Having gone there, I guess I should complete the thought.
I think the danger to the Obama candidacy of his recent statement is that he has revealed himself to be, at heart, a pacifist. On the surface this sounds like a positive thing. It’s certainly something that I support. And yet I suspect that deep down our nation’s citizens recoil away from pacifists, although most people wouldn’t put it that way. We are an odd amalgam – a culture that professes a love of peace, and yet which has derived enormous economic leverage from our outsized ability to wage war.
When I was an undergrad at Harvard, we were visited by representatives from the CIA, who were there to fish for recruits among the intellectual elite. One rep was quite frank with us. Since he was trying to recruit us, it behooved him to be frank. He explained that the major utility of our military might its role in keeping the hearts and minds of our nation-state clients around the world. In this way we achieve favorable trade status, and assert control of the international economic agenda. I suspect that the CIA would have been much less frank with the Press in going over these talking points.
Notice the first thing that Senator Clinton did when Obama appeared to say something negative about Americans and their guns: She reminisced fondly about her girlhood as a hunter. Cannily, she was positioning herself as a warrior. After all, the U.S. president is also referred to, respectfully, as “The Commander in Chief”, which is very much a military characterization.
I suspect that this strategy will not work for Clinton – the cost she is paying in looking ever more like a mean spirited attack dog is simply too high. But by amplifying the perception among general voters, implied by Obama’s recent words, that he may not be a proper gun-toting American, ready and eager to kill (although nobody ever puts it that way), Senator Clinton might succeed in getting John McCain into the White House.
Isn’t it ironic? Obama makes the mistake – which might cost him the nomination – of revealing that he may have a distaste for killing innocent fellow sentient beings in cold blood, something Americans do just because, [irony on] well you know, because it’s really fun to kill. What could be more empowering, more of an adrenaline rush, than that terrified look in their eyes, that heady mix of fear and confusion and pain, just before the moment of death? And it’s all perfectly legal! [irony off]
Obama’s rhetorical slip creates an implication – immediately exploited by his Democratic opponent – that he might not have the heart to arrange for the killing of large numbers of fellow humans. And that therefore he may not be qualified to represent our great nation and its values.
Wow. This is the liberal party! What kind of a country are we?