Long ago, and oh so far away, in a place called January, 2008, Jonah Goldberg and Peter Beinart fed the following thoughts into their webcams:
Peter: I have to say, just the prospect of a McCain-Obama race…I mean, I have to say, that could be one of the greatest races in American history.Answered prayers, folks. Answered prayers. Fast-forward fast-forward fast-forward, we're bearing down on October, and the one comic book superhero "has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," while the other is "cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history."
Jonah: [laughs]
Peter: I mean, can you imagine an Obama-John McCain race, I mean really, I'd wanna, like, take out my American flag and start waving, I mean…
Jonah: [laughs]
Peter: …the thing would just be…the thing would be unbelievable, and I couldn't think of a more compelling race…for almost any two people out there in American politics today than seeing John McCain go up against Barack Obama.
Jonah: No, for political junkies it's sort of like what comic geeks used to talk about: "Imagine you have Superman fight the Hulk!"
Peter: That's…that's right.
Jonah: You know, it's one of these great sort of matches. I agree and it would, it would…maybe we should do a whole segment on imagining what that race would look like.
Peter: Yeah.
Jonah: I could, I could see getting a little bit sick of the, uh, the you know, 'cause neither of them would get, I mean, the n- where the negativity would surface, eventually I guess it would have to, it'd be interesting to try to figure out.
Peter: Yes.
Jonah: But for a long time it would be like, a lot of, sort of, it would be the Yakov Smirnoff, you know, election of, "what a country!"
Jonah: That would get a bit old after a while, the sort of spirit, you know, if we, if we all work together we can make this the best yearbook ever!
Peter: Uh-huh
Jonah: It [would] start to grate on me.
Peter: Uh-huh
Jonah: No, I agree that would be fun. It'd be nice to feel good about the country. I think…I think that is, that is one of the reasons why a Hillary campaign is so off-putting to a lot of people. They feel like it would be a standard issue nasty campaign, and an Obama race wouldn't.
Shapow!
So now Peggy Noonan sees her "beautiful election" entering "its dark phase." And she's wondering aloud whether maybe "we are all making believe this is a life-changing election because we know it's not a life-changing election," that maybe "the presidential election doesn't matter as much as we think," that maybe "[w]hoever wins will govern within more or less the same limits, both domestically and internationally."
Me, I don't know. I do know that politics is the mark that history makes on the present, that "History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors / And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, / Guides us by vanities," and that the owl of Minerva's wings unfurl only with the falling of the night. So, although my hunch all along has been that things overall will probably turn out better with an Obama administration for the next four years than with the alternative, and that the outcome of the election in November might possibly maybe even make a significant difference, world-historically speaking, one way or another, a sceptic like me can't have a notion about the matter that amounts to belief that's true and justified.
I usually know what I like, though, and what I don't. And though the blood-sport spectator in me enjoys the show, and the doubter in me knows that how the game is played and who comes out on top might not make much difference, there's a part of me that's more than a little disappointed by the "standard issue nasty campaign" the two camps have gifted us with. It could have been done differently, and very much for the better. But then again, nature is as nature does.
