MINK column: Attacks and smears don’t matter; voters worry about real things: family, work, health, education
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I don’t care what the advance polls say: Right now, neither I nor anyone else knows who our next president will be. Nor can anyone say for certain why those who vote for Barack Obama or John McCain will do so.
But I do believe — and, admittedly, it may be nothing more than wishful thinking — that the results of this election will have little to do with TV and radio attack ads, robo-calls, smear mailings, conspiracy-mongering e-mails or any of the countless other offenses to decency that have assaulted us these last months.
I say this because this year, whatever our party leanings or candidate preferences, we have known in our hearts that something has been wrong for a very long time. We may not have been able to put our finger on it or put words to it, but we have sensed it, felt weighed down by it, just the same.
This weight, I suspect, is what will influence our vote more than any other factor. On some level or another — conscious, sub- or un- — we will come to believe that one candidate better understands this heaviness, this profound sense of anxiety, and we will vote for him in the hope that his understanding gives him the insight to do something about it.
It is a feeling that transcends boundaries. When 85 percent of Americans say they believe that our country is headed in the wrong direction, it can not be written off to geography, age, ideology, politics, race, ethnicity, gender or class. Something has happened to the sense of security on which Americans — historically the most optimistic people on Earth — have relied to reach toward the future. It feels, instead, as though the solid earth beneath our American feet has turned to sand, and none of us knows where he stands anymore.
The pillars of our lives — home, health, work, providing for our families — seem wobbly, and while we still have hopes and dreams for the future, fulfilling those hopes and achieving those dreams seem ever more improbable.
Unemployment statistics are one thing, personal experience and observation something else: In the last six months, close family members and longtime friends of mine — talented, productive, honorable and supremely competent people — have lost their jobs, their benefits and, as a result, their certainty and security. As job losses have spread, more and more of us know somebody — a neighbor, a friend, an in-law, a spouse — who finds herself in the same fix.
Without work, there is no income, but mortgage payments and car loans and the gas and electric and water bills keep coming due. Gasoline may be down to $2.15 this week, but does anyone believe the price won’t go back up? You can go to Schnucks and Dierbergs and put your groceries on a charge card, but try missing a minimum payment one month and see what happens to your interest rate.
Some of these lost jobs, of course, stem from the current economic crisis born of reckless business practices and feckless government monitoring. Things will get worse as our recession deepens and extends. But over the last couple of decades, we’ve also seen entire American industries extinguished or work transferred overseas to cut costs and preserve or even boost corporate profits. Instead of American workers being supported and helped to regain their footing, employees have been swept aside like sawdust on a shop floor.
This can strike very close to home. Like many others, my own profession is enduring a wrenching, extended period of transition for which there is no clear resolution. Anyone who thinks his survival is assured is a fool and — in this, at least — I am not a fool.
Without work, there also is no health insurance. Do you know anyone who used to have health insurance but doesn’t anymore? Do you know anyone who got seriously ill and wound up deeply in debt because of medical costs that weren’t covered by insurance? Do you know anyone who was forced into personal bankruptcy by unpaid — and unpayable — medical bills?
Let’s get more personal: Have you ever postponed or avoided a medical test or procedure or cut corners on medication because of cost? Have you or has someone you know ever failed to look into a medical issue for fear of establishing a preexisting condition that could make it impossible for you to get health insurance if you changed or lost your job?
Our medical-care system is broken. Everyone knows it, and more and more of us have experienced it personally or know someone who has. We pay more for less than the people of any other advanced country on Earth. Getting sick is bad enough. Getting sick and winding up financially ruined is a disgrace — and a national embarrassment.
So is the lip service we pay to the importance of education. We champion education as the ladder young people can climb out of poverty to middle-class prosperity. Then we let public school districts, in urban areas especially, wallow in mediocrity for generations.
When it comes to higher education, parents watch their bright, hard-working children qualify for college, only to be denied the chance to attend because of escalating tuition costs they can’t cover with shrinking financial grants. Or they graduate into a dismal job market, loaded with so much student-loan debt that they never can get ahead.
This is what parents and grandparents and singles, working people and students, Americans of every racial blend and proud ancestral heritage, people of all religions and no religion and executives and people looking for jobs are carrying into their polling places today. Yet their very presence says that they also bring with them the hope — the faith, even — that one of the candidates for president understands what’s troubling the hearts of the American people and will work to make life better.
Eric Mink was the commentary editor and an oped columnist for the Post-Dispatch from 2003 until January 2009. Before that, he was television critic at the New York Daily News and at the Post-Dispatch. During the 1980s and '90s, he also was a morning show regular on the various St. Louis radio stations that employed J.C. Corcoran. Mink was born in St. Louis in the previous century and hopes subsequent generations aren't too ticked off about it. He is proud to be a member of the University City High School Hall of Fame and makes no apologies for being what is known in the pet trade as "a cat person." 
Mr. Mink, it really appears that your fondest dreams are about to be realized. The statist movement of the left may soon control the entire federal government. If so, the government will relieve the untrustworthy and childlike American public of responsibility for their own existence.
All will be forced to the lowest common denominator and live under the direction and influence of fair minded government worshipers like yourself. The victims you describe above will be elevated to a Utopian existence without concern for the normal struggles of life. Nanny will provide.
Forced union membership, denied firearms ownership, rationed medical treatment, politicized education, restricted communication and regulations for the “common good.” All on the other guy’s dime. A free ride as long as you go where the government wants. It was been great for the Soviets, Cubans, and Chinese. What took you guys so long?
