There are many ways to tell that story. We offer one only. It comes from our last conversation with Fay Citerone, the white, middle-aged professional we had been following throughout the election, who had been wrestling with her initial support for Clinton before switching to Obama. “Listen to this,” she told us immediately after the election. “My ninety-two-year-old mom, who is from a very Republican part of Pennsylvania—I think she had a Reagan calendar on her wall—asked me, ‘Who are you gonna vote for?’ and I said ‘Obama.’ And she said, ‘I think I might, too.’ I didn’t press it. Then the day before the election, I said, ‘Who are you going to vote for?’ and she said, ‘I’m gonna vote for the black man.’ And I said, ‘Mom, have you ever voted for a Democrat for president?’And she said, ‘No, I don’t think I ever have.’ She’s probably voted in every election in her life. So I asked her about Obama. ‘What’s the appeal there, what do you like about him?’ And she said, ‘I think he’s very inspiring. That’s who we need right now.’
“Three friends told me about black people they worked with who went to the polls at five a.m. Tuesday even though the polls here didn’t open until seven. They wanted to be some of the first people to vote. That speaks volumes to me. I think we’ve come so far in our society that it really didn’t matter to white people that he was black. It may have brought about more of a black vote because they had a credible black candidate. But I don’t think people cared. Maybe twenty years ago this would have stopped some people from voting for a black candidate. But we’ve matured so much, American society has, that it just didn’t matter anymore.”
That may be overly optimistic, but it speaks to the power of what Obama’s own story says about America’s promise. Here he was, someone who spent much of his youth outside the United States, from a broken family—a black father who abandoned him, a white mother who then married an Indonesian and moved there with him and Barack, only to send the young Obama back to Hawaii to be raised by his white grandparents. Without major financial resources, or privileged family position, he was still able to attain a splendid education, pursue and realize his dreams.
For many women, the election of 2008 proved unsatisfying. The treatment of Hillary Clinton raised questions about whether sexism is somehow more acceptable than racism. Both Clinton and Sarah Palin endured withering criticism, whether in the media or as the target of late-night comics. There is no way to know how much of Clinton’s owed to her being half of a powerful couple who have provoked strong reactions and resentments now for nearly two decades, as opposed to the fact that she is a woman. That she was a polarizing figure is indisputable, though by the end of her campaign she had won over many people with her show of tenacity and resolve. Palin brought much, but not all, criticism upon herself.
The campaign showed that female candidates face their own special obstacles. Clinton joked after the campaign that when Obama awoke each morning, he could go to the gym and exercise. She had to worry about having her hair and makeup done. But there were serious issues that affected her candidacy. Clinton’s advisers constantly worried about how to demonstrate that she was capable of being commander in chief in a time of war. Their strategy of running her as the front-runner and inevitable candidate in part grew out of those insecurities—better to show her strong and predestined than to allow doubts about whether she was tough enough for the job. Women also come under greater pressure not to show emotions. When Clinton welled up with tears in New Hampshire, she was instantly subjected to questions about whether that moment was real or manufactured to manipulate voters.
Still, her campaign advanced the cause of women’s rights—especially their political rights. When she talked about her campaign having contributed to the shattering of the glass ceiling, she was expressing much more than what quickly became a political cliché. Over the last two generations, women have assumed more vital roles in American society. They are today by far the greater percentage of those attending college—outnumbering male students by as much as 60 to 40 percent. In the professions, from lawyers to doctors to scientists and researchers, they now comprise more than half of those entering their fields. In athletics too, women now occupy a far greater place than in the past—not the equal of men in pay and celebrity status, but closer in public standing, prestige, and acclaim. Those kinds of statistics would seem to assure women of a more significant place in American life in the future, but the evidence does not support that assumption. Women still fall far behind men in leadership of corporations, in boardrooms, in law firms, in medical establishments. At the end of 2008, for example, Catalyst, a leading nonprofit organization that has been providing statistics about women in business for more than forty years, found that women’s overall representation in senior leadership positions has continued to stagnate. Women then represented 46.3 percent of the U.S. labor force, but among Fortune 500 positions they trailed far behind men in the percentage of corporate officers (15.4), board members (14.8), and top earners (6.7). Only 2.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were women. While women in America have made real progress after decades of struggle and protests that slowly brought about changes, sexism still thrives. Far too often women are treated with condescension or as sex objects, suffer discrimination, and fall far behind men in pay and position. And they still lag far behind men in national political leadership. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was a signal example both of the power of women to attract wide public support in politics—and of how far they have yet to go. Political leadership still remains a barrier to full equality.
