A Hero to the Media May Not be a Good Choice for President

As with every presidential race, we are driven by the media to choose a candidate and support that candidate and defend that candidate until he or now she is removed from the list of candidates or follow our selected leader to the ends of the earth, no matter what.

I learned a valuable lesson this past election cycle by signing on with Dennis Kucinich. I learned that politicians are human, though some may be uniquely gifted and brilliant humans, but they arrive to do this work with their flaws too. By human I don't mean that I thought previously that humans were not capable of being politicians. Rather what I mean is that no matter whom one wishes to align with, there are the reasons one should also be as generous to him or her as one is to one's Aunt Millie when she has had a bit too much to drink or has said one too many awful things about your latest heart throb. In other words, you may come from the same intellectual and political family but there are those moments when you just wish you didn't.

Heroes too are human. We have so few these days and when we find one, we generally want to deny what is so unheroic about him or her. In the case of many journalists, believe it or not, I have some heroes and one of them is James Carroll. I think he became my hero due to his book American Requiem. That book spoke to me of so much at the heart of my own life and though there are gaping dissimilarities between his life and mine -- he was a priest, his father was in the Air Force and before that worked for J. Edgar Hoover, and he met the Pope and has had a sterling career as a writer and thinker. However, whatever I make of the differences between us, when I read his memoir, I was amazed at how this basic stance that he took regarding the war in Vietnam distanced him from his father and the ways in which my own stances on a number of issues also distanced me from my father allowed me to see the struggle he took to become who he became.

That is my homage to James Carroll. I read his column in the Boston Globe today as I do every Monday morning. I believe he has much to say to us all about the ways in which our basic goodness can rule the day and the fact that we choose not to acknowledge that is the basis for most of his columns. But at some point even a hero has a clay foot sticking out of his mouth. Today was one of those days. I realize that to many people this will not at the face of it seem so disastrous but here comes my concerned comment: Yes, we are all imperfect and that is just the way we are made but the fact that your conclusion is because we are imperfect and can never be otherwise that someone like Barack Obama should be president is a tad off the mark for me.

The reason for this has nothing to do with the substance of Senator Obama's speech on race which I do agree turned the tide in assessing his ideas. Though, as someone else has already pointed out that by acknowledging the 1,000 pound elephant in the room after he has shat on the rug is not the most courageous moment to speak about him or necessarily the most propitious. Yet here we are with the damn elephant shit all over the rug, the media of all kinds up in one camp or the other about what a brave or stupid man Obama is and James Carroll chooses to speak about how imperfect we are.

Hell man, heroes, as we all know who have studied much of our literary history, are a breed apart because we need a breed apart to have them as the archetypes they have become. I do mean by heroes though the kinds that are easily adapted into comic books and short films with lots of colored drawings. Real people, Jim, if I may call you that, have always been incapable of being heroes and our literature is filled with the human heroes we have elevated who have then descended in such a crashing roar that we only need to look at the newspapers daily to find those who have killed themselves over it (and this is conjecture on my part but I would assume that the recent suicide of Vicki Van Meter is one example of that). This kind of behavior of holding candidates, heroes, anyone to a different standard of behavior than the rest of us is a surefire way to destroy what the founding fathers intended.

It was not just because of the checks and balances of the constitution that we can help to guarantee elected officials will behave but because of the oath of office they have taken. It is that oath, that sworn promise to uphold and defend that makes an elected official's job of a different significance than say a writer's job. I get to sit here and say what I can and try to get others to read it. But I didn't swear an oath to preserve and protect, defend and keep true to anything other than the commitments I have made in my private life for which I should and expect to be held liable.

Here we are, again, in the throes of another horrible turf war in the Democratic Party. We live in a time when it is hoped that more of us have matured because we need grown ups to run this country. Yet to be told that Obama spoke to us as if we were adults tells me too much about what the media want to think of me anyway. Yet, and I know this is going on and on about what is so blatantly obvious by now:

We need to realize that no matter who we put into the White House in November to replace the administration we put into office before them, we are accountable too. We are so afraid of power that we shy away from it. That is a huge mistake and the media like to keep us in that position vis a vis the government's power because it assures them of a job.

