Try this pop quiz for a second: two senators are running for president. One encounters major opposition in poll after poll, while for the other you’d be hard-pressed, as far as my experience goes, not to find an admirer. The first inspires as much divisiveness as praise, while the second is almost universally regarded as an American hero. One seems to have spent most of her life planning a way to the presidency; the other has served his country, to the point of torture and near-death in war, since his college days. Who are they?
Pretty straightforward: Hillary Clinton and John McCain. But I’ve got another question for you: why is a war hero who dedicated his life to his country less likely to lead it than a politician who’s served barely six years in the Senate, from a state that to many functioned only as a convenient launching pad for her career?
The success of their campaigns offers one reason. Hillary possesses a well-oiled machine that is the envy of her rivals. She’s well funded and she boasts the political acumen of her husband Bill, not to mention the warm and fuzzy memory of his time in office for many Democrats. McCain, on the other hand, just suffered a mass exodus of staffers, has almost no money in the bank and has plunged in the polls to the point that he struggles to register in New Hampshire and Iowa.
But the cause of the disparity between Senators Clinton and McCain goes beyond the unpredictable twists-and-turns of a presidential campaign. At another level, McCain is held back by the system he has to run in. McCain is trapped by a Republican primary system chock-full of social conservatives who hate his stands on campaign finance reform and immigration and who still haven’t forgiven his calling Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson “agents of intolerance.”
There is one final reason why Hillary is outpacing McCain in the race for the White House: she can play the political game like it’s her job. Clinton is the model of a modern politician. She can rake in the dough, sound presidential on the stump and impress interviewers like she’s been doing it since her college days, but these skills conceal a resume otherwise empty of service to the country, especially the kind McCain, a former fighter pilot and POW, can claim. Through that service and dedication, McCain has proven himself a model of a modern American patriot, one admirably committed to the greater cause of our country, not just himself.
And for that reason John McCain deserves far more credit and support than he’s been getting. He’s proven a deep and genuine commitment to his country by risking his life in war, and we as voters are right to reward that kind of daring. We’re also right to trust the selflessness and soberness that daring requires. I, for one, want a president with the willingness to occasionally sacrifice his own ambitions for the sake of the country, one that, having seen war with his own eyes, knows exactly the dangers and costs of starting—not to mention ending—another one.
But such is our democracy today that arguments over who deserves the presidency are almost irrelevant. Instead, candidates are judged by the media and by the voters on how well they play the political game, not the quality of their overall service. They get points for raising hordes of cash, for looking presidential and for focusing on wedge issues that divide people just enough to win a bare majority of the vote. We’ve reached a moment where we no longer ask our politicians what they’ve actually done for their country, even though that should be the single most important criterion. We just want to see witty one-liners in debates—the modern political equivalent of a home run. And so Hillary Clinton, the ultimate player in the game, stands at the head of the Democratic field—and McCain trails at the back of the Republican pack.
I grant that to some extent politics has always been a game and all those in it merely players jockeying for position. But our politics can’t function like an oversized game of football or baseball, a matter of who throws up more points on the board. We’re at war; lives are at stake and, on top of that, so is our standing in the world. I don’t doubt Clinton’s competence, or her great talent as a politician. It’s our responsibilityto look beyond fundraising and campaign slogans to judge how candidates have led their lives and, through that lens, how committed to their country they truly are.
