The Tyranny of Orthodoxy

A question was posed during the democratic presidential debate from Los Angeles that hit home with me, as a 37 year-old who voted for the first time as an 18 year-old in 1988. The question had to do with the fact that in every presidential election of my adult life, there has been either a Bush or a Clinton running. While I am proud to say I have never voted for a Bush despite having the opportunity four times to do so, what the question brings up is the divisiveness and bitterness that have become the norm in our political dialogue over the last twenty years, especially the last sixteen that have seen Bubba and Dubya manning the ship.

I know, as an unabashed liberal I am supposed to look on the Clinton era as they golden age and the Bush era as the Dark Ages. While there is some truth to that, the two eras may have more in common than it would seem at first glance. In addition to the aforementioned divisiveness, they share an adherence to political and partisan orthodoxy that hasn't necessarily served the country well. To borrow the line from Ronald Reagan used during the 1984 election, are we better off now than we were 16 years ago? To be sure, there has always been partisan politics in our democracy, at least since Adams took on Jefferson in 1796 and the two party system took shape. Our first president warned famously in his farewell speech of the dangers of division, geographical as well as political. He also warned of unnecessary foreign entanglements, making this a speech that should be required reading for all would be politicos, as well as cable news talking heads. In my opinion, the five most important presidents in our nation's history, two of them Republicans, two of them Democrats, one a man without a party, all share one thing in common, namely they worked more for consensus than they did for the good of their political party. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, while having their own ideology and adhering to party orthodoxy, did not put that ahead of the interests of the national common good.

The same can certainly not be said of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, who have presided over administrations that have seen the rise of fractious talk radio and cable news talking heads, the artificial division of the nation into red and blue states, and the labeling of every outlet and publication as either liberal (as in the New York Times) or conservative (Fox News Channel). All the while, the ship of state has been headed dangerously off course, headed for iceberg fields while the captains simply rearrange the deck chairs. Debate and discourse has turned vitriolic, with talking heads becoming shouting evangelizers, and supporters of either liberalism or conservatism substituting demonization and belittlement for respectful and productive discourse.

Enter stage left, a man who, at least to this point in the performance, seems like someone capable of taking our great republic to a higher place, a place where civility and unity are no longer antiquated notions of a byegone era. A man who represents the possibility for a post-partisan, post-racial, and hopefully post-war era in American politics. While the question seemingly being asked in the media is whether or not America is ready for a Black president, the better question is can we handle four more years of red vs. blue, with red symbolic of the blood that is sure to be shed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly Iran or elsewhere, blue representing the mood of the populace as they see their nation continue to disintigrate into something that would hardly be recognizable to our founding fathers.

The time has come for someone who can build consensus, who can lead the nation and not just advance the agenda of one party or another. I am cautiously optimistic that Barack Obama is that person, which is why I have decided to stay tuned in for at least one more election, in hopes that the reality of an Obama presidency will match the promise of the campaign. The fact that he would be our nation's first Black president, while of historical significance, and certainly of importance to the cause of civil rights and a source of pride for Black Americans who have seen their share of disillusionment, is nearly beside the point. What is relevant here is that Mr. Obama, while being compared to various members of the Kennedy clan, is perhaps the first true leader to take the reigns of power since Dwight Eisenhower, and possibly the greatest voice of the people, all the people, since FDR. It is possible that he would offer us a presidency that for once would require no one to clean up afterward, but would afford the next president the opportunity, eight years hence, to continue to chart the course of progress that Mr. Obama has put us on. That is the hope that I have, the dream of this generation, that we can lose the tyranny of the orthodox, and shed the partisan ways that have come to define our system, to be replaced with a politics of consensus, unity, and most of all, hope for a better world with America as the ship that leads the way, the city on a hill that our colonial and republican founders envisioned us to be.