I based my recent endorsement of Obama for President on a tactical analysis of how best to achieve my strategic objective from the 2008 Presidential election. So far, it seems as though my pinhead-sized drop in the political sea has joined with a substantial surge rising all around me, even in landlocked Iowa. The next month or so will decide whether the wave of Obamania (it’s the second wave of it, really) will carry all before it, or crash ineffectually onto the banks of the Mississippi, receding before Her Royal Colossus. So far, both the decision and the timing seem good from this vantage point.
Now, I have to comment on The Nation’s November 27 issue, entitled “Time To Choose” (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071126/vidal#list). Like me, they saw this was the time, but they decided not to make a choice.
The cover piece has eight short essays, by eight different writers, each endorsing a different Democratic Presidential candidate (even one for Mike Gravel!) This seems to be a fair way to go at the difficult decision of choosing the best from this excellent field of contenders, but it will not change The Nation’s modern tradition of providing no effective endorsement to anyone.
At its best, we would get eight brilliant, totally convincing essays by prominent and articulate expert practitioners of rhetoric, thus confusing us hopelessly. Actually, that’s pretty much what the reader gets, omitting the hyperbole. The eight writers are all skilled, medium-to-well-known, not the usual Nation columnists (impressively neutral, the Editorial Board stays out of it, except to make the minimalist, and irrelevant, endorsement of all viz. the incumbent), and sincere.
I’d say the people they got to speak for some of the more minor candidates (Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson for Richardson, New Mexico’s John Nichols for Biden, and all-time fave Gore Vidal for Kucinich) have names more prominent than those recruited for the Big 3: Ellen Chesler, Michael Eric Dyson, and Katherine S. Newman (in order of descending national poll popularity of the endorsees).
For leaners/undecided Democrats like my wife and me, we found the overall impact to be less clarity in our decision-minded thinking and less certainty in our tendencies. In other words, the issue provides little to no help in the requisite choice, except to emphasize its difficulty.
Reading them for clues to my own feelings and thoughts, I was struck by the mix of different types of argument and rhetorical style employed. The brevity required (1000 words max?) didn’t allow individual writers to attack their thesis from various angles: each basically got one shot at it, plus or minus a twist to open or close the deal. Crafting the piece perfectly would involve harmonizing its style with key characteristics of the candidate to be endorsed, identifying the type of appeal most likely to succeed with those leaning toward the candidate, and employing ironclad logic.
The main choices were emotional or rational appeals, being more or less assertive in terms of strength of preference, and whether to utilize implicit or direct criticism of the other candidates in the argument. These break down as follows:
Biden (Nichols): rational; less assertive; Contrasts: Yes—he’s “the one Democrat Republicans feel compelled not merely to attack but to answer”.
Clinton (Chesler): rational;* more assertive; No—the other Dem candidates barely are in her Hillary’s field of vision.
Edwards (Newman): rational; more assertive; Yes—opposed to “tepid, middle-of-the-road, blow-with-the-wind candidates”.
Dodd (Bruce Shapiro): rational; much less (“Will I vote for Chris Dodd? I don’t know.”); No.
Gravel (Richard Kim): emotional; not very (he knows he’ll have to switch allegiance); not really antagonistic (as opposed to Gravel himself).
Kucinich (Vidal): emotional; not assertive; Yes—his cool knife inflicts a thousand cuts (or approximately one cut per word).
Richardson (Anderson): rational; assertive; Yes—repeatedly attacks all of the Big 3 on Iraq.
Obama (Dyson): emotional; assertive; No (does not mention another candidate, even indirectly). +
Dyson’s piece ended with an appeal so eloquent that it is worthy of Barack:
“Barack Obama has come closer than any figure in recent history to obeying a direct call of the people to the brutal and bloody fields of political mission. His visionary response to that call gives great hope that he can galvanize our nation with the payoff of his political rhetoric…he is our best hope to tie together the fraying strands of our political will into a powerful and productive vision of national destiny.”
Like a speech from Obama, these words say nothing…and everything.
Notes:
*But note the emotional rhetorical flourish (a “1-in-10” kind of blind shot) when Chesler throws in at the end “one more thing”: that she’s supporting her “because she is a woman”!
+In the order of the articles, except with Richardson and Obama reversed (one must save the best to last, of course!)
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