Over the last week, I’ve exchanged about 15 outraged, scared, and confused e-mails with contributing writers to this magazine, and received or written myself, no less than three complete essays about the total lack of professionalism that the McCain-Palin campaign has displayed in their recent communications strategy. I decided not to print any of the essays because one sounded too much like a rant, one sounded too whiny, and one was trying so hard to be objective and unbiased that it failed to say anything at all.
So here I am, as an editor, trying to figure out what to do. Do I just let the politicians snipe at each other, and the news media pundits whine and accuse, and our country continue to be damaged by these Gross Rating Point and Gallup Poll crap games? Do I threaten damaging the non-partisan brand of this magazine by criticizing one campaign, and not the other, on admittedly subjective issues?
I’m going to write. Because this election needs some antiseptic and ultraviolet light.
When I logged onto the New York Times this week and found a piece on their election blog quoting Sarah Palin saying Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” (referring to Bill Ayers), I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that the Fox News agenda had actually become the main line of rhetoric for a potential leader of our country.
In today’s America, nothing is as scary as terrorism, and this fear is constantly stoked in all corners of our society. Terrorists have existed since time immemorial, but today, they present as real and highly probable a threat of physical violence to our country as any other- more so in fact now that the oppressive Cold War détente has ended. Terrorists, in my opinion, are people we should hunt down and kill. When I was in Iraq, I tried to do everything I could to facilitate this outcome. I am currently considering volunteering to go to Afghanistan to do it again.
When you say, as a candidate for vice president, that the opposition is lead by a man who is closely affiliated with terrorists, no intellectual jump needs to be made on the part of the listeners. What you are asserting to your base constituents, those most inclined to believe your rhetoric, is that if they don’t elect you, America’s president will be one with close, disguised ties to terrorists. But the NY Times article Palin cited in this speech could in no way be construed as stating Barack Obama has the kind of relationship with Bill Ayers Gov. Palin suggested.
To me, the issue is about professionalism. Professionalism is a word we learned a lot about in the military, in fact, it was the mark of success we sought after. A professional leader is many things- honest, well read, fit, and tactically proficient. A professional in the Marine Corps is someone for whom a standard is to be regarded as a bare minimum. A professional seeks to win at all costs, except at the cost of honor.
While a professional knows that the most effective form of leadership in challenging times is to “lead by example”, he also knows that that example alone will not be enough. He knows that the example must be taught and enforced, and that dangerous behavior or substandard performance left uncorrected is a reflection on his inability to lead and a passive condonation of mediocrity or worse.
When I happened across the aforementioned Palin rally on TV this week, I had an eerie feeling. I am loath to write this because it sounds like hyperbole, but listening to Palin denigrate her opponents and the Americans they represent- and watching the crowd's reaction- felt to me like a Klan rally.
I remarked as much to my parents, and later in the week to a fellow veteran when Palin’s comments about Obama had hit the mainstream media. But I chalked it up to a bad vibe, or a crossed synapse, the result of Palin speaking out of line, and the weight of my biases developed studying American history in college, and then confronting both overt and latent racism when I was living in the Deep South.
We had wondered if the terrorist comment was a gaffe, but one of my friends speculated that McCain himself had probably made the call to go with that line, and since we as warriors were raised to understand that responsibility rests at the top of the chain of command in any circumstance, it was a moot, but hopeful point, that he had not. But Palin didn’t backpedal. Instead, the McCain campaign released the “Ayers” attack ad in which they refined the accusation, placing only one word, a conjunction, in the middle of their associative incrimination: “Barack Obama and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers- friends.” The graphics for the ad form a sort of contact sheet of surveillance images.
I tuned out, to let the storm pass. I’m overreacting, I thought to myself. I have higher standards than these people do, and that’s just the way they play their game. But I wrote to another vet, “They’re making a mockery of us and our political process.”
By the time I tuned back in yesterday night, the tone hadn’t changed. In fact, it had gotten worse: the McCain campaign’s rallies this week made national headlines with their vitriol-imbibed rhetoric and unholstered crowds.
[Palin:] "And, according to the New York Times, he [Ayers] was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she continued.
"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience. [Washington Post 6 Oct 08]
What? Kill who? Bill Ayers? Barack Obama? Palin did not respond to the comment, and continued with her speech. The Secret Service is investigating the remark.
“Our opponent voted to cut off funding for our troops,” Ms. Palin said, as she was interrupted by a deep-throated chorus of boos. “He did this even after saying that he wouldn’t do such a thing. And he said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, ‘air-raiding villages and killing civilians.’ I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women are doing in Afghanistan.”
“Treason!” one man in the crowd shouted angrily. [NY Times 7 Oct 08]
Even though a recent air raid in Afghanistan killed over 30 civilians including women and children (according to a US military investigation), and Obama accurately discussed this as a losing strategy for counterinsurgency, Palin mendaciously and unapologetically twisted it into an attack against “troops” and said nothing in response to the call of “treason”, a crime punishable by death.
Finally today, as if it were an act that merits praise, John McCain attempted to put the brakes on his bubbling, angst-ridden crowd. I watched, in shock, as a woman asking McCain a question said she “can’t trust Obama” - McCain nodded- because he was an “Arab,” she finished.
McCain began to shake his head at this, then took her mic away and told the crowd: “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not, thank you.” (Applause.)
There are two interesting things about this exchange. First, while Obama is not an ethnic Arab, if he were, would that prevent him from being a “decent family man, citizen”? Second, when McCain tells her she’s wrong, she asks, as if the teacher had just corrected her, “No?”
When your rally speakers refer to Sen. Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” and your media strategy is to paint him as a terrorist sympathizer, you reap what you sow.
Leadership is not merely about setting the example, which it would be hard to argue the McCain campaign had done in the first place. Leadership is about teaching the example and enforcing it, and raising all under your charge up to your own level of excellence.
I would say that Palin should have stopped mid-thought and told those providing the call for lynch mobs to shut their faces, but it was clear to me from her tone of voice, that she wanted her crowd to be angry and pissed off that Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists” and thinks all troops do is unrighteously kill civilians. If it were true, I’d be angry as well. But those are Osama Bin Laden’s positions, not Barack Obama’s.
Through this week’s events, I had an epiphany. Terrorism doesn’t scare me anymore. Terrorism is a mortal threat that I can avoid by moving to the middle of nowhere, or confront by volunteering to go back to the Middle East to hunt and kill more terrorists. What scares me much more are divisive politicians with wry smiles and an aw shucks glee playing with matches very close to the tinderbox that is America’s uncomfortable history of race relations, or our McCarthy-esque post 9/11 “who really loves America and who doesn’t” witch hunt.
This ideological battle, created only for politicians to win votes and for news channels and bloggers to sell advertising, has the potential to have a devastating effect on America by driving deeper wedges into the rifts in our society right at the time- in war, in economic hardship, in uncertainty- when we need to be united as one people.
The candidates have been preaching to us about what leadership is and which of them really has it. I know a little something about leadership too. This week has been about what leadership isn’t.
Further Reading/Viewing: Palin rally 1 (Wash Post) Palin rally 2 (NYT) Recent article about Ayers and Obama in NYT that Palin quoted Civilians killed in Afghanistan (AP) McCain tells crowd Obama is not Arab (YouTube) Palin's attack; Treason call (YouTube)