McCain and Obama: The Keys to the Finale

A rebel, on the Republican side, one exceptionally gifted, on the Democrat’s side, and an electorate always divided with a little more than two months left in the race.

For the first time in their history, the Americans must make a choice between two originals to govern their country. The originality of candidate John McCain is in his character rises from his character, that of Democratic candidate Barack Obama arises from his personal course.

The descriptor for McCain which comes to American’s mouths most often is “maverick,” a mix of rebel, nonconformist, and independence of spirit. The word today is rather (eulogistic). Rebel and courageous, McCain learned it in his prison in Hanoi: hostile to all regimes of favor, the fighter pilot refused the anticipated liberation offered to him by his Vietnamese jailers because they knew he was the son of the admiral commanding the U.S. pacific forces. This non-conformism was shown again when the then captain John McCain refused the rank of rear-admiral from the Secretary of the Navy. He was at that time the Navy’s liaison officer to the Senate. More than a well traced military career, the same as that of his father and grand-father, the officer chose to enter into the adventure of the political world. His independence of spirit, he showed to the Senate, where he never composed himself as an apparatchik of the Republican party. He often ended up supporting Democratic bills: which if good for the country were good enough for him. In 2002, he worked in tandem with the Democratic Senator Feingold to pass a law which would revolutionize the financing of electoral campaigns, putting a drastic ceiling to the amount of private contributions. For this he took the risk of the “Big Money” displeasure within the Republican movement.

In the eyes of the average American, the biography of candidate Barack Hussein Obama is in three ways original: he is black, his name doesn’t sound American, he’s an intellectual issuing from the progressive universities of the east coast. But, with extraordinary adaptive faculties, he knew never to be constrained into a particular category or community. He is the exceptionally gifted child of an America which has given him everything, and to which he never ceases to give his public recognition. Neither by his birth (of a Kenyan father, a non-practicing Muslim, and a white progressive agnostic mother), nor by his education, nor by his personal ideology, is Obama attached to the culture of the American black ghetto. Far from being one who retreats into well drawn communities, he is a political integrator. He has always shown himself to be reserved with regard to the practices of “positive discrimination” founded on only the color of skin. Obama is also as proud to be an American as McCain can be. While he was a student at Columbia he often read Saint Augustin to decide whether to become a Christian. In the Obama family, one prays before beginning a meal.

Sense of Sacrifice.

Original personalities, the two candidates incarnate the sense of sacrifice for the good of the community for which the American electorate waits in all who apply for the supreme function. They each represent a part of the ideal American. McCain is the war hero, the soldier ready to sacrifice his life for his country. Obama, the graduate lawyer of the best law school in the United States (Harvard Law) who scorned money to devote himself to the development of a poor neighborhood in Chicago.

Today the two candidates are equal in the poles. Its a paradox because of the laws of change, in a country where 80% of those polled are malcontent with the line followed by the current administration, which should profit Obama, who has made “change” his slogan, and whose lieutenants repeat “vote McCain, and prolong Bush for four years.” The truth is that Obama’s formidable electoral machine seems seized up. In spite of its financial power (more than 400 million dollars collected) and human (more than 100,000 young voluntary activists throughout the country), it doesn’t always seem to engage the real country. Having been the media’s pet for 18 months is beginning to serve Obama. His candidature is a victim of a “fed up” effect. In a recent poll over the electoral campaign in general, 76% of people questioned said they had especially heard talk about Obama, compared to 11% for McCain. 48% complained of having heard too much talk about the Democratic candidate and 22% said it had given them a less favorable opinion of him. The average American is wearied to see, night after night on TV news, the beautiful, the young, the elegant Obama addressing ecstatic crowds while the repeat the same slogan, the very general slogan, “Yes, we can!” (change the country).

Blinded by enthusiastic news coverage, Obama’s staff has fallen into the trap of the star syndrome. McCain made a point when he said that his opponent was ready to “lose a war to win an election,” making an allusion to Obama’s proposition to withdraw the troops from Iraq within sixteen months. The Republican candidate didn’t only criticize the unrealism and demagogy of his adversary. He equally succeeded in passing a clear message to the electorate: vote McCain, and put the interests of the country first; vote Obama, and put the interests of Obama first.

The Folly of Wall Street

The Democratic candidate, who spent several days on vacation with his family in Hawaii, has plenty of time to reflect on the ways to rebound his campaign. He knows that he has the Black and Hispanic electors, but he has not yet brought in the white center (“Independent”, one says here).

America is a nation where patriotism is still king. The New York Times, grand daily of the center left, has for example just published the entirety of the photos of the 500 American soldiers killed in Iraq. Many cars carry a sticker “Pray for our troops.” Obama knows that he must make an effort in this area. Last week his wife, Michelle, went to meet the wives of soldiers at the large base in Norfolk. The democratic candidate must also make less talk about him, and more about his program. What about health insurance, education, the credit crisis, budget deficit, or the price of gasoline? For these, Obama shouldn’t have any problems: he has succeeded in surrounding himself with the best experts in the country.

With regard to program, McCain has a slow start. His problem is to distance himself from the current administration. The casual manner shown by the Bush-Cheney team with regards to the Constitution and the fundamental principles of law have profoundly chocked the Americans, furious legalists. The practice of torture in the name of the “War on Terror”, was, here, very poorly received.

McCain cannot be content with a classic conservative economic program, founded on the supposed efficiency of a drop in tariffs and the credo worn down to “as little State as possible.” The folly of Wall Street restarted the intervention of the State and the necessity of more regulation of popular trends. In addition the Americans have shame for the state of decay of their infrastructure. In New Orleans, disfigured by Hurricane Katrina, the bumper stickers demand with humor: “When you’re finished with the reconstruction of Iraq, could someone think about restoring our city?”

Ideologically, McCain is not a Reaganite. His republican role model is Theodore Roosevelt. This last was not only a man of the “Big Stick” in foreign policy (as McCain has promised to be, notably in proposing the exclusion of Russia from the G8). He created the death tax, regulated Wall Street, nationalized millions of acres of profit in the National Parks: in doing so, he became the first progressive president of the country (1901-1909). Reviving, in his own way, a famous citation of Roosevelt’s, last week McCain confided in a journalist from the Washington Post: “Capitalism unbridled leads to the corruption of the system. One can see this in the Sub prime crisis.” In his book Worth the Fighting For (“the true quarrel with worth”), published in 2002, McCain writes: “A good government cannot shrink from its responsibility to incarnate the highest expression of the national will, and to be the last rampart against attacks against our founder’s ideals,” namely freedom and equal rights.

In the three televised debates which took place in September and October, McCain could not permit himself to come without a concrete proposition on education (the strong point of Obama’s campaign). The level of scholarship in disadvantaged school districts has never been so low. That of the Universities is much better, the access to which benefits from an effective and generous system of scholarships. The problem is that the equality of opportunity has been torpedoed before the age of entrance into the University.

In the opinions of all the commentators, these are the three debates which will decide between the candidates, more than their speeches at their respective conventions. The intuitive McCain will come with the advantage of his character, more cordial than that of the cold strategist, prudent and more “uptight” Obama. But the latter will come with a more solid economic and social program. The challenge for Obama will be to show that beyond his intelligence and youth, there lies also heart and character. For McCain it will be to show the he has a good program, capable of relaunching America, domestically in in the world.