As the voting starts...

So the primary season is ready to roll, and before I weigh in I have to admit now, after years of doubt and concern, I am officially of the opinion that the nomination process for the most important elected office in the world is indefensible. The other week I was at a party and tried to explain to some Russians and Brits just how this process worked, and it was impossible to justify how a handful of voters in Iowa and New Hampshire determine the course of events.

Anyway, I’ve been following things closely from here. After spending so much time trying to guess the contours of the political landscape here in Russia, it is a relief to think about home. Even though American politics is corrupt with money, frequently devoid of substance, and often just a sorry spectacle of product-placement, it remains true that votes count, no one knows the outcome of elections, and while it has been a horrible couple of years, good and great things do occasionally happen.

I don’t want this to turn into yet another American political blog – there is plenty enough chatter about all that on the interwebs as it is – but I’m hoping that my fellow Democrats will find a away to see past Hillary Clinton’s machine and “roll the dice,” as one prominent member of the party put it a few weeks ago. I’m supporting Obama, for reasons that have as much to do with him as with the idea of what the Clintons represent and the misdirections the party has pursued under their leadership. In 2008 we have a clear opportunity to get on a new and better track, a once in a generation opportunity, and I’d hate it if we wasted it on Hillary.

First, we need to go back and look at some hard truths about the Clinton years. Through the lens of the Bush administration, it is impossible not to see it in a hazy and optimistic glow, but if we’re honest, we’ll note the rise of several worrying trends. Foremost are the politics of empty “centrism” and “triangulation,” and the impotent and failed rear-guard action against the resurgent Republican party. What the “New Democrats” stand for, what the Democratic Leadership Conference advocates, is nothing more than this: take your entire left-wing for granted (because who else are they going to vote for? Republicans?), and go ahead and say anything at all to get that squishy, undecided middle to vote for you.

Aside from the dishonestly and cynicism of this approach, it is hard to pull off unless you have a once-in-a-generation political showman to pull it off. In 1992, it was Bill Clinton, a natural if there ever was one. He had the additional benefit of being in the White House in peaceful times, when the economy was booming. And how did we spend the political opportunities of the 1990s? instead of shoring up and confirming the best elements that Democrats have stood for for generations dating back to the New Deal, we started giving them away. Some examples are famous, like welfare reform, or the failure to secure health care for all (which was just a gigantic failure for Hillary, and not some important learning experience as she tries to convince us today). But there are other, overlooked examples too. In an amazingly well-reported and well-written feature for Rolling Stone about the “War on Drugs” late last year, Ben Wallace-Wells notes Clinton had the opportunity to reform our epically stupid drug policy, which he promptly ditched out of fear of appearing “soft on crime.”

Clinton, we must admit, refused to actually fight for anything except his own ass. And so did the rest of the party. This cult of personality American-style forced us to spend fully half of Clinton’s time in office defending his job from vicious attacks thanks to his incredible personal shortcomings. And through it all, we suffered the two most devastating elections in party history in 1994 and 2000.

This is not a record to be proud of. Hillary carries the Clinton torch with none of the charisma, none of the optimism, and none of the hope. A vote for Clinton is made out of fear, which as I’ve said before, this is no way for Americans to disrespect the political heritage we have inherited. Her term in office will be brief, divisive, and a Pyrrhic victory of epic proportions. The ghastly horror of the Bush administration gives us a real opportunity to accomplish something, and we would be fools to avoid it.

We could do so with Barack Obama. Much has been made of his inexperience, but his opponents haven’t even bothered to explain what all their experience could offer us. The Boston Globe, in its endorsement of Obama, noted this. “It is true that other Democratic contenders have more conventional resumes and have spent more time in Washington. But that exposure has tended to give them a sense of government’s restraints. Obama is more animated by its possibilities.”

And what possibilities they are… not only America’s first African-American president, but only its second who is not a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant (the other, of course, being JFK). A man who has actually lived in other countries, who understands personally and deeply the cultural divides and landscape of the United States. And someone who is not strictly a baby-boomer – a solipsistic generational lump that we are best to drive over as quickly as possible, in my opinion (but that’s another post).

And in the interest of fairness… on the Republicans, the field is so ridiculous that it can’t be taken seriously. Where to begin… I lived in Giuliani’s New York, when it was set well on its way to becoming little more than the theme park for the rich it is now. I lived in Romney’s Massachusetts, where the only people that hate him more than the state’s Democrats are the state’s Republicans. He’s a liar and a fraud and a hair-do, and that’s being generous. Huckabee seems genuine, but he’s genuinely a moron. Fred Thompson… is he even running still? I forget. John McCain squandered any goodwill he may have earned in 2000 by his bizarre loyalty to Bush’s goons for eight years. Would a real “maverick” sponsor an anti-torture bill that allows torture?

The GOP race is an effort to answer several pressing questions. Who hates immigrants and homosexuals more? Who can give bigger tax breaks for millionaires? Who can continue America’s aggressive and ignorant foreign policy with the most disregard for the nation’s safety and reputation? Who can best pander to evangelical Christians and gun-nuts? It is rare that a party that has dug the country into such an impossible mess would choose collectively to jump off a cliff by trying to turbocharge the bullshit that got us in the mess in the first place.

This autumn is a rare opportunity to discredit an entire ideology of hate, greed, and ignorance in one swoop, and I hope the nation seizes it. I’m tired of being embarrassed about being American.