It has been a guilty pleasure at times, like watching a particularly raucous episode of “The Jerry Springer Show,” but there’s something lovable about the way this year’s never-ending political campaign has turned out.
We now have two presidential tickets that display the American rainbow in all its eccentric colors. It’s as raw and real, and as unlikely, as the nation itself: On one side a suave, aloof African-American, twinned with a loquacious Catholic whose manner evokes his blue-collar roots; on the other, a war hero paired with a young woman from Alaska who looks like the heroine of a country music song and earns her reputation both as a beauty-contest charmer and a political “barracuda.”
And best of all, these four people are each, in different ways, American rebels. They have all made their way challenging conventional wisdom, telling off the know-it-alls, making a place for themselves and their ideas. They all retained their individuality in a political culture that tends to grind down candidates until they are palpable phonies. That didn’t happen with these four — whatever you think of them, they are who they claim to be.
The two parties converged toward the center, selecting in Barack Obama and John McCain presidential candidates who promised they would work across party lines to break the gridlock in Washington. The dividers lost. The victors were a change agent and a maverick.
It’s a refreshingly upside-down composite picture: The African-American candidate is the most conventional of the lot, with his Columbia-Harvard pedigree and his elegant Princeton- Harvard wife and his picture-perfect children. It’s Sarah Palin who reminds us of how messy the real world is, with her special-needs child passed from hand to hand, her pregnant teenage daughter, and the hockey-star boyfriend/father who looks, weirdly, like he just won the lottery.
And old John McCain, eyes flashing, tighter than a tick, just like old Gramps when he’s about to take a verbal shot at someone he thinks is a jerk. And motor-mouth Joe Biden, who can’t stop saying what he thinks.
I’m sorry, but this is an American family portrait I like. I know all the reasons to be worried. But for now, let’s enjoy the American tapestry that’s laid out before us: quirky, sometimes discordant, with some missed stitches and ragged patches, but quite a piece of work all the same.