Have some courage. You still live in the greatest nation on Earth.
Whining at the altar of nanny-state socialism is so unbecoming.
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This election, like none that have preceded it, is about the role which the federal government ought to play in a free society and a capitalistic economy. It is a contest between those who believe that workers should enjoy the fruit of labor, and those who believe that government ought to equalize the fruit baskets by taking from half of America, and giving to the other half. It is a contest between those who believe that parents are responsible for feeding, housing, and educating their children, and those who believe that the government should be responsible for all of these things. It is a contest between those who believe that government should be deeply involved in commerce, subsidizing and regulating vast industries, and those who believe that businesses should rise and fall on their own resources and decisions.
At the bottom, it is a contest between those who believe that our nations many problems - health insurance, finance, energy, education - should be solved by the private labors of millions of Americans, as they have for more than two hundred years, and those who believe that the federal government should solve them all, now and forever.
Sad to say, while the solutions of Obama, Reid and Pelosi will be the wrong ones, clearly breaking with American history, they are not to blame for the problem. It is the Bush administration’s incompetence, from the Iraqi war to the economic crisis, that has laid the foundation for today’s political situation. Unfortunately, the simplistic analysis that if a particular Republican President is bad, then replacing him with a Democrat will be good, couldn’t be more wrong. We need look no further than the 1976 election to see an illustration of that.
Unfortunately, the drift toward a larger, more costly, and more intrusive federal government runs in only one direction. How much longer can we afford this?
Nick, I agree with most of the things you said but to lay all of this at the feet of Bush is wrong. The media and sad-sacks out there who hate Bush have focused on nothing but negatives during his entire presidency…it was easy to do. However, here are the positives I’ve seen during his presidency:
-Homelessness, according the PD’s own reporting, decreased by 30%.
-AIDS/HIV/Malaria prevention spending in Africa was the highest of any president’s administration.
-Prior to the democrats taking over Congress, housing starts were high and unemployment very low (yes, the housing was based on the subprime market and low interest rates…but Democrats had their hand in it as well).
-Libya renounced terrorism
-N. Korea sat down for 5 party talks (sure they have a long way to go but they re-started their nuclear plant when the democrats took over Congress)
-The US saved 100’s of thousands of Iraqis and there is peace in the majority of the country.
-Afghanistan (agreeably in trouble now) was freed from the Taliban..who devastated that country (remember the Buddha?)
-His tax cuts had far-reaching, positive results
-Hurricane IKE response which was generally good.
-yes he stumbled big time on Katrina but Blanco and Nagin were equally at fault..which people forget
-The tsunami in Indonesia-he gets no credit for the help we provided
-Positive relations now with Merkel and Sarkozy
-No Child Left Behind-questions on the funding but this is the first president I can remember who really kept education at the forefront.
-Energy–you can say what you will…but he has been talking about new energy sources in most of his State of the Union speeches…but no body remembers that.
-No terrorist attacks on our country since 9/11
How did we get where we are? The media has done a great job of telling people how miserable their lives are. I am not one that believes that life is miserable now…but agree that it will be if Obama gets in office. It may be the best thing that has happened to Republicans/Conservatives.
Mark my words: if Obama gets elected, he’ll go in front of the American public in the first quarter and say that Bush left the economy in such bad shape that he won’t be able to lower taxes or push through the spending plans. Clinton did the same thing…and people bought into it. Idiots.
“Unfortunately, the drift toward a larger, more costly, and more intrusive federal government runs in only one direction. How much longer can we afford this?”
Nick -
The type of “free-wheeling capitalism” usually invoked as the solution to all of life’s problems never really worked in the first place. What it did do was concentrate the hard wealth into the hands of the few hyper-wealthy.
Alan Greenspan, in his recent testimony, exhibited this blindness when he said he thought that the markets/banks would behave ethically. Either this was one of the most disingenuous cyncial statements ever to come out of his mouth, or he knows less about markets and wealth than we thought he did all these years.
The calls for “deregulation” and “privatization” occurred in times of relative economic stability and growth, so the assumption was that they brought it on. These combined with the “charge card” mentality to create the illusion of wealth greater than what was real.
While it is convenient (and mostly truthful) to blame Bush-Cheney et al for the current economic problems, blame is not going to solve a thing. We may have to spend more money we do not have in the next few years on infra-structure projects, increased police and public health care and school teachers just to get people back to work and earning some real income.
While I do not see a return to a cash economy, far more people are going to have to live in the cash economy than who have had in the past 30 years.
Regardless if President-Elect Obama, or Senator McCain, had been chosen, the Bush-Cheney team even now are doing things which will make it even more difficult for the next administration to take certain actions. Vice-Presient Elect Joe Biden has used the “shovel” analogy recently in his speeches. Normally he referenced it as something being handed off to Senator McCain to dig the hole deeper. This may still be an accurate analogy, only the next administration will need the shovel to clear out the Bush-Cheney Augean Stables of special interest sweetheart deals, as well as our largest debt ever.
RH: C’mon now, the guy hasn’t taken office yet. You have to wait until AFTER he’s in to start making excuses as to why he can’t do what he said he could. That’s the tradition, anyways…
camdawggy-
I am certain that President Elect Obama would love to have the now obsolete “100 days” grace period.
The reality is that if Bush wants to get out of office with some integrity left to him, he and Obama will have to work closely together, especially in the areas of the economy and national security. President Elect Obama’s term began today. Cf the address this morning by President Bush.
A lame duck is still a duck…