Hi. Sorry I never got around to doing that local politics rundown. Oops. Anyway, I think I can predict at least one gaffe that will occur in presidential politics some time between now and November.
As we know, Republicans and Democrats, and in a broader sense, conservatives and liberals, clash on many issues, but one of the key
reasons they clash is that conservatives tend to frame issues -- in their own minds, most likely, as well as in debates -- as straight dichotomies, good versus evil, us versus them, etc, while liberals tend to focus on nuances and often reject the idea that because something is not good, it is therefore evil, or that because something is not evil it is therefore good. Of course neither side sees their own way of viewing the world as wrong, and both sides would quickly defend their own method of framing issues.
I suspect we're going to see this come out in an embarrassing way before the General Election, when someone (probably a McCain staffer, or his eventual running mate, or perhaps McCain himself) will say:
"There are no gray areas when it comes to dealing with Terrorism. This is strictly a black against white issue."
Obviously there are ways that an Obama staffer, or Obama, could make this slip, but (a) it would take more effort since presumably they'd be phrasing it as "not a black and white issue," and (b) it would likely come off as less inflammatory for the same reason. And for the record, I would see this as a gaffe, rather than as an actual incidence of racism. If Obama is smart, his team won't spin it as racism, either, but will instead point out that the "black and white" rhetoric is exactly the problem with taking that approach to any issue. At one time in America "black" was clearly considered bad, and "white" clearly good. Now the country has moved beyond that and sees that there are good and bad people of all colors. We need to look at national security the same way. Terrorists are (by definition) evil, but that doesn't give us the right to treat them unfairly. We disagree with Iran on many important moral issues, but that doesn't mean we can't talk to them without compromising our values.
Anyway,
Green Bandit Out.
PS -- I wonder if this difference in viewpoint is the reason Democrats often nominate an attorney and Republicans usually don't. The last Republican attorney that was elected president was Richard Nixon (who, after all, did negotiate with the Communist government of China).
