When I listen to Barack Obama’s speeches and interviews and debate responses, I get a clear understanding of why he wants to be president. I’m not just talking about his specific policy proposals—cutting taxes for the middle class, expanding health insurance coverage, ending the war in Iraq. I’m talking about the deeper reasons that Obama is running for president—what he hopes to accomplish in a larger sense, what direction he would like to take this country, why he thinks he is the right person to lead this country.
I was listening to John McCain the other day when it suddenly hit me: I don’t have the faintest idea why John McCain is running for president. Of course I get a sense that he wants to be president, but I don’t get a sense for why he wants to be president.
When I was in 8th grade, I decided to run for student council. I hadn’t been involved in student council at all before. I had friends who were, and when it came time to elect new officers I put my name in for Vice President. I had no idea why anyone should vote for me. I wanted to be Vice President, but I had no idea why I wanted to be Vice President. Frankly, I barely had any idea what student council actually did, let alone what the Vice President did. But I ran anyway. Guess what? I lost.
Why does John McCain want to be president? The only sense I get is: just because. I’m afraid that’s not going to cut it.
McCain says in his book after the 2000 election that he wanted to run for President to overcome the shame of not achieving what his father and grandfather achieved. They were admirals and McCain could barely become an officer with his fifth from the bottom graduation placement and major problems as a pilot.
He says from his memoir
“I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.”
See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about: He wanted to be president because he had an ambition to be president. It’s a tautology. I think it’s evident not just in what McCain says, but in how he has run his campaign. It’s all over the place. They obviously don’t have an overall strategy (other than “win”); it changes from week to week.
Ambition… eh… why did either of the Clintons really want to be president? Or Kennedy or Teddy Roosevelt or many of the men who’ve held the office? Ambition is part of it.
I tend to agree -at least on the strategy thing. I can’t figure out what they’re doing. The campaign seems to be at war with itself over which John McCain is running. Something else, too… I get less of a sense that it’s John McCain who is running and not some kind of Reaganite/neocon mongrel I barely recognize. It’s bizarre.
I don’t know. Maybe the Republicans are trying to dump this election to cleanse the national palette. Maybe they’re setting up for 2010 and 2012.
you are very clever!! his conceding speech of election day suggests to me that he gave up the dream of being president somewhere on the way in the last 21 months. In fact you could suggest that several moves such as sarah palin, and key speeches actually were intentional moves on his part to ensure that he never would be president.