One Utah

A thrilling aspect of this election cycle is that practically every day I get email from either Bill or Hillary Clinton.

Never before have I had this sort of intimacy with an American President and an international celebrity.

Just this afternoon Bill took time out from the campaign to send me the following note:

We know Senator Obama’s strategy: spend, spend, and spend some more.

His campaign is hoping their spending is enough to win the primary and bring this race to a close. But they weren’t counting on the incredible connection Hillary has made with Pennsylvanians or the remarkable support you have shown her.

Tonight, Hillary will share the stage with Senator Obama in a debate, and Pennsylvania voters will consider their final decisions over the next six critical days.

If you contribute to Hillary’s campaign today, you can be assured of two things: it will go right back out the door to help her win, and it will make a difference in this close race.

Unfortunately I don’t think that the Clintons between them, taken together, ever made an especially good president. The more I learn about Barack Obama (though he never sends emails!) the better I like him and the more I hope that he will win the nomination and the election. He’s no Ralph Nader, no Martin Luther King. More like Booker T. Washington (on a good day) or on a bad day, as our own Glenn Hoeffer suggests, more like Sanjaya. But still, even on a bad day Barack Obama would beat the pants off John “Grandpa Simpson” McCain.

However–

–the Malicious Cookie Monster Within Me (Poe called it the “Imp of the Perverse”) wants this nomination battle to go deadlocked and gridlocked right down to a massive train-wreck of a showdown on the Democratic convention floor.

But why?

Why am I not terrified that such a convention would destroy the Democratic Party candidate’s prospects in the fall election, by confusing the voters, by exposing the candidates to several more months of debilitating character attacks, by delaying the effective start of the actual campaign and by promoting “divisiveness” at the expense of “unity”?

Well to begin with, as a lifelong anarchist, I have never been all that impressed with the benefits of “unity”, as compared to its costs.

“Unity” is the behavioral ideal of our goose-stepping military, our jack-booted military-industrial complex, and our million-man army of corporate CEO’s.   But it is hardly ideal behavior for the rank and file of an aspiring democracy.

I see far more potential in the creative destruction that is so disparagingly called, “divisiveness”–or in the argot of the ecological sciences, “diversity.”

What the Democratic Party leadership wants has rarely been good either for the party or the country!

In this case what they predictably want is a rank and file of jack-booted party members goose-stepping in perfect unison to the hollow drum-beat of their leadership’s empty platitudes–the rhyming buzz-words so craftily assembled by an army of high-priced advertising account executives, from “data” mined in focus-groups and push-polls. The greasy goo that now substitutes for common sense and straight talk and courage to think and act AGAINST the conventional “wisdom.”

What I hope the party leaders will get, instead of goose-stepping obedience, is the sort of creatively destructive pandemonium that can only arise from a deadlocked convention. Only through maximum chaos can there be any hope of liberating the Democratic party, not to mention the country itself, from the iron grip of The Wealthy, The Privileged, and The Brain-Dead–our latter-day Captains of Industry and Gentlemen of the Leisure Class.

Both Hillary and Barack are hermetically isolated by their own political operatives from the exigencies of pedestrian daily life in America. They are completely encapsulated in self-congratulatory bubbles labeled:

“It’s All About…ME!!!!”

The ME Generation! First Bill, then George, then Hillary and Barack. Will it never end?

Either Hillary or Barack would have to be taken down hundreds of notches before they could ever begin to engage with the mundane policy, strategic and tactical decisions facing the average American and, should Providence ever be so kind, the actual President himself.  Before any actual policy decisions could be taken, we must first extricate our  President from in front of the White House dressing-room mirror:

“Mr. (Mrs.) President! Not one, not two, but FOUR commercial airliners have departed from their flight plans and are converging on the White House and Pentagon! And sir (ma’am), you’ve been in there with the Cosmetics Team for HOURS! “

Let us pray that Hillary lands roundhouse punches in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina, and sails confidently into the convention determined to lock it down until she gets exactly what she wants. It’s not about us, Hillary. It’s about you!

Let’s make this race as dead-even as possible going into the convention. And then when pandemonium breaks out on the convention floor, let’s replace the rigid, narrow, artificial, cynical, patronizing script of the professional spin-meisters and operatives and dirty-tricksters, with a riot of genuine original ideas, a wealth of diversity, a chaos of individual initiative. Let’s take the Democratic party and this entire election back from the PAC-lapping candidates and their still more cynical operatives, and return it not to the superdelegates, nor even to the regular delegates–but to the actual American electorate.

This entry was posted Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Democrats, National Politics, Party Politics, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, Zeitgeist. Both comments and pings are currently closed.