The Perils of Bringing People Together

On Monday, Al Gore delivered what is sure to be remembered as the best environmental speech of all time when he accepted the Nobel Prize for his work to tackle global warming.

What gave his speech such overwhelming power was that it was infused with a sense of crisis with the specter that Nature itself is on the brink.

"We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency -- a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here," Gore said. "We are what is wrong, and we must make it right."

He doesn't shy from the observation that with survival at stake, just as in war, everything else must be secondary. He also embraces its corollary: that while there may be costs to truly confronting the climate crisis, but that with survival on the scale, those costs will be worth it.

While no other threat really matches global warming, the kind of deep worry it evokes can be felt by individuals dealing with other big issues: heavy student loan or credit card debt, a lack of health care, worry about a relative in Iraq, or fretting about getting a job after graduation. To anyone in those circumstances, everything else comes second as well.

These are the issues University of Iowa students will wrestle with throughout life. Having a president who understands their seriousness and who has the courage to give them the priority they deserve should be the minimum criteria when choosing a president.

That's why we should all be concerned about Barack Obama's fetishization of "bringing people together," a goal he has put at the center of his campaign. Obviously, the kind of political harmony he's talking about is an admirable aspiration.

As important as it is, however, having senators and congressmen get along better with each other seems small and inconsequential when achieving it gets in the way of survival and security. We can't put relatively abstract concerns about the tone of political discourse before concrete concerns about real-life issues. But a look at Obama's voting record shows that he has done just that all too often, and Iowans and Americans will pay the price for his misplaced priorities.

For instance, Obama voted for George Bush's energy bill, even though its billions of dollars in subsidies to oil and coal companies will massively increase global warming pollution; he was the Senate's No. 1 champion of liquid-coal technology that is supposed to replace gas (only problem: it creates twice as much pollution as regular old gasoline); and he voted to let credit-card companies raise their interest rates above 30 percent, making it harder for students struggling with debt to get their heads above water.

All of these votes did allow Obama to work across party lines with Republicans, which I'm sure helped create bipartisan goodwill in the halls of power.

But is chumminess among senators really worth increasing the peril to the planet or even making it harder for young people to make ends meet?

Let me put it this way: when your dorm room is on fire, it's not the time to settle the dispute over the weekend's beer bill. It's time to put out the fire. Too often, Obama is obsessing over the tone of the national conversation when what really matters is its substance.

Of course, I don't think Obama is doing this out of any malice or corruption. He seems to really believe in the transcendent importance of process. In part, it's a matter of temperament, and a lack of a real sense of urgency.

"My wife will tell you that by nature I'm not somebody who gets real worked up by things," Obama writes in his autobiography. "When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or 100 years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having possibly been worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath."

In times such as these, however, we need a candidate who does get worked up about threats to students' future financial security, about health care, and about the climate crisis, not someone who allows himself to get so wrapped up in abstract questions of the national mood that he neglects the flames lapping at the door.

This post was originally published in The Daily Iowan, the newspaper of The University of Iowa, where I did a reading last night of my new book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party at an event sponsored by the College Democrats.

Comments

[DemandTruth]

That's exactly why John Edwards is my candidate. He's the only one I believe will fight for me and the rest of America's workers.

It's high time America's most prized possession - her workers - are valued and represented again. How's anybody else gonna do that with all those IOU's from special interestes it took to get them elected?

[GuiltyByStander]

Let's not confuse "bringing people together" with selling out.

Obama may be an inept negotiator and unable to persuade Republicans to vote with him. I'll buy that. But we still need a president who can get Republicans to go with a new program.

Joe Biden is that Democrat. He's demonstrated his skill many times. He's been able to make Republicans vote like Democrats. The Biden-Bownback Amendment is the best recent example.