It is crucial to explore the lessons about the process by which Americans elect their president. It remains flawed, as 2008 demonstrated. The battle begins too early, lasts too long, requires ever greater amounts of money, and leaves few people satisfied. Obama’s prodigious fund-raising became one of the marvels of the election, evidence of the enthusiasm his candidacy created and seemingly an antidote to the belief that only the wealthiest play an influential role in funding campaigns. But Obama’s vast campaign war chest also highlighted the degree to which there was an uneven playing field, particularly in the general election. He could spend freely while McCain, who had accepted public funds and the limits they imposed, could not. He paid little price for rejecting public funding in the fall campaign. Efforts to limit campaign spending have rarely worked, in large part because of constitutional obstacles but also because of ever-present loopholes that have been exploited by candidates or independent groups. But the need to raise huge amounts of money contributes to the early start to each presidential campaign, and despite the growing power of online fund-raising by small donors, candidates still court the biggest givers and fund-raisers. Money still undermines public confidence in the election process.
The role of caucuses and primaries, the timing of the electoral contests, the rush to hold early events, the way delegates are apportioned have all correctly been the subject of long controversy. We offer no easy solution to this problem. In fact, as co-authors we disagree on whether a series of regional primaries, on rotating schedules, would be better (as Johnson believes) than a shortened version of the current caucus/primary process (which Balz favors as a way of testing the candidates by greater exposure to voters in homes and communities). But we agree that the entire election process urgently needs to be reexamined—and reformed.
Another lesson involves the debates. By the end of the primaries, both candidates and voters were experiencing debate fatigue. The debates were too frequent, too long, often too discursive. Democrats debated more than two dozen times, Republicans more than twenty. Only a few significantly shaped the races. Debates during the primaries became more important to news organizations that promote and sponsor them than to voters seeking to form judgments about who should be the next president. In 2008, even more than in past election cycles, they became elaborate staged events with half a dozen or more candidates vying for attention over the course of two hours (or ninety minutes) that rarely examined in depth the critical, complex i
ssues facing the country. Formats that limited candidate responses to sixty or ninety seconds and ranged over many subjects severely limited their usefulness. Too often, they became battles for sound bites and “gotcha” attempts to “get” the front-runner. At the least, we believe McCain’s idea of candidates holding a series of joint town hall meetings in which specific subjects of concern were discussed and debated deserved a more positive reception than Obama gave it.
Then there’s the media. The media’s role in politics always has been, and always should be, controversial. In the American system, the press was granted the extraordinary constitutional right to be wrong in the belief that it would serve as a check on power, a disturber of the peace—even at times reckless and irresponsible—all in the belief that a greater public good emerges from free inquiry. At its best, it is the provider of essential information on which the public can form reasoned opinions. In the new world of media, however, its role becomes more complicated and contentious. The number of media outlets increases extraordinarily. They are abetted by the rise of the blogosphere and the rapid decline of traditional news operations, especially newspapers but also newsmagazines and the traditional three television networks. Opinionated talking heads on cable television dominate much of the political discourse. The round-the-clock, 24/7 news cycle accelerates the pressure to provide instantaneous coverage, so often sensational and lacking in perspective and careful analysis. With all this, the collective arms of the press combine to shape the changing narratives of the long presidential cycle.
In 2008, the performance of the media provided some of its best—and worst—examples of coverage and commentary. We are far from alone in finding that a vicious tone animates many of the blog and cable talk comments from both extreme left and right. As the primary contests began an experiment by one of our colleagues, Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, memorably demonstrated this. Curious to examine the effects of today’s information overload on the public, Weingarten locked himself in a room for twenty-four hours with six TVs, two radios, and a laptop set to cycle through the outpouring of eleven blogs and cable news commentary programs. His thoughts emerged in a play-by-play narrative titled “Crime and Unusual Punishment.” At first, his reactions were generally positive. As he wrote, “It’s complicated, but here it is: There’s something real about all this palaver all around me; in its overheated, perfervid way, it’s inspiring. You can’t get away from that. . . . Unfettered discourse is the sign of a robust democracy. It’s a genuine war of ideas out there, being fought by highly committed people who care about the world.”
But by the end of his twenty-four-hour immersion in the heated new world of the blogs and attack-and-counterattack cable culture, Weingarten’s optimism was shaken: “I cannot tell you how horrible it is,” he wrote. “It rattles the very center of your being. If you care about the state of hu mankind, it fills you with despair. We are as a people bleak and hostile and suspicious, filled with senseless partisanship and willing to believe anything and everything about anyone. We are full of ourselves and we hate. And we do it 24/7.”