As we all know, Barack Obama has to put on his pants every morning. Hillary Clinton does too as does John McCain. Just like us they have feelings and cares. What makes them different is the ways in which they want to serve their country. Why should that make them heroes rather than just good citizens? And that is what we should be talking about right now. Who do we think can serve us best and who will keep true to the oath of office? After that all discussions of the color of their pants and the way they wear them should prove to be irrelevant.

Comments

[frustratedinohio]

I really can't stop laughing. Tears in my eyes. The comments are killing me.

[frustratedinohio]

I can't stop laughing. For me Obama is the elephant in the room and I had no idea there was a past tense to the word shit.

[laderrick]

Huh? To answer your question, Obama. As to the rest -- what was all that?

[4wehttam]

Ummm, sorry but what was the point of this? You lost me with the title.

[mamak]

Why buffer your points in so much muddled verbose? I understand that you had an epiphany of sorts but ...somehow seriously constipated.

[FearlessFreep]

"Pity the nation that needs a hero." "No, pity the nation that NEEDS a hero!"--Bertolt Brecht, GALILEO

[FearlessFreep]

Oops! That should be:

[FearlessFreep]

"Pity the nation that doesn't have a hero." "No, pity the nation that NEEDS a hero!"--Bertolt Brecht, GALILEO

[CaptainObvious]

In the same way we are able to turn people into heroes, we can also turn them into demons. Many people in this country elevated bush to heroic status in their minds after 9/11. he was able to demonize an entire religion, and convinced his followers to embark upon the Modern Crusades. The ease with which you were able to equate Obama with elephant dung leads me to believe that you have elevated Hillary to a heroic status in your mind, which is why it feels like anyone who opposes her must be evilly conspiring against her. I have yet to see Obama perform any heroic deeds. But I have listened to what he is trying to say, and it's the same thing I've been trying to say.

[calluna]

It was muddled, but just to clarify, she wasn't comparing OBAMA to elephant dung. She was saying that race was the 1000-pound elephant in the room, but it wasn't until the Wright thing came along that Obama had to confront it.

[frustratedinohio]

Is that where it gets a bit messy in the room?

[peterg76]

The media doesn't care about informing electors, they're favouring the candidate (e.g. George Bush, John McCain) who is most likely to create disasters, thereby guaranteeing the job security of these crypto-journalists.

[sstansbe]

Wow! This blog was really not good. Way muddled. I also think you are a little off mark about the point of James Carroll's column.

[Jacee]

Who do we think can serve us best and who will keep true to the oath of office?

[lbrillante]

Have worked for a well known philosopher I can't say that any condition is always heroic. I think it depends on the person and the circumstances. For a person with a crippling disease putting their pants on in the morning may be heroic. Maybe the more interesting question here is when are you heroic? What is a heroic act for you? Are you willing to do it? Personally I do think it was a heroic step for Senator Obama to take the moment and everything at stake and to do his best to address the issue confronting him and us. Maybe not as heroic as sacrificing life and limb but still a brave move.

[calluna]

One problem is that hero status is not absolute. Look at McCain. Many of us would not be able to survive close to a decade of physical and psychological abuse and then go on to lead a productive life. Today, however, we have no trouble portraying him as a doddering, dangerous old has-been. Obama might look heroic today, but who is to say how he will be perceived a decade from now? And I can hear the chorus now "Like the greatest president who ever lived!" But you can't know that. The higher we stick people up on a pedestal, the further they tend to fall. It's human nature to knock down their idols.

[PistonMoaned]

What an obtuse mess. Bloviation in search of an editor. 700 words to say "I learned that politicians are human."

[NC4Obama]

A: Obama

[NC4Obama]

Q: Who do we think can serve us best and who will keep true to the oath of office?