Maybe John McCain read the editorial in yesterday's Clarion-Ledger; for a certain Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour, did. It's too good not to quote, and it reflects the feelings of everyone I've talked to here in Oxford -- and I've talked to a lot. Under the headline, "Debate or Bailout":
"While the two senators' votes might be needed on Capitol Hill to determine the outcome of the [economic rescue] plan, Mississippi is not some remote corner of the world. We have airports, jets, cellphones, all the 21st century stuff to be connected with the world. A private jet could make it to Washington, D.C., closer to minutes than hours."
The editorial didn't point out, though it might have, that Oxford is 500 miles closer to Washington than is Crawford, Texas, where President Bush has spent much of his presidency. Same time zone, too.
Anyway, Haley Barbour, the good ole boy governor and Ole Miss graduate, was not about to be embarrassed in his own state by his own party and his own presidential candidate. No way, Jose! I sure would like to have had a wiretap on the telephone conversations between the governor and the candidate (and if things keep going the way they've been going, soon that may be no problem).
Now that the debate is settled, can we get serious? Could we please have a national conversation with substance? Will senators McCain and Obama drop those tired sound bites and level with us? Tell us the truth. If you tell us how bad the financial meltdown really is, what it means for the man on the street in Oxford, and what we have to do to pull out of it, we will be with you. All you have to do is ask. The American people are no strangers to sacrifice, although we haven't been asked for much of that in recent years. We know we're in a mess and we want to get out of it. Tell us how you think we can do that, and we'll decide which one of you has the better ideas.
But if you continue to talk down to us, to pander, to use scare tactics, to appeal to our worst instincts and give us cheap, short-term solutions that aren't solutions at all, to tell us we're the greatest nation on earth and ask nothing of us, we'll say a curse on both your houses and stay home. And that will be real, real bad for the future of this country.
So let's talk about what's happening in the real world. Let's talk about that shaky massive bailout of failing financial institutions without any oversight or review or protection for the taxpayers who in the end will pay for this. And pay and pay. And the government expects to do what its doing in secrecy? I have news for you. The man on the street in Oxford isn't stupid.
If the subject turns to foreign policy and national security tonight -- the stated topics for the debate -- lay out a plan for how we're going to pay for what we need. Saying we'll sell T-bills to China and Europe doesn't count as an answer. They're not buying anyway.
No, we're on our own here. And that may be a good thing. Yesterday afternoon in the library at Ole Miss, a few of us were having a real conversation about real people. We stopped talking about what Washington might do and started talking about what we might do. We started talking about how we might lead our leaders. This is revolutionary stuff -- especially for our leaders.
We knew we had to get back to some basics. We knew that 46 years ago men had died bringing African-Americans into this very university, to make sure African-American citizens had the same rights as all other citizens. We are all citizens first.
And that knowledge is what brought us back to our agenda. This was a workshop on full citizenship for lesbians and gays, sponsored by the university's Straight-Gay Alliance. We do not have full citizenship when we are denied the right to serve in the military solely because we have revealed our sexual orientation to the recruiter, to the men and women in our unit, to anyone at all.
Five of the eleven people in this meeting were straight. And except for two of us, they all came from Mississippi. You don't have to be black to see the gross injustice of racial segregation; you don't have to be gay to see the gross injustice of the law that makes lesbians and gays second-class citizens.
To end that injustice, our small band devised what we call the "Mississippi Strategy." It begins with educating the Mississippi Congressional Delegation and leaders in the state about the true nature of this ugly law and petitioning them to change it. Once they truly understand what this discriminatory law means, what it does, what it costs, then things will begin to change in Mississippi and in the country.
That's the most hopeful thought I've had all week.