So tomorrow is the so-called Potomac/Chesapeake/"Crabcake" primary. There was a time, not so long ago, when I was looking forward to this day, but that time passed sometime after New Hampshire. I now find myself in the untenable position of supporting one candidate over another for reasons I can only justify in emotional terms.
This wasn't how I envisioned it when I first imagined a Hillary Clinton run, back before I'd even heard the name Barack Obama. When I did hear Obama's keynote speech in 2004, I felt the same enthusiasm about him that I did about Hillary: this guy will be the future of the party. But I thought that future would materialize a little later down the road.
Obama isn't as young as he looks, but he certainly has a lot of good years ahead of him. For Hillary, it's pretty much now or never. I wish that weren't so, but things are different for women in the public sphere. Which pisses me off, but it's the reality. Women above a certain age are still held to impossible standards of female beauty and modesty, and not all that much has changed since the Middle Ages when it comes to fearing and vilifying older women with wisdom and power. Which is one of the many reasons we so desperately need to see a woman in the White House -- besides Geena Davis.
But I know gender and age are skin-deep issues, as much as race is. On the latter issue, it really did break my heart to see both Clintons squander so much of the good will they had genuinely earned from the black community over the years. And for what -- politically, even, leaving morality aside? No gain at all, and possibly irreparable losses. But if it weren't race, it would have been something else. The "Clinton machine" may not play as many levels underground as the likes of Rove & co., but they're certainly willing and able to use a means to an end. And Obama's people, as close to the line as they may go to position their candidate, are not going to cross it in the way that the Clinton team will. That's just a given, and I've faced that fact.
And I know as well as anyone what America needs right now -- and it's not more fire fought with fire. What Washington need is a giant freaking fire hose. But yeah, "change," yada, yada. Even as I say the word, I wish it struck as deep a chord with me as Hillary's story does.
Her story is a woman's story, one that's different from mine but still resonates with me on a personal level. While, as a writer and an introvert, most of my battles are inner, and I wrestle on the page, her battles are outer and she wrestles in the public sphere. Her story is one of lifelong idealism, hard work, but also much complexity -- strength and weakness, courage and compromise, successes and failures. To paraphrase the ending of Carl Bernstein's bio,
A Woman in Charge, she's always stood for good things, but sometimes there's a disconnect between her actions and her ideals. Sometimes short cuts are taken; patience is in short supply. Which all sounds a bit like the styles of many of her male predecessors who sought this office. Not to mention her husband, or her own ill-advised identification with Johnson, but also Truman, both Roosevelts, and all the way back to Jefferson and Adams, with everyone in between -- some theatrically flawed and some just plain pedestrian, at least a handful inexplicably devoid of charisma (well, I guess it was easier to get away with that before the age of television.) But none of these men were without inner contradictions. Should a woman be held to a higher personal standard in any of these regards?
And for all this talk of Kennedy, look at JFK's life and family background and you don't see Obama the family man. Sure, Barack did some drugs as a kid and didn't get straight A's in high school, but let's be serious here. George W. Bush was an alcoholic and cokehead for most of his life. Obama is the rare person who is impossible to smear. Whatever Hillary says about the Republican steamroller, they're going to have trouble finding anything substantial on the man himself, because he's laid everything out there, he's pretty much is who he is, and that person is someone America likes, from Iowa to Louisiana to Maine.
So does that mean I'm voting for him?
I can't say that it does. But until tomorrow, I can't absolutely say that it doesn't.
Personal angst aside, there are a few policy differences that make a difference to me. As someone who's gone years at a time without health insurance (after a melanoma scare in my late teens) and lost some sleep over it, I like the idea of at least some basic health insurance for every last person in the country. I also trust Hillary's relative foreign policy experience, her personal relationship with world leaders, and, in general, her instincts and leadership ability.
If this weren't a popularity contest, or, I should say, a personality contest, I'd have no trouble justifying a vote for her. But there's this nagging feeling that the element in Obama's personality that people gravitate toward is what will heal this dangerous divide in America, and actually bring people together, rather than just make sure the good guys beat the bad guys (by which I mean the Right-Wingers, of course ;) If that's true, then despite Obama's youth and the fact that he might have other moments, maybe America won't, if it doesn't seize this one.
On the other hand... on the other hand... Like I said, Hillary had me at hello, and she never really did anything to let me down as a supporter, except not being Barack Obama. Life sure isn't fair sometimes.
Oh well. I guess the exercise of democracy is like the exercise of anything else; if it really hurts, you know it's probably starting to work.
