President as “Leader” vs. “Public Servant” or You Don’t Have to Be Republican to Vote Like One

It may just be me, but I found Sen. Ted Kennedy’s endorsement speech for Barack Obama a real shocker. Here is a link to the speech, which the Obama camp has posted on the front page of their website.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/kennedystream

Here is fun idea for a drinking game. Tequila shots all around every time the senior senator from Mass. uses the word “leader” or “leadership”. Bonus points for “fighter”, “tough minded”, gets us “fired up”, “inspirational.” If you ignore the brief references to poverty, race and gender that zip by more quickly than you can say “Don’t want to offend any general election voters”, the main value Ted Kennedy espouses is America as in Everyone despises it right now, but under Obama everyone will love it again. Yippee! “Hunger to move America forward.” “United States the great leader” “He will keep us strong!” “I love this country!”

Well. Sen. Kennedy, I do, too. But making Sen. Obama out to be John Wayne’s wet dream of a candidate may not be the best way to show our love for our country.

My last journal was about a prophetic article Noam Chomsky wrote in 1973, in which he predicted the George W. Bush administration. Part of what is wrong with the U.S. (or Why the Dems Won’t Impeach W. ) is

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/132



You got that? If people think that their president is some kind of demi-god, and if they believe that their leader is necessary in order to preserve this country from all sorts of vaguely imagined harms, then they will be willing to let the government trample all over the rights of marginalized people here at home and anyone in any foreign country.

You say that no Democrat would ever misuse that kind of power? Maybe not. But if you prop up the institution and if you keep people thinking this way, then what happens the next time a Republican becomes president? Change begins from within. If we do not change the way that people think about their government, then we are going to keep repeating the Nixon administration over and over again---until the multinational corporations get it right.

It is easy to drum up a kind of rah rah we love that presidential candidate support for a charismatic, messianic leader who promises to toss out all of our old problems and give us bright shiny new lives. And it is true that this kind of candidate has an edge in elections in America, given the way that so many of our citizens have been brainwashed. So, it is always tempting to utilize the tools of fascism (not German fascism, think Italian, the cult of personality, Il Duce style fascism) in elections. Democrats find it especially easy to make use of the parts about how our collective victimhood makes it alright for us to resort to unethical strategies and to tolerate alliances with our natural enemies in order to level the playing field---just until we win the election, of course. Unity and nationalism can become goals in themselves for Democrats, just as they can for Republicans, and people can forget that in striving to achieve these goals, one can lose ones soul through the use of improper means.

Both parties are guilty of this kind of greedy, goal oriented politicking. And look at the result. We get a nation that is willing to tolerate the worst kind of abuses from its president. Or, in our present situation, we get a Congress which will not believe it when the voters say they want impeachment, because a few years ago, they saw an impeached president’s poll numbers rebound, and they are afraid that the same thing will happen again. Many of them lived through Watergate and saw that the public had no will to impeach over Cambodia or Laos. What if this is some kind of fluke and the public goes back to its old leadership loving ways?

There is an alternative to voting for the candidate who is presented as loving America the best and who promises to make its women the prettiest and its men the strongest and its weapons the most respected. We can vote for the most competent public servant .

Does that sound boring? Like a major downer? Teddy Roosevelt didn’t think so.

http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/quotes.htm




But no one runs for president as a public servant, right? Wrong.

Hillary Clinton.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/115.aspx

The above video features Hillary Clinton “public servant” “standing up for people”.

Hillary is endorsed as a public servant by Charlie Rangel.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g-qGLDs-gAnZiUXD2NU51ry3j3dwD8UD2OJG0

While Kerry endorses Obama as a “leader”.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/politics/11obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Proving that men can run as public servants too , John Edwards has this video endorsement up on his website. John Edwards: You Work For Him, He’ll Work For You

http://blog.johnedwards.com/story/2008/1/29/152310/420

I can almost hear opposing voices saying what is so bad about showing reverence for a president after seven years of Bush-Cheney?

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/public-servant-v-military-commander.html



The Democrats must win this fall, but forget the notion that we must win at all costs and use any methods. The time to start changing America is right now, in the way that we conduct this election. Obama is on the right track when he talks about mobilizing Americans to become active participants in democracy. Watch out for establishment figures who would mold young voters into mindless drones to take the place of their mindless parents and grandparents. They are great for business but not so great for our democracy.

