Rise above low expectations
Posted on Wednesday, October 8, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/hl/Editorial/25751/
In this last column before the presidential election, I challenge voters to raise their expectations.
We’ve heard time and again how expectations were low for John Mc-Cain before his first debate with Barack Obama. So his campaign highlighted this in advance, and pundits said McCain could eke out a win if he just exceeded everyone’s low expectations.
We heard these same low standards applied even more so to Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate for president. In fact, expectations for Palin were so low before her vice-presidential debate that Republicans were spinning any criticism as picking on her, “ gotcha media” or sexism, something Hillary Clinton would never have gotten away with. McCain even sat in on a supposedly “ one-on-one” interview Palin had with Katie Couric because by then Palin had become the joke of the late-night talk shows and of “ Saturday Night Live, ” whose Tina Fey does a better Palin than Palin.
Republicans argue Palin redeemed herself in her debate with Joe Biden, but her superficial knowledge of foreign affairs and the economy, so obviously borne of memorized talking points injected with folksiness, were no match for the candid, in-depth knowledge and experience of Biden.
The point is that we have sunk to an all-time low when all a candidate has to do is exceed our low expectations to qualify for president, or vice president. For a country that calls itself “ Number One, ” this is antithetical.
Which reminds me that expectations were rightly low for George W. Bush as candidate for president and are even lower in his fading days in office. It seems he can get away with virtually anything — even grabbing more power and creating a larger, more unaccountable government — as long as he checks all the right boxes on the social conservatives’ agenda.
We foolishly put down educated elites. But I’ll take a smart person as candidate for president any day over some good old boy who claims he prays but blithely presides over a trickle-down economy that only benefits the rich, or some good old gal who can shoot a gun and who claims foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from her home. For there to be any hope of recovery, we need people who greatly exceed our expectations, not barely meet them.
This mantra of low expectations seems ridiculous if you apply it directly. Do you want a scripted Palin in charge of the economic meltdown and the war in Iraq if a “ President” McCain dies early in office ? Do we expect our athletes aspiring to the Olympics to just exceed our low expectations ? If you had cancer, would you want a doctor who barely met your expectations for recovery ?
This is what low expectations have brought us: From Seattle to Athens, Ga., more and more tent cities are springing up as large numbers of Americans lose their jobs or their homes to foreclosure. It’s reminiscent of the Hoovervilles under Pres. Herbert Hoover, who failed to recognize the depth of suffering in the Great Depression. Now, with health care unaddressed, 47 million people are without insurance, many of them the working poor. Meanwhile, those who have insurance are groaning under increasing deductibles and co-pays.
The situation is so dire that “ 60 Minutes” recently filmed people lining up for days in Knoxville, Tenn., to get free medical care from an organization called Remote Area Medical. Founded to help people in far-flung parts of the world, RAM must now turn its attention to providing stopgap care to thousands at home. Some people have waited so long for care that their diseases are advanced. Some have to be turned away. This is the result of low expectations.
And the best solution we have for this mess is the erratic hothead, John McCain, a 72-year-old reprise of Bush, and his inept sidekick, Palin ? Better the steady, competent, uniting ticket of Obama-Biden, who actually have a viable plan for healing this economy.
It’s time to pick people who exceed our expectations and demand that they continue to do so. It’s time to start living up to the idea that this country can do some good in the world, rather than just claiming its superiority.
It’s time to be better citizens and voters ourselves, rather than minimally schooling ourselves in the issues and therefore picking sub-par leaders.
Raise your expectations high, America, and vote accordingly.