This being the new year and all — and an important one, at that — let's start things off with a resolution: This time, let's please don't vote for another guy like the one currently in office. Not that I voted for him last time — or the time before that. But millions did. Not millions more than voted for his opponent in 2000, but still. OK, I'll stop. This is not to slam President Bush. OK, it is, but in a more specific way. And too, to slam the apathetic among us.
We live in a culture that celebrates and rewards — and yes, elects — mediocrity. Scores of corporate VPs and politicians get where they are not by succeeding, but by failing for so long and so consistently that they are eventually promoted to become someone else's problem; they actually fail upward. Forty years ago, education and writer Laurence Johnston Peter put forth his "Peter Principle," which states that "Employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent." Well folks, guess what? The organization in question is our United States itself.
George Bush was elected precisely because of his mediocrity. Millions of Americans saw him as a likable, normal "Bubba" (to borrow from Bill Clinton's run) of a guy who spoke their nucular language. Just a regular Joe, clearing brush out on the back 40. His everyman-ness was (rightly so) the least spun aspect of his immaculately-manicured campaign.
And no, I'm not falling for Bush's well-honed "Aw shucks" demeanor when I call him an everyman. He's one of those guys who was born on third base, thinking he hit a triple. Most of us haven't had anywhere near his opportunities in life. (Hell, I'd love the chance to run a baseball team into the ground as quickly as he did [specifically, I'd like to do it to the Yankees].) But he's normal in his intellect, in his curiosity, his drive, his work ethic. He's just plain ordinary. Most of us are no different. Excepting, of course, the fact that — well, uh — we're not the president.
But the fact remains that George W. Bush is the president — a failed symbol of our lazy desire for formulaic blockbusters and their paint-by-numbers sequels, and chain restaurants in which we can eat the same meal whether in Boston or Bismarck.
Those movies and the meals are never very good, but they are familiar. And what's most familiar to us politically is rich white guys. Granted, some of those rich white guys started off not so rich (see Clinton, Bill; Edwards, John; etc.), but we seem to fall for them just the same.
I voted for John Kerry last time around simply because he was there. But the guy's a complete stiff. And I don't mean he looks like he was carved from the same wood as George Washington's purported teeth, I mean that he's an out of touch rich white guy even among like-minded rich white guys.
In the 2000 election, George W. Bush painted himself as a good manager. A "decider." Said he surrounded himself with people who understood the issues he couldn't quite master himself. Well, anyone who read the modest Project for a New American Century manifesto his people wrote ten years ago should not have been the least bit surprised at the direction we headed under the Bush administration.
Well, now we're stuck with our current situation. And despite our desire for ordinariness, we no longer live in pedestrian times, and we simply cannot elect another pedestrian leader. We need someone who is extraordinary, not extra-ordinary. Electing an average Joe to the most powerful office in the world is irresponsible and reprehensible, and we can't get fooled again.
I don't necessarily care who we all vote for — as long as we do vote, and do so not simply for someone with whom we agree on critical issues, but for a candidate who has made the most of his or her opportunities in life (made more of those opportunities than you or I would have). Someone who sweats the details; excels under pressure; surrounds him or herself not just with smart people, but with smart people who own and listen to their conscience; and for god's sake, someone who does not take more vacation than we do.
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