What Women Want
What are the issues that affect the way women vote? Typically, women vote on the general issues—the economy, national security, healthcare, education, taxes—in much the same way as do men. But they do have a “package” of issues that they seem to pay more attention to:
Let’s look at how the candidates fare on these.
On September 15th the country had just witnesses the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac meltdowns and a plunge of 500 points in the stock market. We were also grappling with new unemployment numbers that said workers out of jobs had climbed to a record high. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrell Lynch avoided bankruptcy by getting bought by Bank of America and AIG began angling for an $85 billion dollar Federal bailout. On that same day, John McCain said that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”.
I must be missing something. Can we talk about the economy’s fundamentals?
Okay, I know I’m upset. Somebody please talk me down.
In the first time that Sarah Palin ever really got to talk to us—in her RNC acceptance speech—she quoted someone whose entire life was about hate. The quotation came from a columnist and author named Westbrook Pegler. She did this to support her argument that small towns grow people with good values. In one of Pegler’s early columns (1936) called, The Lynching Story, he defended the lynching of two men who had kidnapped and murdered another man. He continued his views throughout his life; here’s another quote from 1963, [It is] "clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry." And in 1965 Pegler expressed this hope for Robert F. Kennedy: "[that] some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."
Pegler’s life was all about hate…hate in action. Hate in which violence was encouraged and justified. Pegler died in 1969.
Either Sarah Palin did not know that she quoted an avowed racist in her acceptance speech or she did. In either case, I am unnerved.
During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, John McCain asked fellow Republicans to “Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight”. He used the word “fight” (or “fought”) 47 separate times in his speech.
Fight. To brawl, battle, come to blows, clash, exchange blows, wage war, attack.
The moral clarity of fighting—good against evil—may resonate with many Americans. It draws a simple and clear picture. Faith is good. Country is good. Small-town values are good. Family is good. Self-reliance is good. The surge is good.
Washington is evil. Taxes are evil. Big spenders are evil. Choice is evil. Regulations are evil. Defeat is evil.
While many of us might yearn for this simple picture, most of us know that the decisions we face us as a nation are anything but.
How can casting every issue, every wrong, every problem in this election as a fight help us?
As this blog was launched, we sent email invitations to friends and family and to some business associates. We invited them to participate in the dialog. We made a point that the initial post - The Case Against McCain - was intentionally provocative. It includes jargon and rhetorical techniques that have become too common. And that have undermined constructive dialog on issues. We also noted a desire to contact people who did not think like we do. The response has been quite interesting. In many ways it’s inspiring. Some of the response has already appeared in Comments on the blog. More interesting though, are responses from those who did not plan to Comment for various reasons. Here are a few of them:
I was born, raised and am a practicing Catholic. My Church believes that life begins at conception and is a vocal opponent of abortion. My Church was founded 2,000 years ago by Jesus Christ (Himself). And even so, my Church has not always been opposed to abortion. St. Augustine developed the rules for Church-sanctioned abortion in the 5th century and for about 1,000 years after that; Catholics could have abortions without violating Church cannons. Even to this day, about 70% of American Catholics believe abortion is acceptable under at least some circumstances. Nevertheless, I am prepared to accept what my Church teaches today. In my own family, we have had to wrestle with this issue, “up front and personal” as they say and we supported, encouraged and welcomed the decision for life. But I get really uncomfortable when I think about whether my values should dictate someone else’s choices.
Every choice we make has consequences. I am unprepared to accept the consequences of requiring others to choose the way I believe they should.
The numbers for August are out—unemployment is up to 6.1%. That’s the highest unemployment rate in five years. The Washington Post reports that our nation's employers cut 84,000 net jobs in August; the eighth consecutive month of such declines. Employers have shed 600,000 positions from their payrolls so far in 2008.
We could spend a lot of time trying to understand why we are losing jobs. What if we looked at the problem from the opposite point of view—how do you create jobs in our economy?
Democrats and Republicans differ on this (surprised?). Here’s my understanding of the Republican view on how the economy makes jobs: We should give corporations, small businesses and wealthy individual Americans a way to keep more of the money they earn by reducing their taxes. To that we should add reduced regulation. Then wealthy Americans, corporations and small businesses will have both the money and the freedom to invest in business. And that investment will create jobs.
Okay, let’s see what the results of that theory have been.
“It’s not about you”. (Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life)
When Americans vote in November, many of us will have carefully thought through which candidate will better serve our interests, values and beliefs. Some of us will decide based upon one strongly-held belief, like abortion; others will be able to decide with the support of several candidate or party platform positions we find to be aligned with our own. And still others (maybe most of us) will have to make compromises with our own values or interests to be able to make a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain.
Some of us won’t think at all; we’ll just pull the Republican or Democratic lever because we always have—because our interests, values and beliefs have always been more aligned with one party or the other.
Should we consider our purpose instead of our politics this time?
Can we talk about this?
Recently, a friend of ours responded to a question about the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for Vice President. The question basically asked whether our friend was comfortable with the candidate – particularly with the prospect of being “a heart beat away”. The question noted the small population of Alaska, Palin’s limited time in the governor’s chair, and the small size of the city where she previously served as mayor. It also noted that Palin appeared to be a lovely, smart and likeable woman.
Our friend's response: “Sorry – I think she truly has more experience than Obama – I am quite happy with the choice”.
That response troubled me in several ways, and led to the thoughts below. My follow-up to our friend went like this:
Thanks to Conner Stribe [CincinnatiObama2008@groups.barackobama.com] for posting the contact information to check and discover your registration status in Hamilton County, Ohio.
