Politics and you …
Posted: March 20th, 2008 | Filed under: Other Sports | 14 Comments »
OK, everyone knows that this blog tries to avoid politics for the most part, but I really want to try something, a challenge to you, a political experiment, if you will*.
*Whenever I hear the phrase, “if you will,†I always think of that scene in “The Sure Thing†where John Cusack is having one of his sex fantasies about the extremely young Nicolette Sheridan.**
Sheridan: Come on Giblet. One more time. One more time.
Cusack: I can’t. Tomorrow. I promise.
Sheridan: It was so good. It was so masterful. Relentless, but with a delicate touch. Confident. Creative. I was overwhelmed. You’re a true artist.
Cusack: Just let me sleep a while. Five minutes. A grace period, if you will.
**It seems like every time I do the quick Internet research on someone quite famous, I find out something that I’m absolutely certainly I should have known — but didn’t. In this case, I vaguely knew that Nicolette Sheridan was married to Harry Hamlin, and I think I knew about her engagement to Michael Bolton. But I had no idea that as a girl she was deeply involved with Leif Garrett. I guess I’ve never seen the E-Hollywood story on Nicolette Sheridan.
A few years ago — well, I can tell you, it was 12 years ago — I read a story in Esquire or GQ or one of those magazines by one of my writing heroes Richard Ben Cramer about Bob Dole. This was before I read RBC’s brilliant “What it Takes,†his book about the 1988 Presidential Candidates and what it takes to become president — more, what it takes to even WANT to become president.
Anyway, at the time I didn’t know much about Bob Dole — this was before I moved to Kansas City — and I was not especially open to knowing more. I always kind of just felt like he was a grumpy old guy who would stop you on the street and lecture you about wearing your baseball cap backward. I’m sure I only read the story because I was on a plane, and perhaps because I was intrigued by Richard Ben, who had written a very interesting and offbeat piece in Sports Illustrated about Baltimore.
Anyway, I started reading it, and I found something odd. I found that I really liked Bob Dole. This had nothing to do with the presidential race or his political history or anything else. I liked HIM. I liked his life story. I liked the way he dedicated his life to this country. I liked that he had (has) convictions, and while he wasn’t perfect, while he had made his mistakes, that didn’t make me like him less. It actually made me like him MORE. Because he kept coming back. He survived German machine gun fire. He survived the turbulent 60s, when he was at various times despised by the conservatives and moderates alike. He referred to himself in the third person, but didn’t seem to mean anything by it. I really liked the guy. I admired him in a way that goes beyond politics.
I can’t say that was a life-changing experience or anything like that. But ever since then, I’ve looked for stories about people. I’ve come to believe that these cartoon characters we often create in politics and sports and life — Clinton as oversexed bubba, Bush as frat-boy buffoon, Gore as wooden tree hugger, Dole as cranky grandpa — while fun, miss the point in deeper ways than just the obvious. We don’t know who will make a good president. Not really. The historically great and beloved presidents — Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Roosevelt, Jefferson, Truman and Wilson and Reagan — were all incredibly flawed men. They all had a huge portion of America who despised them*. They all had good qualities and not so good qualities. They came to the presidency with different levels of experience. Their greatness and goodness, even now, is constantly debated. They all had a commitment to America. They stood for things. They had compelling stories.
*I always loved the story about the businessman who hated FDR. Every morning, he used to go to the train station, buy a paper from the paper boy, glance at it, and hand it back to the boy. Finally one day the boy asked, “Sir, what are you looking for?†The man said, “An obituary.†The boy said, “But the obituaries are inside the paper.†The man said, “The son of a bitch I’m looking for would have his obit on the front page.â€
So here’s my challenge: I would like you to write a short essay — short essay — about why you like Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama. You can send it to me at this email address. There are only three rules:
1. The essay must be short — think 400 words or less.
2. The essay should be about one candidate and cannot mention, either by name or by insinuation, any of the other candidates. I’m not looking for any “I like Barack Obama because I do not like Hillary Clinton†stuff.
3. The essay must be in English. I sadly cannot read any other language.
I would like to post some of these essays (with first name only — your identity will be safe with me) but I have no idea if anyone will respond. LIke I say, it’s an experiment. If you will.
