March 10, 2008

Barack vs. Hillary: Differences that Count

 

Record-setting numbers of primary voters are deciding between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, using criteria that have often seemed confusing, even contradictory. I want to explore differences between these potential presidents that may be influencing this exciting nominating contest.

 

It’s clearly not about details of health care plans, in spite of the airtime the topic has taken up. The candidates’ programs and priorities are quite similar. Voters’ choices seem also to go beyond gender and racial identities and alliances, though those certainly are important factors.

 

So what qualities of these individuals might help us predict their relative success at crawling out of the deep Bush morass of the last seven years? What hints are available? And what do our choices between them have to say about us?

 

Hillary consistently uses the pronoun “I” when speaking of her future presidency. “I will solve your problems with health care, jobs, protecting the country.” Obama generally uses the plural “we” to describe his expected achievements. “We can create a different kind of politics and a country that is respected again.”

 

People bring the paradigms of their past experience to bear on current challenges. It’s inevitable, if perhaps limiting in some situations.

 

Hillary’s “I” begins with her missionary-like desire to save and adds the influence of many years of legal work. She wants to be the country’s lawyer – to advocate our interests, solve our problems, win our cases – as well as her own – against anyone who might get in her way.

 

This paradigm may explain her dramatic failure with health care reform in her brief tenure as change agent during Bill’s presidency. She was under the mistaken impression that she could solve the problem. She says she learned a lot from that experience. I wonder exactly what she learned. Her current paradigm sounds very similar.

 

Obama’s “we” is the stuff of a community organizer, who understands that no single person is strong enough to create lasting change. He wants to lead and organize us in necessary directions, in the Gandhian sense of “If you think you’re a leader, look behind you.”

 

The inspiration he creates isn’t as much about him as finding it in ourselves, if we are open to that possibility. It also suggests Obama’s attention to the importance of process and ownership, as well as substance, in developing policies and programs.

 

Hillary’s lawyer persona can make her seem tougher, or at least more adversarial. Her campaign tactics against Obama certainly make her appear more ruthless. Some may value that quality in our leader – especially when it comes to defending our country, and among those who believe that the world is primarily a struggle for survival. It’s perhaps about hope versus fear.

 

Her last-minute half-truths (NAFTA), personal innuendo (not a Muslim “as far as I know”) and explicit trickery (as in Canadian Parliament) are right out of the Karl Rove playbook. Like Narcissus at the lake, her people and the Rovians see their own reflection in the others and they don’t much like what they see.

 

When the Rovian approach is applied within one’s own party, the results can be damaging. Hillary has been providing sound bites for the McCain campaign as quickly as his technical people can keep reloading their video recorders. Consider her near-endorsement of herself and McCain for commander-in-chief.

 

These tactics belie her dramatic statements about the campaign being about issues that she cares so deeply about – displaying her willingness to cast over the side a person who deeply shares these concerns for her perceived personal advantage.

 

Obama’s response was clever and on-point: “Some people equate the beginning of life experience with their arrival in Washington.” I believe it requires a more visceral addition – moral outrage at an opponent who would risk compromising her party’s possibilities for rescuing the country for personal advantage.

 

In today’s dog-eat-dog world, something can be said for having our scoundrel being shrewder and trickier than their scoundrel. I remember Richard Nixon, representing us at meetings with Leonid Brezhnev, giving me some sense of security. I imagined them both checking their pockets and counting ashtrays after the encounters, but always had confidence we would come out ahead.

 

This approach didn’t change the dynamics between these men or our two countries, though it did prevent mutual annihilation for many years. Perhaps changing dynamics wasn’t much of a possibility in those days. Some people may believe it still isn’t – with our own politics or in the world at large. Again, it may be hope versus fear, or at least resignation. This may explain the large youth vote for Obama.

 

As the political arias of the last several weeks turn into the recitative of the long grind toward the convention, more basic aspects of the candidates’ characters will have more opportunity to emerge. I hope this period brings out the best in them, and in us.