Oblomovka

My friend Stephen Sharkey, who writes plays, once wrote an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler, and, as part of his “research”, we would go out and spend our meagre earnings nightly in Soho’s casinos. My colleagues tried their hands at games of skill, like poker and blackjack. I tended to play the games of utter randomness, like roulette, because I was fascinated by the obsession that the players (including myself) would devote to seeking patterns and predictability in the spin of a wheel that was — as we all rationally knew — completely beyond our control.

I feel that about this American election. I have no control. I can’t vote, which removes even the smallest breath I might place on the wheel. I can make no predictions; there’s certainly not much point in following the spin right now, because predicting the election from the day-to-day motions of the polls this far out is close to futile.

But that doesn’t stop me from constantly hitting reload on the news sites and listening out for every bounce of the ball.
I suspect we’re wired to pay more attention under these circumstances, as our minds desperately focus down to find some factor we can use to change the odds.

I am for Obama, more emotionally at this point than because I’m expecting any real change. I fully expect to be disappointed in him when he gets into office; he’s already disappointed me by betraying the main issue I cared about in this Congress. I worry that I’ve brought down my curse on the Democrats with the arrival of Sarah Palin, the sort of emotional down-at-home story that voters lap up and modern Democrats seem congenitally unable to recognise and counterract — even when, as with Bush, the mythos was artfully constructed. I think right now they’re just hoping she’ll make some kind of rookie screw-up, but eight weeks isn’t that long, and there’s a sizeable proportion of newbie screw-ups that count as endearing in that story.

But, hey, I suppose I should really be rooting for Ron Paul or Barr or None of The Above, right? Nah. My concerns right now are mainly about corruption, and freedom through civil liberties, domestic and international. Obama has a slight lead on the domestic front, where McCain just seems erratic. Obama’s rhetoric suggests that he would see some real mileage to be gained from defending civil liberties, in the face of “security”-driven outrages on that front. I don’t trust McCain’s ability to syringe the corruption out of the heart of the Republican party as it is now. I don’t trust Obama to start that job yet, but it’ll take eight years or so before it’s anywhere near as bad as it is now.

In foreign policy, I’m basically a Jeffersonian in Walter Russell Meade’s ontology of American foreign policies. Jeffersonians are broadly isolationists, believing that America’s own domestic democracy is a fragile flower that needs all the protection it can get, and that most foreign entanglements put that project at risk. That is contrasted with Wilsonian spread-the-give-of-democracy globalists, Hamiltonian defend-the-free-market-with-guns capitalists, and Jacksonian you-lookin’-at-my-flag-funny-or-what? militarists. Jeffersonians haven’t really had much fun in the last few administrations, but hope springs eternal — the most tragic part of Meade’s 2001 book Special Providence for me was that he foresaw a Jeffersonian revival — about a month before 9/11 and the emergence of a fierce Jacksonian/Wilsonian alliance.

So, for a Jeffersonian, a dignified withdrawal from Iraq, a closing down of Guantanomo, and a ten year project for energy independence, and a specific appeal for cross-party allegiances, all sound good. Plus he’s culturally closer to me than McCain, and he’s a great speaker who lays on the constitutional references with a trowel, which I admit I’m a sucker for.

But mainly what I want from this election, is for it to be over. The idea that I have eight more weeks watching this wheel spin around, and that ball bounce and bounce and bounce, is more than I can bear. Les jeux sont fait, rien ne va plus!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS/Atom feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.