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For the first time in quite a few election seasons, would-be presidential candidates from both parties are campaigning on a somewhat universal common platform.
This sort of agreement, though unusual, is good.
Also good is the fact that the key player of this platform is change.
Change is sorely needed in this country and its governmental policies on a number of levels. The potential of change also seen among the candidates themselves, as a woman and an African-American man are the front-runners of their party’s candidates and arguably are in the strongest position to make a bid for the White House.
That in itself is huge. And if one (or perhaps both) made it onto the Democratic ticket, and then won, the biggest change in American politics will have taken place.
Change is good, it keeps things fresh, so they say.
But in politics, particularly presidential politics, only so much can change.
As much as the candidates’ platforms may focus on it and as much as the candidates themselves embody change, not all aspects of this all-important quadrennial election are subject to any sort of transformation.
Not by a long shot.
Dirty politics will always remain a fixture of presidential races.
Take the recent debacle in Nevada regarding the Democratic Caucus. The caucus system requires its voters to meet or “caucus” at a particular time at a particular place in the area or “precinct” where they live. In Nevada, that particular time was during the midday lunch break.
Out of concern for the thousands of casino and hotel workers in Las Vegas who would not have sufficient time off from work to travel home, caucus, and travel back, the Nevada Democratic Party created several “at-large” precincts in casinos on the Strip.
The idea was that any worker with valid employment ID that worked within 2.5 miles of the at-large precinct location who was verifiably scheduled to work during the lunch hour would be able to caucus at these locations and make their voices heard. All relevant procedures and statues were followed in this process.
All was well until the Nevada State Education Association (the teachers’ union) filed a lawsuit on Jan. 11, to block the at-large precincts on the grounds that they violated election laws and would proportion support unfairly.
Suspiciously, this was only two days after the powerful 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union in Nevada endorsed Sen. Barack Obama. The well-organized and heavily Hispanic CWU gave Sen. Obama a huge boost in the Nevada electorate.
Even more suspicious were the somewhat concealed ties between NSEA’s leadership and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was running slightly ahead of Sen. Obama in Nevada polls prior the CWU endorsement.
Of course, Sen. Clinton’s campaign denies any involvement, and this may be true on an official level. However, the peculiar coincidences of the timing of the NSEA’s challenge so soon after the CWU endorsement leads one to believe that a carefully orchestrated effort to disenfranchise a large group of people (who were likely to not vote Hillary) was under way by people certainly connected with the campaign in question.
On the elephant’s side of the pasture, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s faux pas in creating a virulently anti-Mitt Romney television spot and then deciding to not air it, except for a screening for the press corps, has been widely discussed and often ridiculed.
While it’s not exactly a dirty tactic, and is even admirable on some levels, it’s still a little puzzling.
Huckabee’s camp maintains that the ordained Southern Baptist Minister felt that attacking Romney in such a manner would have been wrong.
The withdrawal of the ad also had the, I believe, intended effect of highlighting Huckabee’s human decency, often a rare trait in presidential elections. It also made sure the he and his campaign stayed in the media spotlight for the few crucial days prior to the Iowa Caucus. He of course won Iowa, largely as a result of the Christian right, whose poster child in earlier weeks had been Romney. Thus, the fiasco with the withdrawn ad seems not entirely a candidate’s succumbing to his human sense of compassion, but more a calculated ploy to win over his main opponent’s chief supporters.
Neither of the two examples above deal with anything illegal. No one acted outside the bounds of the law, although many will argue that their actions were questionable at best.
What is certain is that these actions certainly do not convey or conform to the optimistic image of a new America, changed from the cruel years of the past into a new bastion of hope, freedom, and prosperity that is touted by virtually all the candidates at the moment.
No, these actions are decidedly reminiscent of the shady and cutthroat campaigning that have been a fixture in American politics for many decades now, and if these examples are any hint, will remain for many decades to come.
Some change may be forthcoming a year from now, when a new president is sworn in, and we may be closer to a more united, happier, changed America.
Just don’t expect to see much of that change in practice anywhere near the presidential election between now and November.
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