Today's work day on campus has been and a bit kerfuffled by the recently scheduled political speech by President Obama at the University. Everyone is either running to get tickets or running to get out of the way of the traffic, thus giving me a peaceful, quiet morning to clean up some stuff in my office. Which is how I stumbled upon an essay I wrote years ago for a creative nonfiction class. Which just so happens to be about the last presidential candidate nomination process. It's a little long, but finding it today was kismet not to post. Enjoy ....
Be Mine
February 14. It’s always billed as a day of anticipation, of thoughtful dinner reservations and exotic flower bouquets. At least, that’s how I've envisioned it. Reality, however, has usually been more mundane than this broadcasted ideal from Hallmark. So what are my plans for Valentine’s Day 2008? Finish up my cubicle workday and then stand for hours in a campus recreational field house, awaiting an impromptu rally for a leading presidential candidate.
That has to be one of the more depressing February 14 itineraries I’ve ever encountered (let’s hope). Nothing like an intimate evening of shouting and pandering with one of your more recognizable political leaders and an estimated three hundred of your closest fellow citizens.
How did I get into this Valentine’s Day bind? A mixture of guilt and inflated self-importance, of course. Growing up in a small town in the battleground state of Ohio, I remember hearing constant homilies from social studies and AP government teachers about how us kids need to take our vote seriously. We needed to make our voices heard. (I would like to point out that we also needed to sign in and out in order to access the restroom.) This eulogy would have been easy enough to dismiss if not for the invasion of our state by every presidentially-inclined politician every four years. Ohio only makes the front page of national newspapers for two reasons: rampant flooding or electoral voting. At the time, however, I had the armor of youth. I portrayed the role of a disinterested high school student to perfection, executing with precision every blank stare and absent response. As was my teenage right, I shelved Presidential Politics under Adult Matters and returned to more important pursuits like developing an overhand volleyball serve and finishing a cross-stitch of a horse I’ve been pricking away at for three years. (To answer your question, yes. Junior high was a little rough for me.)
However, it’s seven years later. High school is (regrettably) distant and (thankfully) hazy. I can’t avoid Adult Matters anymore. They smack me in the face daily. I spend over a quarter of my life voluntarily cloistered inside gray cubicle half-walls. I’ve made binding decisions on health care plans and retirement packages. I set my alarm on weekends. I personally know at least two notaries. Not only do I use coasters, but my personal coaster collection currently tops out at eighteen, with reserves for particular seasons.
In my defense, most of them were given to me by relatives and coworkers.
Although, that means that I’m the type of person for whom people view coasters as an appropriate gift.
Clearly I’ve crossed to the dark side. There is no turning back now. I’m in genuine Adult Matters territory. What could be a better time to browse the Adult Matters section and pull Presidential Politics off the shelf?
And so, in this election year, I make a pledge to myself, my social studies teachers, and my fellow countrymen and countrywomen: I will strive to fulfill my civic duty and engage wholly with the election process by voting my conscience for the good of the future of the United States of America. So help me God.
As with any lofty goal, the devil is in the details. How exactly does a newcomer to civics go about avoiding bias and educating herself? In order to avoid complete confusion I decide to start by going straight to the source: the candidates themselves. It just so happens that Ohio is in the heat of campaign season for the Democratic nominee. Senator Hillary Clinton, one of the front-runners, will be speaking at a political rally within 2000 feet of my cubicle on our University’s campus (the convenience of being nationally significant once every four years). Who am I to say no? So what if it happens to fall on the most commercially romantic holiday of the year? What could be sexier than a little dash of civic engagement?
Apparently, quite a few things. My mass email invitation to friends and family results in only replies of pity (No plans tonight, hun? Don’t worry. You’ll be with someone next year.) or avoidance (Isn’t parking gonna be a mess? I’m all the way downtown.). According to the candidate’s website, the political rally is scheduled to start around 6:30. I decide to stay late at the office and rack up some bonus points with my boss before heading out solo to the political party. When the clock strikes 6:00, I shut down my desktop, throw a notepad in my purse (obsessive note-taking, a lingering side effect from graduate school no one ever talks about), and lock up the office. Bundled up for the bitter cold, I start trudging toward the nearby field house serving as the rally’s gathering place.
