There's been a lot of grumbling behind the scenes here about how tiring we find the primary season (by me mostly, if truth be told). I'm so tired of endless debates with little substance and pundit prognostications that I just can't wait until the election is over and done with and we can start focusing on what really matters: Iraq, the economy, health care, etc.
But leave it to the universe to send the most unlikely person to give an attitude adjustment. Conservative, former Nixon speechwriter, Ferris Bueller attendance taker, game show trivia expert and most recently, evolution denier Ben Stein reminds us just how historic this election is.
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Download If you look at it up close, this presidential campaign looks like a swirl of bragging and rallies and shouts and money. But if you step back and look at this election through the prism of history, it look pretty darn impressive. Breathtaking, even. [..]
Now let’s be clear. They’re politicians and human beings, and not saints. None of them. They wear pants, not halos. But if you can see the forest for the trees, this is an election about some fine things in humanity: courage, determination, idealism, forged in the still red-hot crucible of the human spirit, the U.S.A. It’s a great sight.
Full transcripts below the fold
If you look at it up close, this presidential campaign looks like a swirl of bragging and rallies and shouts and money. But if you step back and look at this election through the prism of history, it look pretty darn impressive. Breathtaking, even.
Just for example, when I was a child in Maryland in the mid-1950s, if you had started a story about a black man who was running for president, it would have been a set up for a racist joke. Believe me, I heard plenty like that and I hated those not funny “jokes.” But in Barack Obama, we have a self-confident, capable, eloquent man who grew up with terrible burdens: little money, an absent father, and mostly his own extraordinary abilities. From this, he became a U.S. Senator and now a juggernaut heading for the White House. What is this if not a stunning triumph of the human spirit? What is it if not an amazing story of how this magnificent country still offers unlimited opportunity to those bold enough to seize the moment?
And what about John McCain? When I was a law student, blithely playing bridge, he was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, tortured and tormented for six years of horrifying captivity. His life was in danger every moment. Now he is a U.S. Senator from Arizona, a world symbol of courage and the candidate of the GOP for president. This is an even more astounding story of human strength and heroism, and of the country, which he says inspired his survival in chains.
What about Hillary Clinton? She went through a terribly difficult childhood, with a drill instructor of a father, a harrowing, endless public torment by her famous husband, and still has a shot—to be sure, a long shot—at being the nation’s first distaff president. This too is a personal triumph.
Now let’s be clear. They’re politicians and human beings, and not saints. None of them. They wear pants, not halos. But if you can see the forest for the trees, this is an election about some fine things in humanity: courage, determination, idealism, forged in the still red-hot crucible of the human spirit, the U.S.A. It’s a great sight.
