Fears Allayed
The other day I wrote that it would be a shame if we would no longer had the Baltimore Sun editorial board to kick around anymore. Well, today said editorial board provides another chance to lace up my boot.
Senator Obama captured the imagination of millions of Americans last winter by promising to open a new political era by moving beyond the bitter partisan warfare that has defined Washington in recent years. He spoke sensibly about issues ranging from the war in Iraq to the challenge of a sputtering economy.
But more recently, Mr. McCain has closed a large gap in the polls. Some worried Democrats want Mr. Obama to sell himself as a true American, while others want him to offer more detailed policy proposals or pursue a more personal assault on Senator McCain.
Mr. Obama should trust his instincts and remain faithful to his original pledge of change. He can contrast that bright vision with a McCain campaign that thus far has relied on familiar political trench warfare. As Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in Denver this week, the torch has been passed.
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Apparently, the Sun editorial writers have succumbed to the siren song of Obama’s post partisan nonsense. Please tell me how speaking in vapid platitudes about change and unity will lead to a “new political era” of bipartisanship? Will electing “The One” magically make all our political differences disappear overnight? Of course not. What the Sun, and others who preach this tripe, are really saying is that we knuckle dragging troglodyte conservatives must give up our beliefs and accede to their wishes, or—gasp—we are divisive; enemies of unity, change, hope, and all good things. If a Republican were preaching this rhetoric in furtherance of conservative policy goals, would the Sun editorial board automatically abandon all its differences with such a candidate? I wouldn’t bet on it.
Lost on the Sun editorial board, is fact that democracy is fundamentally about disagreement i.e., partisanship. You could eliminate all political parties, but our basic philosophical differences would remain. The founders created a system of government (checks and balances and protection of minority rights) specifically designed to diffuse the very type of unity, which Obama claims as his highest value.
“Divisiveness” writes Jonah Goldberg in National Review, “the setting of faction against faction, one branch of government against another, and the sovereignty of the individual above the group — was for the founders the great guarantor of our liberties and the source of civic virtue.”
Obama’s demonization, of those who dare to criticize him, as “divisive” is in reality, nothing more than Obama practicing, in disguise, the very type of politics he claims to abhor. The Sun editorial board, like the rest of his fawning media disciples, is just following suit.
At the risk of being too divisive, the Sun editorial board needs another history lesson if they think that the torch has been passed from JFK to Obama.