As I tentatively tiptoe in high heels through the salted sludge on the sidewalk, I imagine what my parents would say if they knew my plans for the night. One of my father’s favorite stories to tell from my childhood is when, after hearing that the national budget was in trouble, I scrawled two letters of concern to then-President Clinton, including a one dollar bill in each envelope to contribute my ten-year-old part. My favorite part of this story: the notion that, wedged between the eras of hopscotch and nerve-wracking sixth-grade dances, I had a fleeting moment of civic responsibility. My father’s favorite part of the story: while my first dollar was mailed back to me with an autographed picture of the President and a note saying monetary contributions of this sort can’t be accepted, Slick Willy never returned my second dollar.
By the time I arrive at the field house, a line of thirty similarly civic-minded individuals snakes out the double doors and onto the gritty pavement. While waiting, we have poster displays of campaign buttons to peruse, for a mere $5 each. (Endorsement comes at a cost.) And, of course, lovely volunteer contact information forms to complete. I fill in my mailing address only, despite repeated requests by the militant volunteer coordinator to put down my phone number as well. The Senator doesn’t need my digits. Love letters in the form of issue pamphlets will do just fine.
The line shuffles quickly through the doors but, once inside, we slow to a creep toward the security checkpoint. While I wait as a police officer rummages through my purse, I hear two older women raise their hoarse voices at the Head Volunteer behind the check-in table. Apparently these women have brought their own signs to the rally and feel quite strongly about their right to wave them. The Head Volunteer, a tall woman sporting an authoritative navy pantsuit and a laminated badge, firmly assures the women that they will receive campaign-approved signs inside the venue. The octogenarians hold their ground.
I can see why. While the message on their signs is simple (HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRES), clearly these ladies score bonus points for individuality and effort. Those sparkles don’t glue themselves, and a hot glue gun must be particularly dangerous to maneuver, given the one woman’s trembling hands. They remind me of my grandmother. Well, everything but their passion for Senator Clinton. Earlier that year my grandmother had given me a keepsake book, in which she shared memories of her life growing up. The last page consists of notations about how the world has changed. When answering the prompt, I think a woman president would be…, my grandmother wrote in, “Oh, Lord, not Hillary! OK – if she was a good one.”
I leave the women to continue duking it out and am herded into the open area of the field house. It’s a typical recreational area, built in the seventies. High walls display faded banners of championships long since forgotten. Seven years ago, on a brisk September day, I wandered around this same open space on my first day of college. The field house was the first stop in the day-long move-in process, and the building was filled with cattle call lines toward stations such as TRANSPORATATION AND PARKING, SAFETY, and HOUSING. Unlike the parents of my students who constantly interrupt their own children to explain just what happened last term, my parents forced me to do all of the talking at each stop. My voice shook with nerves each time I spelled out my last name and waited to receive whatever swag that particular station offered: parking passes, dorm keys, extra-large free t-shirts. Now, as part of my job, I come back to this field house every year to help line up graduating students for Commencement. The students fidget and twitch, obsessively batting at their tassel out of their eyes, and wait to receive their diploma and take their first step out of college and into the true adult world. (Well, except for those of us who hide out for an extra year in graduate school.) Seven years after my first waiting experience, I’m back in this same field house, waiting.
Tonight, instead of monochromatic information booths and tasseled headgear, the attendees are a mixture of ages (student to senior citizen), attire (business suits to something dangerously teetering toward pajama bottoms), and attitude (coolly detached to fanatically energetic). The crowd radiates out from two platforms. A raised platform hoists television cameras and news reporters above the huddled masses, providing news affiliates with an unadulterated view of the high, T black platform jutting out into the crowd, serving as the rally’s center ring. The sound system pipes out one of the more random playlists I’ve heard: Lenny Kravitz, Shania Twain, The Temptations, Sheryl Crow. It’s loud in the field house. Not “rock concert” loud. More like “Starbucks cappuccino maker at 7:50 in the morning” loud.
About a hundred individuals stand or squat on risers on the main platform, all holding white and blue signs stating Hillary for President. As opposed to the glitter and glam signs still being nobly fought for at the security checkpoint, these signs utilize fonts instead of sequins to convey tone. While “for President” is written in traditional Times New Roman, “Hillary” appears in an informal, slanted font that reminds me of an italicized Harrington. I imagine the multiple meetings and focus groups that led to this particular design. See? The “for President” portion tells voters, “I’m a serious intellectual with the experience required to lead this great country in a straightforward manner.” But the candidate’s name throws out a wink, reminding voters, “Don’t you worry. I’m here to party too.” It’s the political marketing version of a mullet. Well played, Senator.
