Another True Believer Down
MKFreeberg at House of Eratosthenes on Jan 30 2008 at 12:40 pm | Filed under: Election 2008
Last week I categorized all the candidates running as rock stars, wafflers and true believers. That is our new political divide, I argued, because the candidates weren’t running on platforms anymore — instead, they were selling us things, and the disagreement that separated them had to do with what there was to be sold.
Rock stars sell their names and their personalities. Let’s face it…none of Obama’s supporters can tell you his position on any more than a couple of issues. They don’t care. That isn’t what they bought. Ron Paul disagrees with his own supporters, on a great many issues. Issues aren’t important here. And Hillary…hell’s bells, nobody gives a crap about anything she says she’s going to do.
The wafflers sell their timing. They say the right things to the right people — but if they stuck to those positions as the audiences changed, they’d be dead ducks. And they know it. Their selling point is that they’ll “bring together” the “deeply divided” electorate, by “reaching across the aisle” on the issues you don’t really care about. The issues you personally don’t care about. But when they talk to the other guys…the story will be that they’ll do this reaching across the aisle, by jettisoning some other positions about which you care, very deeply. They change their tunes with the whistle-stops. Everybody knows it, we just pretend it isn’t so.
The true believers are true believers. If you disagree with them, they’ll admit it. Some of them will admit it in an “aw shucks, I hope I can still count on your support” kind of way…or, maybe their true beliefs have to do with you being the Hated Enemy, and they’ll tell you to stick it. But the important thing is that they’re going to stick to their guns.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. John Edwards has always been a True Believer.
Yes, it’s provable he’s a liar. He’s a rich guy pledging to close up the wealth gap between the rich and the poor — and nobody is even pretending to believe, even for a split-second, that any of his plans have to do with diminishing his own income and/or personal net worth. But you can be a hypocrite and a true believer. John Edwards has always had a true believe in a two-tier society, in which rich people like him get to stay rich, and rich people who aren’t like him have to be made poor.
I don’t mean to say let’s give him some respect for this. You can decide that for yourself. I’m simply pointing out what John Edwards really is…and it isn’t all bad.
In the post of mine linked above, I said…
The True Believer is the kind we all say we want, the guy who doesn’t vacillate. Positions driven by principles. And I’m afraid that the presidential campaign season in the United States has become a rather unhealthy ritual of weeding these guys out.
I think at this point where just about finished with that preliminary process, aren’t we? Who’s left? So we’re down to the rock stars and the wafflers. And January isn’t even over yet.
So Edwards would have been a horrible President, and was a truly awful candidate — on top of which, he never really had a chance at all, did he? Yet, his departure is still more a cause for weeping and groaning than for celebrating and cheering.
Wonderful…just wonderful…a nine-month mud-wrestling match among empty suits and two-face turncoats.
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