Obama and McCain - A Tale of Two Candidates

On May 15, in Columbus, Ohio, John McCain, gave a "somewhat utopian speech" which exposed "the quixotic nature of his foreign-policy ambitions."

Or so says Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate.

But McCain's speech contained something else. This Hitchens refers to as "one of his [McCain's] smaller and more realistic and achievable domestic proposals..."

"'I will ask Congress,' said the presumptive Republican nominee, 'to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons.'"

Hitchens likes this idea a lot. It is, he says, "a reformist proposal with quite a long and interesting pedigree, and it speaks well, I think, of the man proposing it."

Maybe. Hitchens still thinks the war in Iraq was a wonderful idea so that gives you some idea of where he stands in the political spectrum. But, it might work to the extent that it would open up lines of communication between the White House and the Congress, lines of communication that have been pretty much shut down for eight years in favor of royal decrees from a regal prezident to a petrified and powerless legislative body.

A major problem, however, is that of substance. What would McCain and Congress talk about? McCain, surrounded by lobbyists and cronies, still doesn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite, nor is he aware that al-Qaeda was never the problem in Iraq. There is a huge gap between what McCain should know and what he does know.

Still...it ain't that bad an idea so far as it goes. It does, however, show that McCain is a man much more comfortable with dialog in analog than with digital 21st Century technology. McCain is a noted bullshitter, and loves to sit around and tell tall tales. He's one of the good old boys, perhaps more at home in the proverbial smoke-filled back room than in a space filled with computers, WiFi and the Internet.


So, let's do some comparison shopping. In an article on TheAtlantic.com titled "HisSpace," Marc Ambinder says that "revolutions in communications technology have always bestowed great gifts on those politicians savvy enough to grasp their full potential." He provides several examples.

First, Ambinder suggests that Andrew Jackson was able to better form and organize the Democratic Party because of improvements to the printing press -- "...he courted newspaper editors and publishers ... with a zeal then unknown among political leaders."

Even more important for Jackson was the postal service, "which was coming into its own as he reached the presidency ..." The postal service gave Jackson the opportunity to tell his story to the country via "the distribution network that the postal service had created." His 1828 campaign used biographical pamphlets delivered by the postal service to reinforce his "heroic image."

Ambinders notes that Abraham Lincoln was thrust into the national consciousness when transcripts of the famous Lincoln and Douglas debates were reprinted nationwide in newspapers "which were just then reaching critical mass in distribution beyond the few Eastern cities where they had previously flourished."

And Franklin Delano Roosevelt "used radio to make his case for a dramatic redefinition of government itself, quickly mastering the informal tone best suited to the medium. In his fireside chats, Roosevelt reached directly into American living rooms at pivotal moments of his presidency."

Nor can we forget how the first televised presidential debate in American history helped propel John F. Kennedy into the Oval Office.


Ambinder says that "if Barack Obama eventually wins the presidency, it will be in no small part because he understood the medium [of the Internet] more fully than his opponents do." Obama has used YouTube for speeches, and he has organized his support through the Internet, with "8,000 Web-based affinity groups, 750,000 active volunteers, and 1,276,000 donors..."

More importantly, and in contrast to the McCain style, Obama "Clearly intends to use the Web ... if he is elected president." He will do this in such a way, says Ambinder, as "to transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning." He plans to resurrect Roosevelt's fireside chats, but he will use the Internet, not radio. Just imagine, says Ambinder, "how Obama's political army, presumably intact, might be mobilized to lobby for major legislation with just a few keystrokes ... he might change the political culture of Washington simply by overwhelming it."

There's more. "...Obama seems to promise ... a participatory democracy in which the opportunities for participation have been radically expanded." Thus Obama has suggested a "public, Google-like database of every federal dollar spent. He aims to post every piece of non-emergency legislation online for five days before he signs it so that Americans can comment. A White House blog--also with comments--would be a near certainty. Overseeing this new apparatus would be a chief technology officer."


I find all of this tremendously exciting and opportune. My God, to have a president who can actually read without moving his lips; who knows the difference between Google and gargle; who doesn't need to consult a right wing think tank every time he wants an idea gives one the goosebumps.

Ambinder says, "If Obama wins, and if he can harness the Web as a unifying force once the voting is done, he could be a powerful president indeed--the kind that might even deliver on some of the audacious promises that Obama the candidate has made."

Finally, though, a word of caution. None of this would come easy. In many ways, it is uncharted territory and carries a variety of unseen dangers. "...the Web, like the politics it seeks to transform, is uruly and fickle."

But just think of the possibilities!