Ironically, presidential candidate Obama already has that you will speak no criticism about him aura about which Roosevelt warned. He isn't even in the White House yet, but if Bill Clinton or anyone else says something bad about him, the press reacts as if someone has spit on the sacred image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Hillary Clinton's supporters have had to listen to the press call her everything from Bitch to Witch and John Edwards supporters have endured every variation of Edwards is a phony , but comparing Obama to the respected civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was grounds for an MSM fatwa on former President Bill Clinton. The last candidate that got this kind of corporate media kingly treatment was W. back in 2000 and then again in 2004.

Hmmm. Seems to me that the corporate media is doing a bang up job of protecting the office of the president so that they will be ready for the next Article II president, whomever he may be. Even if Obama is just a placeholder.

What about people who endorsed her without using that phrase?

not as messiahs or demi-gods or (heaven help us) capital L leaders.

Even though I know Edwards can not win, I support him, because he is running the right kind of campaign. He focuses on the right issues and takes no corporate money. The poor need someone like him. It is not always about winning.

Here is something funny (and sad) from The Onion

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/mysterious_traveler_entrances

I don't trust him.

at just the "prefect moment" & sits on his lap at the SOTU. THe whole thing isn't going to wear very well in the long run.

within the Democratic Party to re-create Chicago 1968. Their goal was to set Obama up as McCarthy--the youth candidate who would go to the convention, get snubbed, take his voters home (I'll bet Karl Rove had hired protesters) and cause the Dems to lose. By supporting Obama, he has mended the rift that might have formed within the Party along race lines.

However, Kennedy's speech did not sound much like an Obama speech. It almost sounded like he was running JFK for president again. I don't want Bay of Pigs again.

Considering Obama's training as a community organizer in the radical Alinsky tradition I would bet he understands more than most any candidate in recent memory the importance of movements that empower people rather than depending on leaders. That's what the LBJ/MLK civil rights argument was about. Obama thinks change comes from the people, not a leader who mandates things from the top. In fact, you'll hear that theme in his speeches often if you listen for it.

I understand him fine. I worry that he does not understand the nastiness of the people who will try to crawl in bed with him if they think that he is headed to the White House. He needs some protection from the political sharks out there.

Obama would be the first Presidential nominee who comes out of a left wing movement that is focused on the idea of empowering individuals and communities to lead themselves. If that's important to you then it only makes sense to support Obama. He's the one who has lived it and speaks it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion

The Cubans have a right to live the way they want. Being communists was their business not ours.

Moral: never trust any politician. That was what I learned growing up in the 60's. The Man is always the Man. Does not matter if he is Black, a woman, gay. If he is invested in the status quo, you keep your eye on him.

People who learned about watergate in school, came of age with "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and then were lied into war by Bush don't need to be reminded not to trust leaders.

because I can not think of any other use for this God awful administration. Unfortunately, much of the political consciousness raising from the 60s came from the draft. People can ignore what is happening now if they want. That is why the right wing is so careful not to have a draft this time.

Seriously, in 2000 there was very, very little interest in the Democratic Party among college students. The party was ignoring them and their issues and didn't appear to stand for anything in the view of most young people. Campus Green Party chapters were bigger than the College Democrats on every campus I visited. Democrats were so negligent at giving any kind of inspiring message to young people that it took Bush to get them on our side. Thankfully, Obama seems to be breaking that bad habit.

This is part of my problem with the Clintons and their political approach. It may get you through the next election but it destroys the party in the long run.

Your ruining a perfectly good narrative about Obama being an empty suit with no ideas and no experience. We all know that "real" experience is 35 Years(TM) worth of kibbutzing and sitting on boards.

Have you seen this?

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/poll_bullshit_is_most_important

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/barack_obama_tiger_beat

Hee!

I love political satire.

and my thinking as well

this is why I support Hillary's candidacy.

She "gets" what a President is supposed to be.

And yes, it's there, and very very noticeable. It's here on DU, when the slightest hint that he may have some flaws, that he may have made mistakes, brings the full force of wrath upon whoever posts. I've even seen where someone posted praise of another candidate and failed to mention Obama too had been called out.

Worse, you can see it in the media, and in the speeches by some of his endorsers (a comet? Come on.)

Maybe it's not his fault, but he basks in it. I think one reason why such an excellent public speaker is only a mediocre debater is that he hates to be challenged by anyone. And that's scary.

first and foremost.