Here's Some Political Commentary, For Your Entertainment

I know this has been floating around for nearly a month now, but a few too many people haven't seen it yet. So here's some political fun to start the week . . .

On Bulldogs

Although I've had access to television of late (a rarity), I didn't watch much of either the Republican or Democratic convention, mainly because watching politics doesn't give me much motivation to care about politics. It's easier (and less maddening) to skim the newspaper, pick up Newsweek, or look at the views of the candidates online. Party conventions are a little too propagandizing, a little too reminiscent of watching those black and white clips of a Hitler Youth Rally. That said, I did see a bit of Obama's speech last week, and last night I caught the end of Giuliani's tirade, as well as most of Palin's acceptance speech.

Obama's speech, as might be expected, was hopeful (yep). I'm not into the political thing enough to feel like I can give an intelligent assessment of whether this is just fluffy idealism (as the Republican contingent incessantly points out). Likewise, I'm not really able to give anything more than a superficial critique of either candidates' respective policies. This is not a pretext for political laziness. Rather, the ability to make intelligent argument about political policy is, unfortunately enough, beyond the reach of most Americans (regardless of their intellect). As with any field of knowledge, the ability to have an informed opinion about politics comes only with a significant amount of combined scholarship and real-life experience in the field. This is, in most cases, available only to those who have chosen to make it a career (i.e., politicians, lobbyists, scholars, etc.). The rest of us, when attempting to speak confidently about such complex issues, are mainly just talking out our asses.

With that, however, I think I have a couple valid avenues of criticism (at least in regard to my personal values). Take, for example, the general concept of valuing the earth, from keeping the environment we humans live in both healthy (for us) and beautiful to the concept that the relatively little wilderness that remains ought to be preserved. I am not attempting to argue the validity of this broader value. I know there are many who would repudiate it as an ideal, yet for what it's worth both parties at least claim to have (somewhat) of an environmental ideal (I even heard FOX news try to claim Palin was an environmentalist before her nomination was announced last week). My concern is the vagueness of that ideal as it is expressed from the Republican party. While on the one hand it is recognized that we ought to protect the environment, value wilderness, etc., there is, as far as I can see, no active effort to do so from the McCain campaign (the Bush administration, of course, being beside the point on this issue). The vitriolic chants of "drill baby, drill" while Giuliani was speaking didn't convince me that there was going to be one, either. Even if one were convinced that drilling in ANWR were a necessity for our nation's well-being, I would expect some sense of remorse in doing so from anyone that actually understood the value of wilderness. The same point could be made about the health care system. I'm not convinced of any one solution to our health care woes, but as one who's at least spent a little time working in the system, I know it's broken, and that changes need to be made. So while the Obama plan may or may not be the best solution to the problem, I think it's highly problematic that there's not really much recognition that there even is a problem from McCain and the Republican Party.

While I am not necessarily hopeful (sorry Barack) that many (or any) of these problems will be solved if Obama and Biden win in November, there is at least some comfort in knowing they'll at least be issues that are still on the table of discussion.