Seeing that the platform risers already contain a representative amount of young, professionally dressed women, I head over to the bleachers set up on the outskirts of the field house, the heels of my shoes sinking into the artificial turf. As I meander my way away from the crowd, a campaign volunteer (they materialize instantaneously and everywhere) steps in front of me. He informs me that the bleacher seats have reached full capacity. “Wouldn’t you like to stand over to the center area? Closer to the platform?”
Although I can clearly see wide expanses of the bleachers un-sat-upon, I also notice that the average age of the peanut gallery hovers around fifty-five. Not wanting to endure a chorus of comments from my elders about how my high heels will lead to retelling of bunion and back surgeries, I move my high heels back into the crowd.
At this point it is 6:30, the intended start time for the political rally. Whenever I watch a presidential speech or press conference, there’s always that convenient countdown ticker in the lower part of the screen: The President will address the nation in 12 minutes. The White House Press Secretary will address the charges at 2PM. I assume we’ll be underway in a minute or two. Just like my assumption that the jewelry store television commercials featuring loving couples strolling through Central Park are accurate, I make the unfortunate error of mistaking television for reality in the political realm. She’s supposed to speak at 6:30, so I originally planned on heading home around 7:15. Clearly, that won’t be the case. Without the ticker, estimated start times fluttered around the crowd, ranging from 5 minutes to she’s probably still in Youngstown.
However, this waiting game does provide a natural conversation starter. As I wander through the mix of people milling around the platform, some with familiar faces from classes or staff meetings, I notice that the crowd murmur has a distinct, Are We There Yet? flavor. All conversations regularly circle back to the question of when the candidate will arrive.
Three students standing in front of me catch my eye, mostly because one of them is wearing a rainbow-striped yarmulke and a rope bracelet. I break the ice with the tried and true question of the night.
“Excuse me? Hi. Have you guys heard when she’s supposed to get here?”
The three young people, two guys and a girl, turn around, making the rainbow yarmulke disappear and introducing a well-worn t-shirt with a band logo in its place. I don’t recognize the band at all. Chalk up a point for the Adult Matters team.
“Nah,” the face above the t-shirt says. “But I DID hear some lady over there saying that her cousin works for the campaign? She said that he said she’d be here in, like, fifteen minutes.”
Everyone at these rallies seems to know someone who knows someone who’s related to someone working on the campaign. My coworker Emmitt: his cousin has a grade school friend in Cleveland who coordinates local volunteer drives for another candidate. The person I sit beside at another rally: Her son is best friends with one of the police officers providing an escort for the candidate to the event. Forget Kevin Bacon. During an election year, relatives of campaign workers are the only people anyone wants to connect to in six degrees or less.
“Really? That’s not so bad. I thought it’d be lots longer,”
“Well,” the girl says, “that was like half an hour ago.”
Engaging people in conversations is quite easy at these events. Which is fantastic for a person who has a moderate amount of social anxiety like I do. (Oh, I’ll show up to the party. But only after I’ve circled the block two times and talk myself out of panicking and just driving back home). Part of that openness probably comes from the anticipation. It’s exciting to see all these people, especially young people taking an interest in political life, trying to be part of something bigger than themselves. Plus, maybe I can get some tips on how to go about this whole, develop-a-political-point-of-view process. Wait a tick … is that Kumbaya I hear playing over the loudspeakers?
“So, are you guys students here?”
“Yeah,” the girl says.
“What year?”
“I’m a sophomore, and he’s a junior. What are you, Mike, junior?”
“Yeah,” the student wearing the unknown band t-shirt says. “But let’s be honest: I’m not graduating next year.”
“Taking a victory lap?” I say, trying out a joke.
“I guess.” Okay, so we’re not at the joking part of our relationship yet. Duly noted.
“So, have you guys voted in the primary yet? Is this your first election?”
Mike starts laughing, while the two other students roll their eyes. “For me, yeah,” Mike says. “They sure as shit can’t vote.”
