Political Democracy at Its Most Interesting

David Aikman

Can anyone recall a presidential election in the U.S. more interesting than the current one? I can’t. In the more than four decades since I moved to the U.S. (initially not being qualified to vote), I’ve encountered everything from apathy to zealotry, with cynicism and despair in good measure in between. But I never can recall the degree of excitement that has been elicited among voters, especially by Barack Obama.

When I was in graduate school in the late 1960s, I was taken aback by the dismay of most college undergraduates in 1968 that Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, was running against Richard Nixon. Nixon? Many young people in the 1960s would rather gag than pronounce that word. American intellectuals since that time have developed a cottage industry of running down the quality of American politicians. But they have no case to make in 2008.

Nixon, of course, triumphed four decades ago in 1968, in part because most American voters had seen on TV the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago and didn’t want the country to fall prey to long-haired, unwashed radicals. By 1972, Nixon had cemented that sentiment into the public consciousness, demonstrating, in addition, one of the greatest presidential talents for international diplomacy since Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. Nixon certainly didn’t need the bungled Watergate affair to win a landslide in 1972 against George McGovern, who humiliatingly won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia against the entire rest of the U.S. for Nixon.

When Hubert Humphrey was about to run against Nixon in 1968, he was challenged in the primaries by the enigmatic figure of Senator Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy had a few endearing habits; he once ducked out of an election rally in order to watch a movie—I think Ulysses, based on the James Joyce novel. I campaigned for McCarthy (well, youth is entitled to its follies) in the 1968 Oregon primary (which he won, beating Robert Kennedy) and discovered that some voters could literally be persuaded to vote for a candidate if you could convince them he was more handsome than the other guy. (It was only guys then.) I discovered that you could also tell which candidate a household favored by ascertaining the tidiness of their porch or backyard: slovenly appearance, Robert Kennedy, tidy appearance, Hubert Humphrey, posh appearance, Gene McCarthy.

President Ford failed to prevail against Jimmy Carter in 1976 not because—à la Huckabee—he failed to galvanize conservatives sufficiently, but because many voters wouldn’t forgive him for pardoning Richard Nixon after Watergate. Gerald Ford also bungled a TV debate response to a question about Soviet control over Eastern Europe. Carter, for his part, succumbed to Ronald Reagan in 1980, because—again in a TV debate—he couldn’t convince voters that they were better off after four years of his administration. Besides, many voters remembered Jimmy Carter’s description of a “malaise” afflicting the country. Americans in general don’t like “malaises” of any kind, and they certainly don’t like their leaders telling them that they are living in one.

Elections since the 1980s were often characterized by periodic pronouncements by reporters and columnists that each presidential election was the “nastiest” in recent memory. They weren’t, but that didn’t deter the pundits from saying so. Of course, the 2000 election was a cliff-hanger because the electoral college vote had to be decided by a vote in the Supreme Court. In 2004, despite continuing gripes that President Bush had “stolen” the election in 2000, the American electorate re-elected him by a convincing margin in both the popular vote and the electoral college.

But what makes the current election so interesting is the quality of the candidates and the fact that there is neither a president nor a vice president running. The field has been wide open on both Democratic and Republican sides, and, as a result, some very fine talents have been drawn into it.

Sophisticated European critics of American politics have a habit of complaining how “provincial” American presidential aspirants can be, how hokey their regional accents sometimes sound, and especially, how boringly pre-occupied they often are with public assertions of their religious faith. But in the current year, though there is indeed one prominent religious conservative running, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, faith has played a largely peripheral role in the election process.

On the Democratic side, it is obvious that Hillary Clinton is an exceedingly intelligent person and an experienced senator. Though there are lingering questions about the alleged hostility she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have long had towards the U.S. military, a neophyte in foreign affairs she is not. On the other hand, though her close rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama, is untested and has one of the most uncommitted voting records in the U.S. Senate (e.g., voting “present” instead of for or against a bill), he has achieved formidable success in charging up a whole posse of new young voters and getting them engaged in the political process. He is an excellent speaker and shows commendable fair-mindedness to his political competitors and opponents, even though not everyone appreciates the almost messianic quality of his rhetoric.

On the Republican side, the apparent front-runner, John McCain, is a war veteran who endured five years of prison camp and torture and then carved out a Senate career with bold, even brazen disregard for the views of Republican Party loyalists. He speaks his mind with refreshing candor and proves that you can still be plenty feisty at an age when the rest of us are in retirement homes, on golf courses, or wishing we had saved more money as young people. His erstwhile closest rival for the Republican nomination, Governor Mitt Romney, is a brilliant businessman who has been the only candidate in many years to have had the experience of meeting a monthly payroll as a CEO. Mike Huckabee, good-natured, folksy, and an ordained clergyman to boot, certainly speaks up for a sizeable portion of that sector of the electorate for which personal Christian faith is very important. He certainly deserves applause for perseverance.

The entire election cycle so far—primaries, caucuses, and debates—has been fascinating and full of surprises and we are far from over yet. This is political democracy at its most interesting, exciting, and—maybe—inspiring.  

Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.

2 Responses (comments are closed) • Columns, David Aikman, Character and Ethics, Good and Evil, Society, Thu 14 Feb 2008