Thanks, but no thanks

Politicians are like used car salesmen:  we expect them to lie. 

“It’s in mint condition,” he tells you with a straight face.  “Get in. See how it feels on you.”

Sure, it takes a while for the cool air to start blowing but you don’t notice, because the salesman has rolled down the windows and opened the sunroof to let you “feel” the experience. And boy, does it feel good.  “Let’s put it on the highway and open it up!” he goads.  Before you know it, you’re sitting with the finance manager working out a “deal.” 

She’s a nice lady, you tell yourself, as you sign up for the extended warranty, credit life insurance, and roadside assistance (which you’ll undoubtedly need).  She hasn’t told you about the 3 percentage points she earning on the loan, but heck, she sure is a nice lady.

Unfortunately, we have come to expect political candidates to parse the facts in their own favor.  We expect them to flip-flop on the issues, pander to our most closely held ideals, and craft charades so beautifully choreographed we would think we were watching Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at the American Ballet Theatre. We get caught up in the bright marquee lights, lavish costumes, the spectacular sets, and the wonderfully complicated composition.   They recite the ABCs and we swoon and swear they are quoting Shakespeare.

They invite us to “kick the tires” but then count on us not to look under the hood.  Many of us wouldn’t know what we were looking for anyway.  When we ask questions, invariably they remind us that we don’t know the intricacies of fine machinery or how things get done in Washington.  They remind us about their “experience” and spin wild tales meant to convince us that they are really just like us.

We buy into the production, because we want to believe them.

There was a time when I truly admired Senator John McCain.  I am a former U.S. Marine, so when he talked about duty to country I was listening.  I was listening when he led the Gang of Fourteen, a bi-partisan effort intended to thwart filibusters and confirm qualified, thoughtful jurists to the Supreme Court.  I was listening when he stood toe to toe with George Bush, Karl Rove and their band of merry men in South Carolina as they smeared him with vicious lies not worth repeating. I was listening when he called Bush’s wartime tax cuts for the wealthy “immoral”, wrote an innovative climate change bill and authored another on immigration.  I was listening when he called us to our higher selves, public service for the sake of the greater good. Following his loss to President Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, he did the unthinkable.  He announced publically that he’d lied about his position on the Confederate flag. “I broke my promise to always tell the truth,” he said at the time. 

He had me at “hello.” 

I don’t recognize the new John McCain.  The man I respected was a breath of fresh air—a man of unwavering candor.  He wasn’t a politician.  He was a true statesman.  He told the truth when it wasn’t convenient and literally balled up his fist and struck a blow to the status quo.  But the man, who once wore his integrity as a badge of honor, has now sullied it distortions, half-truths, misleading statements and flat-out, bald-faced lies.  All in the name of winning.  And make no mistake, when you repeat the same lie over and over again that makes you a liar.  Do it when the truth has been shown to you and that makes you a pathological liar in need of medication.

Rather than run on his own ideas and values, McCain has instead abandoned them altogether.  Those tax cuts? Now they are the best thing since they lit up the baseball park and started playing at night.  Climate change? Immigration? He won’t even support the very legislation he wrote.  George Bush?  Voted with him 95 percent of the time. Karl Rove?  He didn’t just rip a page out of his playbook. He stole the book and the sequels.  Rather than bank on his own once vaunted integrity, McCain and his running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin have wrapped themselves in victimhood while throwing firebombs at Senator Barack Obama. 

They say politics ain’t beanbag, but McCain has become the very kind of vile, unrepentant politician he told us so often he despised.  And it’s a work of fiction. 

All of it.

He could take the easy way out and blame his campaign.  But it’s his voice on my TV screen saying, “I’m John McCain and I approve this message.”  It’s John McCain on the morning shows, angrily attacking his questioners, as time and time again he is called on the carpet for the stream of whoppers he’s told lately.  Cindy McCain was right. The ladies of The View picked them bare.  They forgot that Barbara Walters is a real journalist. 

So let’s roll the tape. Shall we?

Obama will raise your taxes.  Lie.  His tax cuts will reach 80 percent of Americans.  Who does he leave out?  The same people who brought you exorbitant gas prices and the mortgage meltdown.

Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergartners.  Lie.  The legislation called for age appropriate sex education, including a curriculum that would teach five year olds how to spot sexual predators.

