The Primary as Political Circus

Clinton and Obama turn nasty in debate

By Leonard Doyle in Columbia, South Carolina

Published: 23 January 2008

Tensions between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have spilled over into bad-tempered exchanges, mostly over the controversial role being played by the former president Bill Clinton in the election campaign. The attacks, during the course of a televised debate on Monday evening, saw the candidates glare at and speak over one another. They exposed the deep animosity and growing competitive fury as the climax of the primary season approaches.At one stage Mr Obama effectively accused the absent former president of lying to help his wife’s campaign. “I’m here. He’s not,” Mrs Clinton snapped, in reply. “I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes,” countered Mr Obama.Mrs Clinton tried to paint her opponent as untrustworthy on issues, saying that his votes in the Illinois state senate had facilitated sex shops near schools and that he once worked as a lawyer for a “slum landlord”. It was a church project, Mr Obama said, somewhat haplessly.The debate also turned to disputed remarks Mr Obama made about Ronald Reagan in Nevada last week, for which he has been attacked. “I said that Ronald Reagan was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to push through an agenda that I objected to,” said Mr Obama. “While I was working on those streets [of Chicago] watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.”

The debate returned to the subject of Bill Clinton when Mr Obama was asked to respond to the remarks by the Nobel Prize-winning black author Toni Morrison, who once observed that Bill Clinton “is our first black president, blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime”.

Praising Mr Clinton’s affinity with black people, Mr Obama brought the house down with a remark that he would have to investigate more of Bill’s dancing abilities, before judging “whether he was in fact a brother”.

All day yesterday Mr Obama’s complaint that he did not know who he was running against remained valid. Mrs Clinton flew back to Washington DC in the early hours, leaving the job of campaigning in South Carolina for the next few days to Mr Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea.

Mr Clinton’s first campaign stop was at the Lizard’s Thicket restaurant to meet voters and eat a Southern breakfast of “coffee, grits and eggs”. He brushed aside Mr Obama’s complaints. “I feel pretty chilled,” he insisted, claiming he was just pushing back at “false and persistent criticisms of Hillary… There was nothing specific I said which was inaccurate,” he said. “I try to be very careful about what I say and not to use too many adjectives.”

But the bitterness of the feuding still hung over the campaign. It was all about “Bill” when the media finally caught up with Mrs Clinton. But she sidestepped the questions, calling them “totally off topic and off base… I think what we saw last night is that he’s very frustrated – Senator Obama is very frustrated,” she said.

Mrs Clinton has gone in search of votes for the bigger challenge ahead, when 22 states vote on 5 February. The expectation always was, that with its large Africa American electorate, South Carolina would go to Mr Obama. But given the excitement Mr Clinton generates when he travels around the state, even that is no longer a certainty.

* Fred Thompson last night quit the race for the Republican nomination. He failed to register in double figures in the early primaries and had pinned his hopes on a surprise win in South Carolina. Instead the state plumped for John McCain and the former Tennessee senator could now throw his support behind the frontrunner.

For rolling comment on the US elections visit: independent.co.uk/campaign08

I think it’s pretty sad that two such charismatic and potentially powerful candidates, candidates who should be consensus-seekers, trying to reach out to the great masses of us who are sick and tired of “business as usual” for the corprate government, seem compelled to rip one another apart this way.  They are of the same party.  They share much the same agenda.  Both of them have reason to be sensitive to minority issues, whether gender, or race, or age.  Both are intelligent people who have taken time and given thought to what the average middle and working class American wants and needs,  and what we feel should be our legitimate role in the global economy and world political arena.  They have a chance to make a statement – WE are the true voice of America, not the clique of corporate hacks now running our nation, the cabal who who have sold their souls to banking and industry and sold our freedoms up the river in the process.  Instead, they rip into one another, each trying to demonize the opponent who is not really opposed at all, but an ally in the greater scheme of things.

I’ve always hated this aspect of American politics.  The primaries pit like against like, and emphasize that which divides rather than that which unites. The media treats the process of selecting a party’s candidate as an opportunity to report on controversy and contention, and if no controversy readily presents itself, they will try to manufacture one. The candidates end up focused on why you should not vote for their opponent, not why you should vote for them.

Presidential politics is all about image and sound bite nowadays.  We never really get a chance to know and understand what any candidate advocates, what causes and policies they support, what they propose as economic, or foreign policy, or social welfare programs.  Such things can’t be described and communicated in a 30 second campaign commercial.

And after all the heated debates, all the acrimonious argument prior to the primaries, once a nominee is selected, all the defeated aspirants are supposed to rally round the party’s choice and push for the chosen one as hard or harder than they pushed against  him/her just weeks earlier.  The whole process begins to feel plastic, a facade for something going on behind the scenes where we, the governed, are manipulated and from which we are excluded.

As a child way back in the turbulent 60’s, I used to fancy that a career in politics woud be an exercise in public service, or statesmanship.  Genuine principled leadership.  That particular vision was forever bloodstained by the political assasinations and violent protests of 1968, and tarnished for good by Nixon and his criminal crew.  I’ve stayed involved, and diligently voted in both national and local elections as a point of pride.  But it’s been more out of the conviction that if I don’t cast my ballot, I have no right to complain about the government we end up with.  And I prize my right to complain about the government.  I do it often, with gusto and enthusiasm, especially when we as a people manage to elect a disaster like “George W.”  But I no longer want to involve myself personally.  I’m not certain that you can go into the business of government without compromising your principals to some degree.  It’s a crying shame.  But, at that, our system is still better than what much of the rest of the world uses for “political choice”. 

What I do find amusing is the probability that our next Democratic presidential nominee will be either a woman or a black man.  And possibly running against a Republican candidate who is a Mormon.  None of those seemed possible back when I first began to pay attention to such matters.  The Kennedys’ Catholicism was a legitimate issue to raise back them to many people, and respectable working men and women took to the streets at the prospect that a march led by Rev. Martin Luther King might pass through our placid, lily white neighborhood.  Times have changed.  They’ve changed a lot.

But let others play the power games.  I can put my own foot in my mouth quite easily, thank you, without an assist from some network reporter looking for a “story.”  And as an Assistant Public Defender, I’ll never have to worry personally about fundraising and lobbyists and public relations.  Let those who thrive on such things have their fun.  I’ll just stand by the ringside and try to enjoy the circus.

Hilary, Barak – why don’t you consider laying off one another and laying into that idiot now occupying the office you aspire to.  Those would be some fireworks worth the seeing!