The Company You Keep

In the small town where I live, politics is still very personal. In a typical campaign season, it isn't only the candidates themselves who will canvas neighborhoods, going from door to door armed with a few prepared words and a flyer. Almost inevitably, the candidate's spouse or child or parent will be drafted into the effort as well. Some campaigns make it almost seem like their true "candidate" is not just the person running for office, the name on the ticket, but also that person's entire family and other associates. Too often for my taste local candidates seem to seek votes based on where they went to school, the churches they attend, and the roles their friends and family members play in the community.

National politics is more issue-oriented, but the idea that a candidate's worth depends in part on the people who are related to or otherwise associate closely with that candidate has nonetheless affected the current presidential race. There have been too many muckraking stories about the candidates' inner circles to list them all in a single blog post; few, if any, candidates avoided having their character called into question due to the actions of some person connected to them. I've often had difficulty deciding what to take out of these type of stories. They may be truthful but yet they are often surely promulgated in order to taint a particular campaign. Take the story that emerged last year concerning Rudy Giuliani's current wife as an example. She has been accused of repeatedly demonstrating a surgical stapling technique on live dogs to potential medical customers as part of her former job at U.S. Surgical. Following the procedure, the dogs would be put down having fulfilled their "purpose" in the sales presentation. This is an ugly story, but how does it help us judge Giuliani as a presidential candidate? I suppose one line of thinking is to assume that since Giuliani showed a lack of judgment by choosing to marry a monster he would also show a lack of judgment when making political decisions. I can't quite adopt that line of thinking -- otherwise sensible people often seem to make decisions that often seem questionable to the people around them when it comes to love and relationships. Would you choose not to promote someone who was superb at his job just because he married someone awful? I don't think I could do that personally. At any rate, Mayor Giuliani may not have even known about his girlfriend's past when he married her. I've never been married, but somehow I doubt "dog torture for profit" is a topic that comes up very often during a typical courtship. That's a bomb that gets dropped a few years into a marriage, I imagine. This story is quite typical of its type. On one hand, the details are ugly enough to sway some votes, but on the other hand the degree of separation between the candidate and the acts mentioned is great enough that most people would simply shrug it off. A few votes here and there can ultimately have a big impact on a race, though.

The latest candidate to run into trouble because of the company he keeps is Barack Obama. Obama's patriotism and racial views have come under question merely because the former preacher at Obama's church, Jeremiah Wright, has a history of making controversial political and racial statements. The attention accorded to Wright's statements created enough furor that Obama ultimately decided to deliver a speech to explain his close relationship with Wright and the differences in their views. It was an effective speech, I thought, but I very much wonder if it is wise to hold presidential candidates accountable for the words of everyone around them. Granted, Obama has acknowledged that Wright has been an important influence in his life, but they remain two very different men. To be honest, I don't really hear the acerbic words of the firebrand Wright reflected in Obama's speeches at all. Some of their ideas are similar, but the manner in which they are expressed are worlds apart. Manner inevitably influences interpretation. Contrast Wright's infamous sound bite "God damn America!" with Obama's message of "Let's change America and make it better" (my paraphrase). Both statements acknowledge that America isn't perfect, but Wright's message seems to focus on what he thinks is wrong with America today and what wrongs he believes that America has committed in the past while Obama instead focuses on what America could be in the future. Obama's view of the present and past seems a fair bit rosier than Wright's view as well.

I think judging the politicians based on their own actions and their own words is the best policy a voter can adopt. Like Obama, I have family members with racial views I don't personally subscribe to. I've never distanced myself from them -- in fact, I believe they have a right to those views, though I also exercise my right to argue with them from time to time. Indeed, I don't think I personally know anyone who agrees with me on most issues that are important to me. If the same rules applied to me as some would like to see applied to presidential candidates, then I would be saddled with an enormous host of views that I don't personally hold or even have any sympathy with. If the same rules applied to everyone, then anyone with a family member who does something wrong of his or her own free will should be accused of being a bad sister or a bad parent or a bad husband or a bad third cousin twice removed, and, by association, a bad person. I don't think you can judge people effectively based on the company they keep. At the very least, you would surely need to study the dynamics of each individual relationship to discover the nature of the sympathy of sentiments that exists between two people -- to understand to what extent Obama and Wright see eye to eye, we would need to listen in on their private conversations, not just their public speeches. Since we don't have that kind of access (nor should we), I think Barack Obama should be the #1 authority on what Barack Obama believes.