Palin said “thanks, but no thanks” to the so-called Bridge to Nowhere.  Lie.  What she really said was please, pretty please, we didn’t need an old stupid bridge anyway and by the way, I’ll keep the money. 

Palin never requested earmarks as governor.  Well, yes she did. $256 million for 2007 and $197 million for 2008.  In fact, Alaska has consistently been the largest per capita beneficiary of federal earmarks.  She even hired a lobbyist for tiny Wasilla to bring in a mother load.  “It’s un-American, it’s undemocratic, and it’s not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop,” she said.  Presumably, that’s true because if they win she won’t be in a position to request any more money.

Palin, according to assorted statements, either fired or didn’t fire the head of the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan. And according to Palin, his dismissal (or non-dismissal) had nothing to do with her former brother-in-law’s nasty divorce from her sister. That’s hard to believe when she won’t sit before the bi-partisan investigative panel that she asked for.   It’s a tough line to swallow, when the Alaska attorney general (and Palin appointee) refuses to allow government employees to testify.  Even though he is technically the lawyer for the state, not Palin. It’s even harder to believe when a gaggle of McCain lawyers took an express flight to Juneau to squash the investigation altogether.  One usually has to wait until they are actually elected to start obstructing investigations.  Even Cheney held out that long.

Did I mention lawyers are a lot like car salesmen too? 

One by one, McCain has been called on to condemn the lies and what did he do?  He doubled down quicker than a seasoned Vegas blackjack player.  To the contrary, he’s mounted a high horse on a low road. 

Look at me!  I’m a POW! 

McCain once railed against the intolerance of the Christian Right.  The very people he has now pandered to in order to win his selection of Palin. This is nothing short of “personal treason” as one columnist for the Washington Post so aptly put it. As evidenced by her performance in an interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson, she is patently unprepared to run anything bigger than the local Piggly Wiggly. 

Bush Doctrine?  Never heard of it, but what’s your point Chaaaarrlie? Alaska’s energy production numbers?  Grossly exaggerated.  Banning books?  Never dreamed of it.  But I did fire the librarian when she didn’t answer my “rhetorical” questions (three times) the way I wanted her to.  Foreign relations? I can see Russia from my house!  Met any heads of state?  No, and you wouldn’t be asking me if I was a man.  Actually, what she said was that there were other candidates for vice president who had not met foreign leaders.  While she was busy cruising the aisles for books to ban, she should’ve checked out a few on U.S. History.

The McCain I once respected and admired is long gone.  This McCain– the one who wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him in the face– is categorically unfit to lead.  His failure to appropriately vet Palin is just one example.

That one-owner certified, pre-owned baby parked on the showroom floor and all dolled up with colorful flags?  Turns out, that “one owner” was your local rent-a-wreck.  Raise the hood and you discover a re-built engine and tell-tale evidence of a paint job meant to disguise a previous collision. The body is fire engine red now, but it was once metallic blue.  Oh, and the odometer has been rolled back with a twisted metal clothes hanger. 

Thanks, but no thanks.  If I want a Whopper, I’ll stop by Burger King.

 

A Woman’s Worth

EbonyJet.com Headline

I have been a mother all of my adult life.  A single working mother. I put off dating, took menial jobs far beneath my qualifications and baked my share of ginger bread cookies for PTA Night, all so that three incredible children could have better. I chose their lives over mine.  I don’t have to tell you that it wasn’t easy. Unfortunately, my story, our story, is not
unique.

We slept in cars, bought groceries with food stamps and prayed for a better day.  When that wasn’t enough, I put myself through school at Emory University and took a part-time job as a staff writer at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  That was over a decade ago.

Along the way, things got better. I’ve been an executive at two Fortune 500 companies and a practice director at two multinational public relations firms. Today, I own an advertising agency and I’ve authored two novels.  A third and fourth are on the way, God willing. All of this was possible because somebody laid a brick or two on the road for me.

A few weeks ago, I woke in tears.  It was my 40th birthday and certainly not a time for sadness.  Rather, I cried in joy because for the first time I realized and could embrace the value of the struggle.  The bright little girl, who once cried in my arms because we didn’t know where we were going to live, was headed off to Brown University.  The small boy who had been the “man of the house” far too soon was now truly a man.  And the tiny, angelic baby who had come to this world precious and innocent just 15 months after him was now a 16 year old girl headed out to her first job interview.

For all of this, maybe I should be proud of a woman like Sarah Palin. Maybe, just maybe, I should be rejoicing in John McCain’s selected running mate.