The other two grumble back at him, and I take a second look at them a bit closer. I can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t be able to vote. Registration deadlines haven’t passed. They look young but not not-legal young. Maybe they’re registered as Republicans? Wait. No. I understand that they’re widening the tent and all, but I don’t think the GOP coat check room has many deconstructed military jackets with Amnesty International patches sewn on the sleeves like the one the girl is rocking tonight. And believe me, that tent would have a coat check.
As it turns out, they both indeed have over eighteen years of age under their studded belts. Their voting obstacle deals more with geography than with ideology: they’re international students, both from Germany. Thus, they aren’t eligible to vote, despite their interest in American politics. (“More than most of you, it seems,” the girl throws out with an edge in her voice. For those of you keeping score, that’s German Student: 1. Concerned American Citizen: 0.) I strain to hear an accent over the din of the crowd as they continue to chat with each other, while mentally kicking myself for assuming they were American and not international students. However, in my defense, it is Ohio.
“So where are you from?” I ask Mike, expecting someplace with a trendy underground music scene and established domestic partner health benefits.
“Upper Arlington.”
Upper Arlington is located near campus and is mostly known for golf courses and stone-faced suburban homes as opposed to breakthrough indie rock bands or subversive behavior.
We chat for a few minutes about the campaign and the candidates. The Germans are both supporters of Senator Obama, but they’ve come to this rally to check out “the scene,” as they call it. Mike has mailed in his primary ballot, for Obama, earlier that week. His main goal for the evening would be to try to get on camera. I have a sinking suspicion that he’s hoping his parents would be watching the news that evening. Unfortunately, the best shot at scoring any TV airtime is on the platform risers behind the main podium, and these three apparently didn’t pass the screening by the volunteer coordinators.
I find myself understanding these students’ desires to be here despite the fact that they have already thrown their support behind a different candidate. There’s electricity and anticipation in the air. It’s as if we’re not quite sure what is going to happen, but it feels like something is going to happen, and we all sure as hell want to be able to say we were here as a part of it. Whatever it is. In fact, with so much contained energy, the crowd spontaneously erupts with random cheers every few minutes. A crowd favorite is the local classic, spelling out Ohio in volleying chants. Each cheer quickly grows in strength, rolling through the crowd, but few cheers survive longer than five or six repetitions, and no cheers permeate the bourgeoisie seated on the aluminum bleachers to the left.
After a third attempt of chanting the candidate’s name slams against the impervious bleacher wall, I take a quick second to judge those people, stifling the new enthusiasm of these young civic activists. It should be noted that I rarely participate in these cheering efforts myself, but that’s different. I’m here to observe the political process, to educate myself. Chanting and sign-waving are for the converts.
Around 7:20, after multiple teasing announcements by campaign volunteers and specific instructions on what to chant during the rally (Whose house is it? OUR HOUSE! What house is it? THE WHITE HOUSE!), the true circus ramps up. People start condensing around the platform to a closer vantage point. Never one for crowds unless a sport is involved, I wade upstream and pick a spot on perimeter of the crowd. Right in front of a portion of the bleachers. Maybe I can block some views so they would have to stand like the rest of us. I’m civic-ly engaged, but I’m not above spite.
As the crowd starts percolating with energy and practicing their sign-waving, I see a coworker of mine, an advisor nearing retirement who enjoys relaying her personal life stories in the most awkwardly public of places. Example: I once spent six minutes in a restroom of a Garden Ridge with this woman, slowly backing towards the door as she shared uninvited details about her latest medical appointment. The next day, since she thought I was such a good listener and knew I was single, she decided to give her divorced son my email address.
She beelines over to me, grabs my upper arm with a surprisingly strong grip, and steers me closer toward the crowd. She rattles through her list of Clinton talking points, only pausing when she notices I don’t have a sign and flags down a campaign volunteer, who jabs one into my hand. I use the same tactic I employ during holiday gift exchanges with coworkers, graciously accepting it, admiring it for a moment, then subtly setting it down by my feet for disposal or regifting later.
At this point, the crowd is at a roaring boil. Moments of excited screams and frenetic waving burst from the spectators closest to the curtained platform, indicating glimpses of the candidate. After a few moments, a cadre of suited individuals strides to the center of the main dais. The leader of the student organization supporting Senator Clinton introduces the governor, who (eventually) introduces a local congresswoman, who introduces an astronaut, who introduces the governor for a second time, who finally introduces the candidate!
