the pragmatist and the visionary
by Ari Holtz
Published: February 12, 2008
Super Tuesday is a week behind us and the two major political parties have returned to form. For the Republicans, it’s orderly and businesslike. For the Democrats, it’s chaos, neuroticism and indecision. Sure, theocrats, neocons and talking heads (oh, my!) disapprove of John McCain, but actual Republican voters have decisively made him their man.
Democrats, Heaven forbid they get anything done easily, remain split between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Yes, yes, yes, we’ve all been told how these two camps are divided between black and brown, young and old, white and blue-collar, male and female. But there is another factor underneath these simple demographic dynamics. And, yes, you will cringe when I say it. I will cringe when I say it. It’s more played out than Soulja Boy. It’s change.
The word change has become a tired and irritating buzzword. It’s been drilled into our brains with maddening ferocity. Beneath the cliche, however, lies some truth. The country, Democrats especially, exhausted and fed up with the Bush years, wants something new. The division within the party, however, exists in how individuals define change. For some, a change away from George W. Bush is enough. These folks support Clinton. For others, change means a shift away from the entire way that politics has been practiced over the last 16 years. These voters support Obama. And while this difference may seem nuanced and subtle, it is in actuality huge. So huge, in fact, that the party must be careful that its current fracture doesn’t expand into a catastrophic break.
Clinton and Obama have presented very different pictures of themselves as potential presidents. Clinton suggests that the problems with our government are in its results. The policies have been wrong. Financial policies have favored the rich, foreign policy has been incompetent and unilateral, women’s and children’s issues have been neglected, as has the environment, and nothing has been done to improve healthcare. She argues that with her leadership we can change the direction of our country by identifying the right policies. She, then, as the pragmatist in chief, has the political game to get it all actually accomplished.
Obama, on the other hand, sees far more wrong with government than wrongheaded policies. To the Illinois senator, it’s the essence of the government itself that is the problem. Sure, Obama sees the goals of the Bush administration as faulty, but he also finds the process by which it goes about achieving them as troublesome. He argues that the Republicans have been divisive, manipulative, dishonest and have preyed on our differences to accumulate power. He has insinuated that he feels a Hillary Clinton administration would bring much of the same.
Obama’s appeal rests on the notion that America needs far more than a political engineer who can work the machinations of Washington to accomplish things desired by left-of-center Americans. Obama’s message resonates with Americans who feel that we not only need a change in what we get done but in how we get it done. He presents himself as the visionary in chief who can see the light of a new way, who can enlighten us with a higher, more pure, positive, unifying politics.
Think that last sentence sounds like naďve gobbledy-gook? You’re likely a Clinton supporter. Were you set just a bit on fire by it? Turned on? Excited? Well, then Obama might be your man. And maybe, like many Democrats, you don’t know how you feel. Many in the party are torn between believing, on one hand, that politics is unavoidably a nasty game and, on the other, that perhaps it doesn’t need to be. They are conflicted about whether inspiration and the vision of a new way forward is real treasure or fool’s gold.
How Democrats end up coming down on all this - whether they believe in pragmatism or vision - will define the future of the party and the future of our nation. The party must be careful, however, to proceed in sorting this all out with caution. Because at the end of the process, it needs to be one party, united, not two warring factions nursing their wounds. The party must not tear itself apart as it tries to find itself.
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