The Mechanics of Democracy

After 11 straight primary losses, it’s do-or-die for the Hilary Clinton campaign. In last week’s debate, she did. In three key rounds of policy boxing at Cleveland State University, the junior Senator from New York eloquently articulated the critical difference between the two proposed paths to universal healthcare coverage, defended a nuanced plan to navigate the dicey waters of NAFTA politics, and hammered home Senator Obama’s relative foreign policy inexperience as a fundamental handicap for a potential Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. And still, she could very well lose Ohio.

Senator Clinton’s widely acknowledged strength in this year’s Democratic debates makes her dizzying fall in the polls somewhat puzzling. The juxtaposition of her consistently strong performance in the policy realm with her patchwork poor performance at the voting booth begs a fundamental question: If not mastery of policy, just what criteria do Americans use to pick their president? Does it boil down to raw identity politics? Or, even worse, is Hillary-hatred based on factors as (literally) cosmetic as her brow and laugh? Are we truly to choose a commander in chief based on the candidate’s marital history or a brief (albeit misguided) affinity for headbands?

The most obviously electric forces in this election, of course, are those of race and gender. After ingesting the January avalanche of pundit speculation in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire, I too had chalked up my ambivalence about the two candidates to my own race and gender. I simply had to grit my teeth and decide which one was more important to me, which was in more dire need of “change”: my status as a minority or my status as a woman. As the campaign wore on, however, I came to realize that I don’t swing towards Hilary Clinton when I am feeling particularly feminine (or feminist, for that matter), and I don’t get excited about Barack Obama when indignant about the social marginalization of Asian Americans. Rather, my strongest pro-Clinton feeling surge at the end of policy debates like last night’s, and hot tears stream down my face as Barack Obama delivers magnificent speeches like those he gave at Dr. King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Without doubt, there are many who will vote for or against Hillary and Barack on the sole basis of her extra x-chromosome and the color of his skin. But for the informed and thoughtful citizen, the much more interesting question at stake is less about demographics and more about the key skills required to be an effective president: established fluency in policy-speak versus the ability to bring down the rafters. At heart, is the presidential election a popularity contest?

The merits of Clinton’s command of the facts are self-explanatory, while the relevance of Obama’s ability to connect with audiences is less so. When I asked a friend who had stumped in New Hampshire why he had chosen to sacrifice an entire, precious day of Reading Period to Senator Obama, he responded, “I don’t know, I just find him really inspiring. Isn’t that enough?” More than four weeks later, I find myself wondering the exact same question. Is it enough that Barack Obama loses more policy debates than he wins, but leaves audiences roaring everywhere he goes? Will that win in November and, more importantly, will it serve us well until 2012? At the New Hampshire debate, Senator Clinton reminded America of the dangers of voting for the candidate with whom they would most like to “have a beer.” But the magical quality of Obama’s oratory can hardly be sidelined to that of a happy hour playmate. Any diligent junior high civics student can tell you that the executive is constitutionally the weakest branch of government. But a rhetorically adept president can leverage public support to drive through groundbreaking bills that are too risky for individual legislators to try and pass on their own. In this respect, an Obama presidency might better mirror Lyndon Johnson’s role in pushing through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than the anemic gestures towards civil rights made by the Kennedy White House. Senator Obama’s ability to rally the public troops—call it inspiration, charisma, or even “change you can believe in”—seems to have touched a widespread nerve amongst Democrats of all stripes, particularly when compared with the distinctly uninspiring and combative style of his opponent. It remains to be seen, however, just how valuable the American people believe this x-factor to be contra John McCain—a candidate with Hillary’s foreign policy credentials and without such widespread (albeit superficial and oft-overstated) “dislikeability.” Painting a Purple Heart winner as “anti-hope,” I would hazard, could present a few new challenges for the Obama spin machine.

As a highly educated, soon-to-be-yuppie emerging from the throes of e-recruiting, I ex ante believe that jobs should be rewarded to those who can establish their qualifications in a substantive, structured and tangible way—namely, through policy debates. But in the end, my vote carries the same weight as that of the senior citizen concerned about losing her drug benefits to an overly ambitious tax plan, the concerned father who doesn’t want his daughter to think that the only way to become president is to marry one, and the recently unemployed steel worker who just can’t bring himself to vote for such a frigid you-know-what. Far from elegant (or even reasonable), the process by which we make our most important political choices is a sticky web of policy, identity, and a strong thirst for likeable leadership; our inability to gauge, much less standardize, these criteria with which we size up our options is at the same time the most beautiful and frustrating element of our electoral process. In this way, the choice between Senators Clinton and Obama represents neither a battle of the sexes, nor a clash of black versus white, but rather, an unprecedented referendum on the mechanics of our democracy.

Audrey J. Kim ’09 is a history concentrator in Adams House.