Barack fill, the HRC Campaign will take it all and take it big. Don’t pay attention to the polls in Iowa, Hillary will win there. She’ll take New Hampshire strong and South Carolina and it’s on to Super Tuesday and she’ll win there. No matter what. Obama would make a good veep, but she’ll give it to Richardson. And it’ll be Clinton-Richardson (who were the not-ready-for-primetime players in the 90’s) against Giuliani-Huckabee.

On Sunday night when I attended the Univision debate held at UM I thought that for sure I was going to come out of there knowing who had won. I don’t know if anyone did. Ron Paul’s honesty and apathy towards pandering is refreshing. Huckabee spoke well. Giuliani and Romney didn’t do anything to take it out of the ballpark and McCain spoke truthfully and with his hand on his heart, but no one listened and no one will ever let him in.

A War Election? A Change Election?

I guess we’re coming to the conclusion that it really doesn’t matter who the president is. That no matter what they’ll follow the same long-term strategic goals and conduct business as usual. We placed our faith in the Bush Administration as being the first MBA Presidency. We placed our faith in this team as the self-anointed “Dream Team” of American Foreign Policy: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice. They were the grown-ups compared to Clinton’s kids who were running around the White House without knowing what to do next. And the Grown-Ups let us down. Those kids from the Clinton White House have come of age and are now the self-anointed Dream Team of politicos and policy-wonks. But I don’t think they’ve learned much since their first tour of duty during the 1990’s. At the end no one has the experience. No one has the courage to be a leader. It’s business as usual in America, and we lose sight of our dreams and aspirations in return for economic and social comfort. And no matter which party controls the White House after next year’s election, we may be a little better off than we are now…or we may not…this is the future status-quo.

But it needn’t be a fait accompli. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Barack Hussein Obama became president of the United States? People from all over the world would see that the United States of America is not represented by another Old White Man. So what if he’s not experienced? So what if he hasn’t fulfilled his sentence in Washington? This man is our Bobby:

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. (Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention.)


He’s young, he’s charismatic. And we project what we want to see in us onto him. He is our tabula rasa. He’s Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in one. He’s change. He’s unlike anything we’ve ever had before. He’s presidential. He’s ready.


As a Republican, I support Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.

As a Republican, I will most probably support Rudy Giuliani, the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States.



“All life is a preparation for something that probably will never happen.”

Unless we have the courage to pursue the audacity of change.