During last Wednesday’s debate, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos devoted a significant amount of time to pressing the candidates, particularly Barack Obama, about recent controversies. Since then, some of his supporters have been outraged by the occasionally rough treatment of their candidate.
To begin with, I would agree that in an ideal world, everyone would remain focused on the issues, and votes would be decided by the candidates’ stances on health care, foreign policy, taxes, etc. This is not, however, the case. The reality of running for president in the United States is that your life will be examined in detail and anything remotely relevant or scandalous will be publicly aired. Anyone who doesn’t know this has no business running for president. Part of the challenge is handling the unfair questions, absurd attacks and bizarre distortions.
That said, the average American would probably get annoyed to say the least when their candidate is on the receiving end of the abuse. A scandal-obsessed media that can prevent the best person from winning, especially when so much is at stake, is a scary thing. As a Clinton supporter, I am quite familiar with the feeling. If last Wednesday upset Obama fans, they should look back at transcripts of past debates to see the questions put to Clinton. The truly remarkable thing about the debate wasn’t the tough questioning of Obama, it is the fact that so many people find this so offensive. Where was the righteous anger when Hillary Clinton was asked if she could control her husband? Why wasn’t there a wave of protest when she was asked what she wanted to say to the New Hampshire voters who didn’t think she was likeable?
For months, I have watched as Obama was spared much of what Clinton had to deal with. She’s been bearing well with all the rough handling with extraordinary poise and resilience, never letting herself be flustered by the low blows of debate moderators or pundits. It is not that I enjoy watching Obama be subjected to such treatment, but that I think the treatment of both candidates should be examined with the same degree of scrutiny.
Furthermore, I think that it is time to stop and reflect on the questions that were asked. While the number of non-issue questions was perhaps excessive and a few questions were ridiculous (Does Barack Obama believe in the American flag?), some raised important and substantive points.
In particular, I do not think that asking Obama about the now-famous “bitter” remark he made in San Francisco is at all out of line. Saying that bitter voters “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” is a very serious statement. I have a lot of respect for Obama and I originally hoped that a clarification of his remarks would involve sentiments I could generally agree with, but I was gravely disappointed. After asking for a little understanding of a misstatement and highlighting some of the challenges facing ordinary Americans, Obama then proceeded to reiterate a very similar conception of the everyday citizen.
Obama continued to paint a picture of small town, rural Americans who were resentful about being left behind by the government and driven to seek refuge in religion and guns. He completely failed to address the last part of his statement, which associated these Americans with racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. It is startling that a man who talks about the importance of bringing people together and creating change would also hold such negative stereotypes. His statement showed a lack of respect for the sincere motivations that underlie the faith and beliefs of millions of Americans. I would still like to believe his views on this subject give more credit to the average American, but the fact that he did not make a point of saying so is something worth discussing.
Furthermore, when his response to such questioning is to denounce the practice of harping on a single badly worded statement while simultaneously managing to revive the 1992 cookie quotation, I have a harder time seeing him as the embattled defender of a better kind of politics.
An uglier remark came after the debate when Obama said, “Senator Clinton looked in her element. She was taking every opportunity to get a dig in there. That’s her right, to kind of twist the knife a bit …” I don’t fault Obama for throwing the occasional elbow, but I do think we should recognize that he is playing the game as well.
Modern political campaigns take advantage of the media’s battering of their opponent and encourage the ensuing scandal, then protest about the unfairness of the media when it happens to them. If we actually want to change this system, rather than insist that we do when under fire, we need to sort out the substantive controversies from the absurd and raise our objections consistently. We have to be upset every time the media moves beyond reasonable questions about a candidate’s character, judgment and attitudes to excessive probing into private family matters and casual acquaintances. Only then will we have a chance to move the heart of the discussion from cookies and flag pins to gun control and nuclear proliferation.