She’s here! She’s here!
At least, I think she’s here. I don’t really see Senator Clinton, just a churning sea of Hillary for Presidents. When my coworker chose our vantage point she didn’t calculate in the spontaneous arm raising that occurs when the Senator finally arrives on stage. Add on the sixteen-inch arm extension the distributed campaign signs supplies and I don’t have a shot. I’m sure it was a fantastic moment, so I make a note to look for a replay on the local evening news.
After a few minutes, the crashing waves of signs calm to a steady lapping at the Senator’s feet, and she begins to speak. Being in the midst of a major political campaign must be taking its toll, because her voice rasps and cartwheels over her talking points. After thanking her opening acts and the crowd, she starts popping through the major ideas of her campaign, first asking us to hold her accountable to all of her promises. Since she asks, I figure I better take copious notes. A few finger stretches, and here we go: preventing home foreclosures of local families, walking not just talking (she’s certainly achieving that one; she’s pacing all over that platform), making government for the many not government for the few, ending No Child Left Behind, freezing interest rates on student loans, providing pre-school programs for all children, going to bat for the working class in the Rust Belt, increasing job training, expanding community college offerings, “not blinking” on universal health care, ignoring punditry, and establishing more transparency in the White House. Okay, I think I have them all. Now if only I knew what they meant.
In the past, while watching a political speech, like a State of the Union address on television, I always wondered how the audience organically bursts into applause, always at the same moment. Rarely does one encounter only a smattering of applause during these speeches, it's always cheering en masse. When the rare, unexpected smattering does happen, the small-scale response of approval throws even impressive orators off his or her game, as if unplanned auditory approval is even more distracting as boos.
Now, during the Senator's speech at the rally, I can physically feel the moments of applause as they approach. There is no mistaking them. The crescendo in oratory is about as subtle as that moment at the end of a date when the guy reaches for his Chapstick. And (both of) those moments are difficult to sidestep out of: even if you know there isn't a connection, that this will be a one-date thing, you don't want to be rude.
Part of it is probably that feeling of wanting to be a part of what’s happening, what brought Mike and the Germans out to the event. It’s hard to resist, but I try to focus. I’m here to learn, not to cheer. I try to use my notebook as an excusatory preoccupation for my hands, writing through the moments of designed cheering. It feels disconcerting and a bit lonely even, violating the political rally social norm of aggressive participation. The people around me take notice of my lack of enthusiasm, shooting me disapproving looks. My coworker’s clapping flaps so far out that one time she knocks into me, turning one of the candidate’s campaign promises into an off-roading scrawl of blue across the page. By the time the Senator hits the halfway mark of "No Child Left Behind" the woman standing beside me veers her applause peripherally toward me, hoping (I guess) that her enthusiasm is contagious. Within the theater of civic engagement, the role of observer is cast in an antagonistically suspicious light. To make amends, I do clap approvingly as the candidate shoots out talking points on the need for universal health care and affordable student loans. Call it the political rally equivalent of turning your head at the last moment and offering up a peck on your cheek instead of your lips. That seems to establish a truce.
Besides the amount of campaign promises she can cover in ten minutes, I’m amazed at the sheer volume of flash bulbs going off all around her. The popping flashes set off a rush of electricity around the platform, lighting up the vast space. After a few minutes, the romance of the moment wears off and the rapid fire seems crushingly intense, intrusive almost.
I can’t imagine tolerating that bombardment of aggressive observation for ten minute straight. Come to think of it, this event is just one of many that the Senator attended today. She’ll do the same thing tomorrow and the day after, just as she has done for months before and will continue to do for the months ahead. She doesn’t ever get to feel the crescendo of these events, milling around in the crowd like we had for the past two hours, our anticipation simmering. She only encounters these crowds when we reach a rolling boil, red-hot, brimming with cheers and flashing lights and applause. What a strange space to live in for month after month. How could any candidate endure this alternate universe every day for over a year and emerge even remotely normal. Graying hair as a side effect of the job should be the least of our worries. Distorted reality seems like a much graver concern.
Ten minutes of commitments and six minutes of waves later, it’s over. Handlers rush the Senator out of the building and back on to the campaign trail. After two hours of intense anticipation, the sense of excitement evaporates immediately. With the flash bulbs gone, suddenly I’m no longer standing shoulder to shoulder with my fellow engaged citizens, participating in a moment of civic enlightenment. Now, I’m waiting at the exit of a field house, my feet planted firmly into the fake grass, heels sinking in a little, and avoiding eye contact with people I had seriously considered high-fiving just an hour ago.