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Joe,
Do we have to write about one of those three? No chance to express why we might be picking none of the above this fall? I know that what you’re doing here is more about biography (ours and theirs) than politics. But Obama, Clinton, and McCain aren’t running for griot; they’re running for president. Or I can go back to just reading and wait for spring training to finally, finally end.
I must say that I share the disposition of many of the conservative talking heads (though, unlike many of them, I like to think that my opinions come off in a way that doesn’t make me look like a pompus ass), when I say that McCain would not me the candidate of my choice, if anything simply because of his inexperience in the arena of economics, and his moderate leanings on several key issues.
OK, this is starting to sound essay-esque…I’ll E-Mail the rest…
Hi, this isn’t related to the blog entry, but i wasn’t sure how else to pass this along; your book is excellent. Your writing style spurned me to invest in the paperback, and it was a great purchase. Engaging and revealing of Buck & his era. Good work.
What significant portion of the population despised George Washington before he became President? By the 1790s, Jeffersonians certainly disliked him, but prior to that, he was a universally beloved national hero.
I had the same reaction to Dole when I read “What it Takes”. The man was hardly wihtout faults, but funny as hell and gutsy as all get out.
I would be more interested in essays regarding a young Nicolette Sheridan.
I decided about six years ago, at age 24, to stop following politics. It depressed me, hearing all these people pandering to the public, asking us for our votes, kicking dirt on each other. Watching them debate each other, I thought to myself–these aren’t the best men America has to offer? They were mediocre at best, little kids trying to make each other look bad.
The 2000 election had a lot to do with me becoming so cynical about politics. Here’s why: Because in general, the incentive to vote is small because the chance of one vote actually making a difference is about one-in-a-billion. And in 2000, we found out that that one-in-a-billion chance doesn’t exist; that if one vote would make a difference, then there will be recounts and judicial decisions that will override any hypothetical one-vote margin of victory.
So even though this campaign’s been going on for over a year now, I haven’t really seen either of these candidates speak. I don’t read newspaper articles about them and I’m not really informed about their positions.
Having said all that, here is why I support Barack Obama.
1. I hear he’s charismatic. And in the few video clips I’ve seen of him, he does look like he has his shit together.
2. I think it would be cool if we had a black president; I just think a lot of the racial tensions that plague our society would be a little less bad.
3. I really like the “Yes, We Can†video circulating on YouTube. You can see why young people like the guy; I can’t picture any other politician having a video that … groovy. Seeing that video was the final thing that put me into Obama’s camp.
Seriously, that’s it. I’m not going out and campaigning for the guy, or becoming a big fan, or even trying to read up on his beliefs/positions. But I did vote for him, and will do so again if given the opportunity (and if nothing else comes up to change my mind, like a wicked McCain-sings-the-Beatles video).
I’ve yet to see the politician I liked.
Voting for Obama helps me get rid of my white guilt.
Just kidding.
I think.
Woodrow Wilson was not a great president. Yes, he helped outlaw child labor and he busted up the trusts, but the guy was TERRIBLE on civil rights; he was responsible for egregious executive breaches of power (just read the Espionage and Sedition Acts); he was so uncompromising on the League of Nations that he doomed it to failure; and he was complicit in the peace settlement at Versailles that basically screwed up the rest of the 20th century. What’s more, he suffered a stroke that incapacitated him during his last year in office while his wife basically ran the country. I guess that last one isn’t entirely his fault, but he should have had better people around him to deal with the situation. I think intelligent people can argue over whether he was a passable president, but no way he deserves to be listed alongside Lincoln, Washington, FDR, etc.
Irony overload!!! Joe Posnanski invites essays, but limits them to 400 words.
To: Mark Dittmer
Thank you for dropping out of the political process. I am glad that there is one less vote that is based on a candidate’s charisma, skin color, and coolness.
Just a guess, but I suspect that the Tories who remained in America after the war weren’t too thrilled with Washington.
Seriously Joe, unless your idea of cracking down on free speech, throwing dissidents in prison, outlawing alcohol and getting the country into a meaningless war that killed hundreds of thousands of americans should merit “historically great and beloved” treatment, I think you need to reconsider you views on Wilson.