McCain and Obama: Two Models From the Same American Car Company

I will start by stating my conclusion: The supposed split in our country is not so much a political one as it is a national personality division. One way of distinguishing who we Americans are is to see some folk as visionary and some as realistic. The discussions become contentious at election time, when each type exaggerates his or her pique with the other side to show how far off kilter the other is. At those moments when the news panelists are shouting at each other, it almost appears that our choice is between the undefined or the ill-defined. But it is not the choices that are irreconcilable; it is the choosers.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a highly acclaimed and acute analyst of American character and style saw this complexity in us well over a hundred years ago. Recently reading in his Democracy in America, I was struck by how the reports of this visitor from France still resonate on pitch.
He noted that when Americans write and speak to each other, they employ bombast and pomposity. Because we are busy with the banalities of making a living and getting ahead, we do not have time to develop our ideas and appreciate fine points. We are left with vague understanding of important matters, and we swallow the claims of those who pronounce on the issues of the day as if they were circus barkers.

Turn on the television and listen to the talk show hosts proclaiming their opinions, from either the right or the left. Tocqueville's needle still hits a nerve. This observer of democracy's habits said that the thinly informed citizen, which is most of us, lacks "a sure enough taste" to recognize "disproportion."

Actually, we revel in disproportion. To improve ratings, even the more serious news programs parade before us best-selling authors and entertaining party strategists to pronounce on the day's events. As Tocqueville put it, the "crowd" looks to poets [communicators of the biggger truths] only for vast subjects, because they do not have the time for their own "precise measure." "Author and public," he intoned, "mutually corrupt each other."

Do not discount Tocqueville just because he was French. His ringing indictment is on court TV in our current Presidential campaign. Listen to and watch our two presumptive nominees. Barack Obama is our poet. He has charisma and stage presence. He may wrap his ideas in vague, inflated images; but do we not go to county fairs to sample the intriguing pitches made at the various booths? Obama's eloquent speeches are stirring, even if we judge him naive. And John McCain? Well, he is a genuine hero--what we all would be in our fantasies. He may stumble over fine distinctions, but that is part of the "charm" of Americans, as Tocqueville calls it.

To Obama, if we come together we can be "great"--shades of Tocqueville, who famously touted the unmatched energy of an aroused democracy.

To McCain, our greatness is manifest; we only need to impose it on our enemies. Again, Tocqueville was on the mark; Americans are unimpressed with fine distinctions that tend to sap our restless, aggressive energies.

I wish we could be informed and aroused at the same time without suffering from the split personality, but at least we have both cars in our garage. Snobby Tocqueville would probably predict that, as true Americans, in November we will blur it all and vote for perceived gas mileage.

Doug Good