Weingarten was correct in characterizing the background of public discourse during the election as being bleak, hostile, filled with senseless partisanship and hate. He offered no remedy to a condition that further contributes to growing polarization of American society, making it all the more difficult to achieve public consensus to address complex and growing problems. Nor is there an easy remedy. One of the glories of America’s experiment in democracy is the belief that unfettered debate, however vicious and unfair at times, is essential to the functioning of a free society. So one answer to reducing the increasingly destructive political climate lies in continuing to celebrate the First Amendment and its protection of free expression. But at the same time, the public, from political leaders to ordinary citizens, needs to challenge the haters and reassert the values of tolerance, civility, and respect for differences of opinion. That means encouraging uninhibited debate over divisive issues in a diverse society—and to strike a reasoned balance between extremes. And that requires an educational system that stresses teaching citizens these basic elements about a democratic society, and their responsibility to participate, be informed, and appreciate all sides of an argument before rendering a political judgment.
Finally, there’s the role of government itself, all the more critical because of the economic collapse and the intervention by Washington to fashion a remedy that so suddenly changed the stakes in the election. Economic warning lights were flashing red for months, if not years. And that raises the far more complex question of what the appointed watchmen were doing during this period, who was watching the watchmen, and what was the proper role of government. Not big, small, liberal, or conservative government, but government that works, government in which people have confidence. The regulatory agencies had become, at best, lax. At worst, they were dismissed as unnecessary. They failed to fulfill their responsibilities. Democrats seize on this as the root of the problem, but in truth neither party can escape blame for what happened.
Whether the economic collapse of 2008 signals a shift in the way Americans feel about the role of government is not clear from the election results alone. At the least, the crisis seems to have shattered the public consensus about following a decades-long Reagan era model of laissez faire government. That did not answer the question of whether the public wanted a return to big government—or to the principles of government as the neutral umpire, one that strives to allow opportunity to flourish and risk to occur, but also establishes supervision to keep the system from self-destructing. Those principles, and the unanswered questions about the role of government, lay at the heart of the election.
The election of 2008 was not about small issues. It was nothing less than a battle for America. Despite the imperfections of the nominating and electoral process, the excesses of the media, and the failure to plumb below the surface of the greatest issues confronting America, the election of 2008 was as significant as the nation has experienced at least since 1980, if not 1932 and the advent of the New Deal. At the end, the election was defined by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, raising even greater challenges for the American people and their political system. For all its faults, 2008 will be remembered as an election of great consequence and a dramatic turn in direction, one that produced a surge in voter turnout, the engagement of younger voters and African-Americans, and in Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton three politicians notable for their character and resiliency.
EPILOGUE
The Inauguration
January 20, 2009, the Capitol
On Barack Obama’s inauguration day, the worst of times brought out the best in America.
Obama was taking office facing some of the grimmest conditions a new president could confront. Since his election the Dow Jones Industrial Average had declined by more than a thousand points. Wall Street calculated $7 trillion wiped out during the previous year. The S&P index of the leading five hundred stocks had fallen more than at any time since 1937, with every sector taking double-digit hits and the financial sector losing more than half its value. The government reported the worst job losses since 1945, a decline of two and a half million in the last year, and nearly two million in just the last four months.
Yet despite such terrible news, the enthusiasm of crowds that turned out in record numbers to witness Obama take his oath and the millions of television viewers watching from across the country and around the world showed a joyous anticipation. They had come to Washington from great distances to witness this moment. The city had braced for as many as five million. Final tallies estimated the number at below two million, and this great crowd was ecstatic, exuberantly waving little American flags passed out to mark the moment. Even some with tickets who furiously found themselves stuck in a tunnel due to a security breakdown, making it impossible to reach the Mall in time, anxiously attempted to keep in touch with what was happening, gathering ar
ound radios to listen to the proceedings, sharing the inaugural reports with others.
For days, a celebratory mood had swept the capital, reflecting the optimism about the new president across the country. A USA Today/Gallup inauguration day survey found people, by nearly six to one, more hopeful about the next four years. The night before, temperatures had dropped well below freezing, amid talk of possible snow. On the morning of the inauguration, the cold remained, but it was clear, the skies were a brilliant blue, the entire scene of masses of people stretching from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial sharply illuminated.
The faces that viewers saw on their TV screens were those of Americans eager for success, hopeful that a difficult period was ending, anxious to believe that tomorrow would be better than today.
Every inaugural, especially in the age of television, offers Americans an opportunity to share intimately in the scene playing out before them. So it was with Obama’s.
As the cameras panned the inaugural stage, gathered beneath the bunting and flags and secure behind bulletproof glass were the nation’s leaders. The Bushes, father and son: one older, more frail; the other, eyes closed, head lowered, the expression at times almost appearing grim. Off to the side, in a wheelchair, after hurting his back lifting boxes, was the outgoing vice president, Dick Cheney, controversial to the end, the result of a series of exit interviews in which he defended the administration’s actions. And there were the Clintons, Hillary beaming, Obama’s strongest competitor, now about to become the new secretary of state. Beside her a smiling Bill offering words of greetings to distinguished guests. Hovering behind them, barely seen, was the face of Al Gore, yesterday’s vice president and almost president.
The Battle for America 2008 Page 47
