The Final Repudiation

We still require submission to agendas and principles not entirely the candidates by allowing the parties to control the election pursestrings. The great subterfuge of American politics is the parties themselves that through evolution have created a system where non elected persons control the policy and therefore destiny of our elected officials. No longer are they accountable to the people, just the dollars for reelection from the parties.

"Barack Obama completed the long march away from the Founders??? intent."

Mr. Will is referring to the way in which our presidential elections have evolved, but at the risk of stating the obvious, Obama did much more than obliterate the old way of chosing a POTUS.

Slavery was written into the Constitution in it's very first draft, and remained an official part of the Constitution for another 90 years before the amendment to officially outlaw slavery was written. Overcoming that particular Founder's intent is the real triumph for Barack Obama.

Mr. Will yearns for the return of the good old days of the Founders, who gave us a constitution that prevented women from voting and made slavery a founding principle. There isn't space to list their moral failures and lapses in judgment. To cite a single example I'll point to the Bill of Rights. That alone ought to be enough to disabuse Mr. Will of his notion of the near perfection of the Founders' wisdom.

Thanks to others for noticing how when Reagan's oratory won hearts and minds it's good, but when Obama does it it's suspect. George Will, your biases make you incoherent.

Also "his campaign, powered by the ???popular art??? of oratory" is willful twisting of words. Like every other modern campaign, Obama's campaign was powered by money from millions of supporters. "In total, Obama???s campaign raised $639 million dollars, mainly coming from donors giving donations of $300 or less."

It is reassuring to see the number of posts that challenge George Will's absurd argument implying that Obama was elected mostly because of his oratorical skills. It shows how discerning Newsweek's readership is, and how amazingly off base Will's usually incisive arguments are here.

Much of what Will says is true, but he leaves out a number of essential facts.

First, the Founding Fathers, in a number of their writings discuss the method of Presidential choice adopted in the Constitution, and admit it was a solution which would probably evolve. It evolved, as Will points out, more rapidly than anticipated by the quickness with which not only political parties developed, but due to the development of a two party system as opposed to a multi-party system such as we see in many parlimentary governmnts. This leads to bitter rivalry as the two parties battle each other without ever having to resort to building coalitions such as we see in multi-party governments.

The candidate Obama most resembles in terms of "sudden" popularity and "lack of experience" is in fact Lincoln, who, just like Obama, was first a State Senator in Illinois and then served one term in the Congress.

Unlike Lincoln, Obama has been subjected to the most intense scrutiny of any candidate in history due to both the length of the campaign and the unprecedented media coverage. Virtually 100% of the electorate saw Obama in at least one debate, and the majority saw him in many more. How many people actually saw the Lincoln/Douglass debates?

Will's argument is faulty, as he tries to support his patisanship with selective facts rather than a lengthy discourse actually documenting the full evolution of our election process.

Let's hope Obama rises to the job as well as Lincoln did.

BFP9130 makes a great point.

Americans are so used to living vicariously through "Reality TV" that the entire election campaigns were treated just like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. Complete with text voting during debates. Ridiculous. Where was Simon?

President-elect Obama MAY be great. Or, he may be the biggest liberal nightmare this country has seen. No one knows. All evidence of experience or lack thereof and all clear evidence of indescretions were swept immediately under the rug - all in the pursuit of a black president - who isn't even "black"; but bi-racial.

Let's hope Obama governs from the center and "spreading the wealth" goes the way of the dodo.

Will states that "since 1972, selection of nominees (is) entirely by popular choice", and criticizes Obama's and Carter's fancy rhetoric as the key to their nomination success. Since conservative Republicans have held the presidential seat for a majority of those years, those candidates also need to be included in his critique. I would argue that no party has as effectively used demagoguery to win nominations than the Republican party.

Will points out that "since 1972, selection of nominees is entirely based on popular choice", and discusses Obama's and Carter's fancy rhetoric as their key to nomination success. But since conservative Republicans have held the White House for a majority of the years since 1972, Will also needs to criticize those candidates as well. If any party has consistently used demogoguery to win elections, I would argue it has been the Republican party.

Obama won because people agreed with his ideas - why does everyone who favored McCain have to fabricate stranger and stranger rationales for it?

It isn't clear from Will's arguments whether he thinks Obama has intentionally advanced this movement away from "the founder's intent" or simply been a person well adapted to take advantage of a natural momentum in that direction, at least as our presidential election system is concerned. Maybe he doesn't distinguish between the two, but I think it's an important distinction. Also, a gift for the "popular art of oratory" is not, in itself, evidence of some malicious intent to undermine our system's integrity. I'm not sure if he intended to imply that, but it seems so. I admire and appreciate Mr. Will's understanding of the constitution (he's much more knowledgeable than I am). I have to wonder, though, at the habit of upholding the original framework of our government as a perfect model. If it were so, the framers never would have designed it to be modified and "perfected" over time. They obviously saw some need to adapt, and that suggests that these changes over time are not necessarily detrimental, but an intentional part of the founders' plan.

George WIll's point is that our current system for selecting nominees and then, electing candidates has strayed from the system the Founder's originally envisioned. This is a fine point and worth considering but the "dangers" of the current system are the same whether a Democrat or a Republican is elected. I would have preferred Mr. Will to focus on that point instead of invoking the same ole partisan rhetoric suggesting that Obama has simply talked his way to the Presidency.

It looks like George Will of the eighties and early nineties is back to true form. I suppose that we will see him spend more time talking with the echo chamber that is the so called conservative intellectuals. And damn any attempt to address contravening opinions. Never mind that Barack Obama's experience as a community organizer and a constitution law professor implies that he has spent more time in the "real" America and knows more about the constitution than George Will. Barack is the one without experience. I suppose that George is the one that has some experience and even knows what the founding fathers intended. Hey, who needs logic or cares that we have the Internet for instant feedback? Keep living in your fantasyland. Sheesh!