As I slowly shuffle with the crowd toward the double doors, I glance around the field house. The scene decomposes even before we leave the building as reporters pack up their microphones and lights and crew members begin tearing down the platforms. Those structures couldn’t have been easy to build. I’m sure some of those news reporters have spouses or significant others who had made reservations at their favorite restaurant tonight, only to cancel them when campaign announced the impromptu rally.
People stream out of the open doors from the rally, lowering their heads against the newly sharpened cold and clutching their gloved hands around pieces of political residue: volunteer forms, buttons, signs dimpled at the base from a particularly passionate grasp. Most chatter percussively in groups of threes or fours as they head away from the field house, but none of the beats of conversation I overhear have any connection to what we all just witnessed. Most of them involve debates on where a seldom seen acquaintance and his wife now lives, or a particularly obnoxious teaching assistant, or the pros and cons of veganism (more committed to the issue of animal rights) versus vegetarianism (easier to travel). After a few minutes, the stream from the field house blends into the larger flood of pedestrian traffic around campus and disappears.
I don’t even realize I still have a campaign sign clutched in my gloved hand until I get to my car. I look around the parking garage and see a trash can, but for some reason the thought of throwing it away seems a little callous. I’d have to bend and contort the sign to stuff it into the overflowing receptacle, leaving it to soak up the remnants oozing out of ketchup packets and coffee cups. I open my side door to lay the sign on my back seat. Then those senior citizens and their signs deemed as illegal contraband flash through my mind. I pull back and open my trunk. I wedge the sign under the carpeted floorboard, climb into the cold front seat, and drive home.
Later that night, after eating a few chocolates from a heart-shaped box (thanks, Mom and Dad!), I turn on the television to catch the local news. I finally see the Senator’s entrance, waving and smiling amidst a backdrop of signs. The flavor of the rally on television pops in sharp contrast to the aftertaste I left the field house with just a few hours earlier. On television, the camera paints the proceedings with vivid colors: a raucous spectacle of passionate supporters, cheering enthusiastically for the candidate hoisted just above their energetic signs. The place is packed. The crowd barely fits into the screen, hinting at multitudes just out of the camera’s scope. At the actual rally, there were yards of space available to stretch out. No wonder the campaign volunteers kept herding us toward the platforms. It definitely made for a better shot.
I had been mistaken in the design of political rallies. As an attendee, I wasn’t the campaign’s main audience. I was part of the play, Townswoman #173, and an unwilling extra at that. The audience wasn’t me two hours ago. It’s me now, sitting in bed, watching TV. The footage ricochets back and forth between close-ups of the Senator’s key talking points and scene-setting establishment shots of the crowd. During the long camera pans of the crowd I scan the dots of heads for a rainbow-topped one.
I walked into that field house with such a romantic notion of civic engagement: I would find my political soul mate, someone who I would want to make bedazzled signs for support with stickers on the bumper of my car. But who finds her President Charming on the first try? That type of puppy love is for the eighteen-year-old voters, all starry-eyed and full of hope. Political compatibility is a practical exercise, requiring thought and evaluation, not just feeling weak in the knees when you hear a candidate speak. I commit myself to taking a more practical approach on my quest for political clarity in the weeks ahead.
A month later, before heading to bed, I check my email. Amidst multiple messages from honors students panicked about earning B’s (also known as, Not-An-A’s), I see an email entitled "Thought this might save you some time!" A friend of mine had heard about my civic quest and sent me a link to a quiz she saw on the homepage of USA Today. By answering just a few multiple choice questions on a range of political issues, I would find out my "compatibility" with eight of the leading presidential candidates. In true USA Today, graphic-obsessed fashion, as I answer questions I would see my compatibility results visualized with the heads of each candidate rising and falling. It reminds me of a carnival game I played as a child at the local fairgrounds: by shooting a water pistol at a target you race to get your tiny horse figure to cross the finish line before your competitors. I wasn’t sure what marksmanship and a strong index finger have to do with horse races, but I claimed my prize nonetheless.
