“Country First”, “Drill Now! Drill Now!” said the placards festooning the arena at the Republican National Convention last week. I was on the cross-trainer at the gym and when I switched on the TV thought perhaps the channel was showing a spoof show, a parody extrapolating the aggressive rhetoric, war-mongering and insularity to an extreme. But no, that was the real Mitt Romney on the stage. “We need change all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big government liberals and elect John McCain!” Hello? Ah the administration of the past eight years must have been liberal then. “Did you hear any Democrats talk last week about the threat from radical, violent Jihad? Republicans believe that there is good and evil in the world.” It could be funny if it wasn’t so scary.
You could feel a fired-up fear of change among the delegates, who were apparently a few degrees more homogenous than previous years. They were clinging (oops mustn't say that) to the comfort of each other and of unity in the face of a threat. Never mind the precise form of the threat, just that it’s dangerous. Huckabee was up next. Midway through his speech he also suggested that Americans do want change. “When gasoline costs $4 a gallon…You want something to change.” The crowd prickled. Change? Ok it’s bad that gas costs $4 a gallon, but change? Isn’t that a dirty word? There was a trickle of hesitant applause. “If you're a flight attendant or a baggage-handler, and you're asked to take the pay cut to keep your job, you want something to change." Nervous clap-clap. "If you're a young couple losing your house, your credit rating, and your piece of the American dream, you want something to change.” Hesitant agreement. “But let me say there are some things we don't want to change.” Phew. A palpable wave of relief through the delegates. “Freedom, security, and the opportunity to prosper.” A tremendous cheer, as Huckabee proclaimed those powerful familiar values.
What wasn’t asked of course, was freedom, security and opportunity for whom, and at what cost for the rest? In what way does the legacy of the Bush administration – which would be perpetuated by McCain – represent freedom, security and opportunity?
Huckabee told the story of a schoolteacher who one day emptied her classroom of desks. She told the students they could have their desks back when they told her how they should earn them. None of them guessed "right". Eventually 20 veterans in uniform carried the desks in and the teacher said, "You don't have to earn your desk, because these guys, they already did." Recognition of the sacrifice by veterans, fine. Perhaps it would be good to think about ways in which that sacrifice won’t have to be necessary in the future. But instead the implication of that annecdote and of so many other remarks made throughout the convention was that this is a country whose freedom – even the education of its children – owes its very existence to the defeat of adversaries in warfare. Is that what the founding fathers had in mind, even if implicitly, when for example Jefferson concluded the Declaration of Independence by proclaiming that "for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." For all the superficiality and razzmatazz of the national conventions – both of them – they are fascinating in the way they strip naked the American ideal, posing questions about what exactly it is and how it can be achieved. And they expose the contradiction between a single national identity and ideal founded on values (epitomized by the “Country First” slogan), yet one that rests on the primacy of the individual. Obama, despite the disappointing compromises he’s been making in the crucial effort to win, seems first and foremost to be about reconciling that contradiction. In his acceptance speech he articulated clearer than ever the “common purpose" that runs through his politics. He recognizes that the individual is at the heart of politics and that in a country / a world in which different values, beliefs and ideals are permanently jostling against one another the solution is not to push them all to subscribe to one value system but to find ways to make them work together. The question is how to convince them to work together. And how to make working together go far enough, when some interests wield so much more weight than others.
I’d been on the cross-trainer for an hour, feeling physically weary from the exercise and mentally weary from the addictive pantomime on the screen. And I needed to get a shower before the gym closed at 11. But I wanted to catch Sarah Palin’s speech too, so on I pounded through Giuliani’s snide jokes about Obama (he spoke in front of a projection of the New York City skyline of course, driving home the permanent threat of terrorism and his own heroic response to September 11 - not necessarily in that order). "Barack Obama has never led anything, nothing, nada… He worked as a community organizer. What? He worked — I said — I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume. He worked as a community organizer.” Raucous laughter from the delegates. The Obama campaign couldn’t let that one go. “Let’s clarify something for them right now," it responded. Community organization is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.”
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