A fearful invocation of King and RFK

Then there were three.

Try them on for size.

President McCain

President Clinton

President Obama

How do they feel?

Ill-fitting? Tentative? Weird? A whole lot better than what we have?

Frankly, I was pulling for a President Edwards or a President Gore, but none of the candidates are much interested in what my fellow Oregonians and I think, thanks to our after-the-fact May primary.

I suppose President Gore is still a possibility, particularly if there is a stalemated convention and political justice in the world (fat chance), but he’s a long shot.

Of the three live candidates, Obama is the only one who was, and is, right on the defining issue for me, Iraq. (Obama believes we should never have gone there and need to get out pronto.). McCain wants to stay and suffer the chaos. Clinton still finds it beneath her to admit to the folly of authorizing the invasion in the first place. Her stance is sheer arrogance.

Now that Edwards has withdrawn, the latest round of polls show Obama picking up most of Edwards’ support. I was starting to lean away from Edwards even before he withdrew. I found myself being drawn to what seems like an Obama mystique.

Obama infuses his speeches with an almost transcendental, soul-directed quality. When he won in South Carolina, he described our divisions as being as much within us as individuals as they are within us as a nation. We need to health ourselves. The senator’s timing and phrasing are eerily like that of Martin Luther King Jr. Clearly he has so assimilated King’s speeches that they are part of his marrow.

Then there are the comparisons to Bobby Kennedy, his fervor and his sense of mission. That same "why not?" fire seems to burn in Obama.

A caution. Four paragraphs ago, I used the word “live.” These three candidates are obviously more than politically alive. They are literally alive, and they are vulnerable in a world of hatemongers, some with celebrity status (Yes, Rush, I mean you). I’m old enough to have lived through the anguish of 1968. It is a year one wants to forget, but never can. We bear its scars. Invoking of the names of King and Kennedy is apt and good, but the invocation is tainted with fear and grief.

It is one thing to have to wait for May and then November to choose among these leaders. It’s quite another to have to have the choice stolen by madness, hatred, conspiracy or terror.

Wealth and well-being — in context

"He's got to be careful; everyone wants to be rich."

The "he" in question is John Edwards, who is proposing raising taxes on the super-rich.

The warning, as quoted in today's New York Times, comes from political science Prof. Dennis J. Goldford at Drake University.

I question the professor's statement. Not everyone wants to be rich. Most of us want to be happy, and we don't equate that with private jets or a chateau in the Bahamas.

I'd direct Professor Goldford to the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson's line about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." An earlier draft (and John Locke and Adam Smith) had "property" instead of "happiness" among the "inalienable rights," but Jefferson knew, and Edwards knows, that it's not all about big bucks.

In fact, psychologists are finding that wealth beyond a modestly adequate level doesn't equate with happiness, or even well being.

Think Paris Hilton. See, those jail house stories about Paris weren't just chewing gum journalism. All they needed was a little context.

The Times needed to provide context too, rather than let Professor Goldford's comment go unanswered in the story about Edward's plan. The money raised from the super-rich, by the way, would go to help reduce taxes on lower-income Americans. They don't necessarily want to be rich; they just want to be, well, happy, and Edwards knows it.

Let's save "what it means to be 'happy'" for another time, or for your own comments.

The political courage to love

The Vietnam vet who confronted me on the streetcar Sunday (see previous post) has led me to a sobering conclusion.

We are one domestic terrorist attack away from electing a war-hardened John McCain as our next president.

Seen this way, the absurdly premature polls now pointing to a Democratic victory in 2008 are numbers from nowhere.

Suppose a terrorist cell, or a solitary suicide bomber (or, perish the thought, an agent provocateur) detonates a bomb in an all-American shopping mall some Saturday in the next 18 months.

Two hundred dead? Four hundred? One thousand gravely wounded. Many victims are children. Depictions of the devastation and agony are delivered again and again to the TVs in every living room in the land.

Baghdad suffers such carnage each day.

Here, once will be enough.

Will a vengeful, flag-waving, self-righteous America then vote for a Clinton/Obama ticket or Obama/Edwards? An Edwards/Richardson pairing? How about Al Gore?

Not a chance.

A “United We Stand” America will send a McCain/Giuliani or a McCain/Brownback war team to the White House.

And the killing goes on and on and on.

The important point is this: The likely winners, like all the candidates in both parties, will be, self-proclaimed “Christians.” Once again, they will be too weak, yes, too cowardly, to put into practice Christ’s most challenging commandment: “Love your enemy.”

As a people we should ask, where do we find leaders with the moral strength and courage to chance such love?

Can our system of government even nurture them? Do we, a frightened people steeped in “might makes right,” bar them from the halls of power? Would we, who venerate a Christ or a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, ever actually have the courage to elect such a person—to act in the name of love?

I fear that unless we (and here I mean all humanity) quickly evolve so that we vest such leaders with real power, we as a species are doomed.

I don’t think that my streetcar acquaintance had any of this in mind when he challenged me about my service to our country; but this is where his challenge has led me.