But I’m not.

I’m not “bed wetting liberal” nor am I a “right-wing zealot.” What I am is a working mother.  And I cry foul.

I won’t, for a moment, denigrate her experience or lob spit balls at her family.  I will, though, take issue with what she knows.  Or more succinctly, what she does not know.  Living in Alaska, I’m not sure how much she knows about the people living in inner city Baltimore.  I don’t know how much she cares about the 125 murders this summer in Chicago.  I have no idea what she believes about HIV/ AIDS and the havoc it delivers on Black women or the cancer rates in East St. Louis.  She hasn’t said nary a word about Hurricane Katrina or the infant mortality rates in Appalachia. 

I do know that she’s a life-time member of the NRA, a proponent of individuals who wielded the very weapons that killed my father and brother. I do know that she “lives really close to Russia,” but I’m not so certain she is ready for Putin. I know she wanted to ban books for public libraries and sex education in schools, but that her 17 year old is pregnant and preparing for a shotgun wedding.  I know that she loves her husband enough to allow him (and probably did herself) use her office to settle a personal score–one that the McCain campaign would now like to cover in under a blanket of Juneau snow.  I know that the Alaska Independent Party, and its secessionist platform, was enticing enough for her to attend its conference (and for her husband to become a card carrying member).  Does she love her country? I’m sure.  Enough to support those who want to leave it.

But I have no earthly idea what she knows (or could possibly know) about national domestic policy or foreign diplomacy.  For all of her working class values, she never once mentioned the Middle Class in her diatribe that mocked her opponent’s experience. Having been the mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,000 at the time) and governor of Alaska (a state a smaller than the county I live in) for a little over a year, she felt she was qualified to do that. And obviously, so did John McCain. 

If she’s qualified, then so am I.

But in this country I love, she has been afforded the ability to run.  The very constitution she says doesn’t apply to the men at Guantanamo says she can.  But this is about more than that.

As Gloria Steinem said in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, “Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.”

The good news is thanks to Shirley Chisholm, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angela Davis, Condoleeza Rice, Anita Hill, Madeline Albright, Maxine Waters, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilary Rodham Clinton and a slew of others, there are 18 million proverbial cracks in the ceiling. Our collective political and economic power is due to the strides (and leaps) they, and others, took on my behalf.

I am grateful.  I am deeply humbled to stand on the bricks they’d laid before me.  

But, whatever our struggle was (and is) that last thing I want is to be patronized.  Just as I cannot support just any African American who decides to offer themselves up for public service, I will not toss my vote to someone just because we share the same chromosome mix. To do so would dishonor the vow I made to my children, to myself. I did not vote for Al Sharpton, wasn’t old enough (nor would I have) voted for Jesse Jackson and I certainly will not support Sarah Palin.  Identity politics, especially in this case, are a sham of the worst order.

When I cast my vote, it will be for people who will lay more bricks for people like me.  It will be for people who will put diplomacy before war, challenge us all to provide healthcare for the sick, help another child go to college, and check the special interests in Washington.  This fall, I’m not looking for a woman.

I’m looking for a brick layer.

I couldn’t care less if that person hasn’t spent “enough” time in Washington or can “properly field dress a moose”. I couldn’t care less if that person likes hockey, soccer, football or table tennis.  I couldn’t care less if they graduated from Harvard or the University of Iowa.  I’m a Christian, but I couldn’t care less if they are down with Deuteronomy, Leviticus or Numbers. I want them to uphold the Constitution. 

So no, I will not sit idly by as they attempt to suspend habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay, engage wiretaps on American citizens without a warrant, and hide behind executive privilege when they are caught firing attorney generals based on how well they tow the Republican line.  I won’t let them cost us $12 billion a month fighting a war that should have never been authorized and never been waged.  Not while working people lose their homes to predatory lenders and watch as we bail out the financial institutions that created the housing crisis.
 
I will not, in the name of history, vote for a woman like Sarah Palin who does not share my values.

But here’s what I will do.

I will continue raising money for Barack Obama. I will get on the phone again and call people in distant states I’ve never met. I will e-mail, call, and knock on doors until the final vote is cast. I do this, not because he shares my skin, but because I admire his principles and he shares my values. I do this because Barack Obama is more than a community organizer, he is a bricklayer. And he sees — just as he sees the light in Michelle’s eyes — my struggle, my worth as a woman.