Before mid-1998 I had never really been politically active. Being a pacifist of sorts I've had flare-ups of opposition when Bush I took us into Desert Storm, when Clinton decided the best action in Kosovo was to start blowing shit up, and of course when Stimpson W Bush decided to a) run for president in the first place, and b) use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to do whatever the fuck he could think of.
My first real twinge of active (as opposed to reactive) politics came in 1998 when Jesse Ventura decided to run for Governor of Minnesota. I was living in St. Paul at the time, and had a courier job where I listened to his midday radio show every day, and I came to realize, much to my shock, that he was the best candidate of the three available. I voted for him, and he amazingly won. And he did a pretty damn good job for an independent executive in an absurdly partisan state.
I also lived in the DC area during Marion Barry's rise and fall. I mention that because of this: I am fiercely and devotedly anti-Bush, and John McCain fits a description I read several months ago of Mitt Romney, "if he could get elected as a Pirate, he's run as a Pirate." Frankly, a republican being elected at this point on the coattails of Stimpy's 19% approval rate would be an indictment of the Democratic leadership more than anything.
I'm left to fence between Hilary, who I find highly capable if not amazingly annoying (oh, and Bill? PLEASE shut it. Thanks.) and Barack Obama. Obama is a powerful presence, and he has the charisma and the it-factor to bring people up and out, and that's very exciting.
The problem is this: When I step back and look at Obama on paper and in practice, with the oratories and the general big ideas and big hopes and big dreams and big changes and yes we cans and all that, it strangely reminds me of someone no one really wants to be reminded of:
Sharon Pratt Kelly.
Remember her? You may not. Sharon Pratt Dixon (later Kelly) was a longtime local DC political player, a representative for the local power company who managed campaigns and married a DC Councilmember. She ran for Mayor of DC in 1990 when incumbent Marion Barry was caught smoking crack in a sting operation and announced he would not seek reelection. Her campaign was a broad reform message based on 'cleaning house with a shovel not a broom', and her grassroots campaign came from well behind to win the election comfortably.
Just one problem: she got into office and it became apparent relatively quickly that she, in fact, hadn't the slightest idea what she was doing. She got into the chair, attempted to implement a bunch of shortsighted ideas, met council resistance to the point of spending the back half of her term essentially neutralized as a leader, to a point so bad that none other than Barry himself was able to come back around and defeat her in 1994.
The Obama/Clinton slapfight has given us zero insight into how either one would perform as president. I think its fair to say that one of the two will likely be elected based on the fact that we pretty much know what the McCain camp has in mind, and it isn't much different than what Stimpy has us stuck in. Nonetheless, I can't help but hope that we have someone who can do the work to get this nation back into a decent place and a good standing in the world, because a loud failure may bring us right back into the fire in four years.
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