Published Mar. 1, 2007 in "The Oklahoma Daily"
Viewable Online Here
The 2008 presidential elections are over a year away. The New Hampshire primary is still just a gleam in the eyes of the big wheels in Concord, N.H. But the infighting between presidential hopefuls has already started. This time, it's the firstround of the super-heavyweight title match between Democratic front-runners Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama.
It started — as does much of this country's popular drama — in Hollywood. Successful producer David Geffen of DreamWorks SKG organized an invitation-only, star-studded fundraiser for presidential hopeful Obama. The fundraiser raised over $1 million, unsurprising given the support Obama enjoys from the deep-pocketed glitterati of America's movie capital.
Hollywood supporting a popular, charismatic Democratic presidential hopeful is not exactly earth-shattering, and is really not the major issue. You see, Geffen and the Clintons were pretty close back in the early nineties. Then came Monicagate, along with some other issues, and Geffen distanced himself from the Clintons. So no one was that surprised when Geffen openly supported Obama and not Hillary. What really got people's attention is what he had to say about Arkansas' presidential couple.
Essentially, Geffen called all politicians liars, and he further voiced his true unease at how he believed the former first couple of Little Rock, Ark., had lied. He then ran through a series of somewhat unflattering adjectives for Hillary, and verbally drop-kicked the Clinton political team. For more on this, see Howard Fineman's Feb. 21 column in Newsweek.
Hillary was not going to stand for this. Her team fired back almost immediately, calling on Obama to denounce the offending remarks, and also to give back the money.
Obama, certainly not one to be cowed, responded equally forcefully. His team highlighted Geffen's once-close relationship with the Clintons, and Hillary's coziness with a supporter who had publicly insulted Obama and his race.
Later, Obama also stated that he shouldn't be the one to apologize for someone else's comments.
After the initial volleys earlier this month, both sides have backed down from escalating the issue. Both Obama and Hillary are back to speaking, shaking hands, seeking face time and raising money. They both have better things to do than focus on some stray comments at one fundraiser, no matter how glitzy.
Even the initial broadsides from both campaigns were in a sense obligatory. High-profile Geffen is unabashedly Democratic. If a fellow Democrat's attack on Hillary couldn't be defended against, how would they fare against the precision attacks of Republicans come election season?
Obama's camp was certainly not unjustified in defending their candidate and his actions.
But then again, these were virtually automatic reactions to actions that were themselves pre-ordained by our political atmosphere, particularly when it comes to elections.
No candidate can afford to look weak in the eyes of the other party. Pacifying, satiating and neutralizing the fire of the opposing party is the driving force behind most actions of candidates, including the little bout mentioned above.
Did most people really care what one left-wing Hollywood firebrand had to say about a particular candidate? Not really.
Are his words really going to seriously change most people's opinions about Obama, Hillary or politicians in general? Not likely.
Do the camps of Hillary, Obama and virtually all candidates from both parties know this? Probably. Will this in any way stop them from verbally attacking, parrying and defending one another over relatively asinine comments? Not a chance.
Much of the verbose battles that are given so much focus during elections are really waged not for the benefit and attention of the general public but to guard against fire from opponents. The idea is to deny one's opponent any advantage in any area, which is a principle of war called security.
Inherently, there's nothing wrong with it.
Violation of this security would grant an opponent an opportunity to capitalize on a weak point and potentially destroy a particular candidate. That is something all candidates have the right to guard against.
A major downside to this is the deluge of political tiffs between virtually all candidates.
A new argument appears almost every day, and most of these are over some comment made by someone about something.
Granted some comments are genuinely misunderstood or misspoken, most of them are about such minute details or so blatantly incorrect that most people need no assistance to determine that said comments have no value.
However, politicians still respond to these comments because they must. They have to do so to make sure there is no chink in their political armor, no unprotected heel for their rhetorical Achilles. If they didn't, you can bet that their opponents would try their best to flay them alive. Again, the consequence is a deluge of endless debates, disagreement and discourse over virtually everything.
Who really pays the price for this? That's hard to say. One might conclude that the politicians themselves suffer the most. That's a fair assessment. But they're also in effect protecting themselves from themselves. I don't know if that qualifies as suffering. One might also say that it's the general public who bear the brunt of the pain, since they have to bear witness to these endless chains of rhetorical attack and counterattack. But then again, a large portion of the public is apathetic, either by nature or by sheer desensitization. They simply don't care to listen to these mini-arguments.
It's unclear who, if anyone, really suffers from these election-time verbal cluster bombs. It's also unclear what benefit, if any, they have for the general public. What is pretty clear is that they'll continue dropping.
Everywhere.
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