What does the solution look like?

I’ve heard it said that, if all you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Surgeons are notorious for recommending surgery for just about any ailment. There are probably more examples of this. But the idea is that every person looks for a solution within the realm of our own experience.

This election year, American voters are faced with candidates who look for solutions through very different prisms. John McCain served in the military. He’s the son and grandson of admirals. His public persona is very much tied to his military service. And commentators have often noted his opinions about the end of the Vietnam war—that it should never have ended the way it did. That we should have kept fighting until we won.

Barack Obama is a lawyer and taught constitutional law. His mother was an anthropologist, interested in cultures different from her own. He might reasonably be expected to look for solutions by writing new laws, and by understanding other cultures.

This is not an insignificant difference. For the last seven and a half years, the executive branch of the United States government has looked to military power as the answer to global problems. The Bush administration has promoted widening wars and publicly stated their expectation that these wars they began would last for our lifetime. They have also demonstrated an almost unprecedented level of contempt for the rule of law, holding themselves as immune from the laws that govern the rest of us.

It is, of course, up to the voters to decide whether or not they judge this perspective to have been successful. Whether or not it actually made our lives better. If it did, in fact, solve any of the very grave problems the world faces.

If the polls can be trusted, most people do not believe it did. However, only a very slim majority of voters seem to make the connection between the current warmongers and the warrior who would replace them. Again, based on candidate preference polling, McCain is seen as a more honorable man than the current promoters of war. He may be. But he still seems to see war as a solution to virtually every problem. It is perhaps natural. But it is a solution we have already tried. And very few seem happy with the outcome.

I can only hope American voters make this connection in November and decide to make us once again, a country of laws, and not a country perpetually at war.

Comments

[Myra Jones]

A good article. I hope that readers all over the country make this connection in letters to the editor of their local papers. If people are unable to add two and two, we better do it for them. Election of another McBush would be a disaster that this country might not be able to survive.

[Margie]

I too am female, white and 58 and totally agree with your comments on Obama. I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why so many of our sisters were (and some remain) so strident in their support of Hillary. I generally go out of my way to support competent women, but Hillary's rise was on the back of, or at least unthinkable without, her husband's political connections. I want the first female US president to get there on her own merit, as has Mr. Obama.