I decide to give the quiz a whirl. It seems like the perfect solution: no emotion, no preconceived notions, no oratory. Just. Issues. I take a seat at my desk, set my Diet Sprite down (on a coaster), and pull up the website. In order to avoid any temptation to see my Mr./Ms. Right before I've finished answering all of the questions, I press a Post-It note over the compatibility results, hiding the candidates’ faces behind a baby-blue curtain until the moment of truth.
After seven minutes of clicking (and countless Google searches to figure out what on earth a carbon tax is) I take a deep breath and pull off the Post-It to reveal my political blind date.
Mike Gravel.
…
Who the hell is Mike Gravel?
Maybe the Match.com approach isn’t the best one to take when selecting a future presidential figure. Sure, we agree on the most things. We wouldn't get into fights over dinner about our gay son’s desire to focus his doctoral thesis on stem cell research. But, I hate to admit it, on half of those questions? I guessed. Nineteen years of formal education and I have no idea if a carbon tax is the best way to protect the environment any more than I know whether a wall across the U.S.-Mexican (or U.S.-Canadian) border will protect us from dangerous, murdering terrorists, or just from the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The following Saturday, I stop for some browsing in a used bookstore by campus. After picking up some crisp Roald Dahl books in desperate need of being well-worn and well-loved, I wander over the American History section, hoping to find some inspiration for my current quest from the legends of the past. A small paperback catches my eye: a collection of the writings of Abraham Lincoln that had been erroneously jammed between two biographies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a seemingly uncomfortable place for any Republican to reside). I wrench Honest Abe from his confines and flip through the pages.
I’ve always loved Abraham Lincoln. As any child who attended American grade school remembers, Lincoln was the only president that spanned both history and art. We built his home out of Popsicle logs and fashioned beards and tall hats from dyed cotton balls and black butcher paper. During President’s Week, a two-dimensional chorus line of Lincolns smiled down to us from hallway bulletin boards as we walked to the cafeteria for lunch.
It wasn't until I was older that I discovered a more accurate picture of Lincoln. He didn't grow his beard until right before his Presidency. He had an estranged relationship with his father. He lost his first love to illness and was inconsolable for months. Despite, or perhaps because of, his personal trials he still managed to become one of the greatest, most-loved American presidents. Given his credentials, I figure Lincoln could give me some pointers on the whole, electing-your-nation's-leader game.
The book is a collection of famous letters and speeches Lincoln gave throughout his political career. After skimming a few letters, this quote materializes in my mind:
Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
I have a feeling Lincoln wouldn't be very happy with the guessing game I played with the Candidate Compatibility Quiz, or with my focus on the mechanics of Senator Clinton’s political rally instead of the Senator’s message the rally was designed to promote. Come to think of it, given the length of his speeches, he probably wouldn't like the idea that national issues (health care, war, poverty, civil rights, environment) warrant only multiple-choice options or seven-second sound-bytes. I think about his election, especially that first one. It wasn’t a guarantee that he would win. I feel uneasy wondering if I would have voted for him if I had been around in 1860, or if I would have chosen another candidate like the multitudes of Americans did that year, and again in 1864. (Then I realize that, even if time travel opened up that moment in history to me, I don’t have to worry about that particular scenario. It’s the one benefit of not having the right to vote: you can’t ever cast a ballot against history.) The honest answer I have for Honest Abe today is that I have no idea where my feet are on most issues, let alone whose feet are beside mine.
I flip the book over and study the cover picture. According to the caption, it's a portrait of President Lincoln from 1863. He’s dressed in a dark suit and bow tie, one hand behind his back, no stovepipe hat to be seen. By 1863, he's already endured threats of assassination, seen his beloved country self-destruct on his watch, buried two of his sons, and moved American history a step closer towards equality through his Emancipation Proclamation. Depending on when the portrait was completed, there could have been a messenger standing just outside the frame, waiting to give the President an update on the escalating body count at Gettysburg.
His posture is ramrod straight, even for Lincoln. His face is grave, steadfast. It reminds me of a professor standing in silence in front of his class, scanning the faces of the students, waiting for someone to respond to the question he just posed. The seconds tick by. He looks back at me from the cover of the book, one eyebrow slightly raised, waiting for me to answer.
I walk to the register to purchase the book. In the car, I slip my receipt by the page with the quote. I sit Lincoln on the passenger seat and head home to start figuring out where to put my feet.
