Sure, you may think the campaign has been defined by things like hope, change, and John McCain searching for his wayward pal Puddles (YouTube it), but I say personal empowerment won out as the paramount theme. Voting drives abound, volunteers convinced men, women and animated friends (I’m looking at you, ACORN) alike to use their voice, whether while participating in government or verbally assaulting volunteers.  Empowerment?  I think so!

     Tonight, Barack Obama will likely become President elect, a feat that not only encourages more African Americans to strive for the tippy-top, but also people with white teeth and good speaking voices.  Throughout the campaign, John McCain and Joe Biden have proved that elderly folk can do anything, except avoid appearing really, really elderly.   

     Sarah Palin’s uncanny rise (whether she succeeds or Alaska secedes, don’cha know?) has epitomized personal empowerment: she literally empowered herself by aerially slaying tundra creatures with a shotgun, and encouraged women to seek office by presenting herself as a tangible role model (you too can have an X-Treme! husband, pregnant teenage daughter, and homey vocabulary). 

     So, naturally, I took this theme one step further and cast my vote for Charles Hussein Kesslering (a write-in, of course).  I may have no experience, no personality and no cool nickname like “Rogue” or “that Muslim,” but I’ve been empowered.  That’s what counts. 

However, the underlying assumption in a democracy is that voters are well informed and well educated. Not only that, it is assumed that the people who vote have the analytical ability to extrapolate, using a candidates positions on key issues, a candidate’s possible actions in future situations, as well as the outcomes of those actions. In other words, voters are required to be smart. The only problem with democracy is that people are dumb. Really, really dumb.

Ok, not everyone is dumb. Those with good educations will most likely vote well. Smart citizen votes, however, are worth exactly the same as everyone else’s (if you ignore the electoral college, which is also incredibly stupid), including the ignorant majority who vote based on brainless reasons, like race, gender, personality, and elitism (“that candudate thinks he smartur ’an us. I ain’t votin’ for him.”). Others vote solely on the basis of one mundane social issue, like religious fundamentalists who oppose Barack Obama only because he is pro-choice.

In reality, I don’t think any of us, educated or not, are capable of deciding who is ready to lead the country. No matter how hard anyone tries, it’s impossible to fully understand the challenges a President faces. For instance, as a physics major, I feel confident in my ability to judge the candidates’ science policies. However, I know very little about economics, and I have no idea which candidate has a better economics policy. I understand that weakness and I have, for the most part, ignored economics when I decided for whom I would vote this year. The vast majority of voters, however, seem to have a difficult time understanding their own strengths and weaknesses.

When people evaluate candidates on issues they don’t fully comprehend, democracy breaks down. As our leaders become less and less competent, society worsens. I realize that my ignorance of economic issues means I might vote for an equally economically ignorant leader. I could possibly be jeopardizing our country’s economic future. That’s a problem.

Therefore, I propose the wisest form of government is meritocracy, where leaders are chosen by skill, and not by popular vote. Objective tests would provide the best way to assign leadership positions to the most highly qualified experts. We would live in a utopia where computer algorithms decide who to put in office to maximize the country’s happiness level. People would still complain about the government, of course, but that’s what people always do.

All that being said, you should still vote. Democracy kind of sucks, but it’s what we’re stuck with. Besides, what else were you going to do on Tuesday? Go to class? Take the day off and vote!

Mais c’est vrai. Obama is the only subject of conversation about the election these days. McCain is a total non-actor on this side of the pond. As this article from Le Monde says, John McCain is virtually unknown in certain parts of France, the country in which he has one of the lowest approval ratings–around 5%, according to a recent poll conducted by newspapers and media outlets around the world.

As Sydney noted, I have heard several comparisons to JFK, most recently from a Greek high school physics teacher who was hosting me in Greece who said that, like Jack, Obama seemed to represent change, and that is what America needs right now–it doesn’t matter if it’s a change in the right direction; any change would put America on a better course than the one it is on now.

(And just as a side note, there is almost a maternal view in Europe towards the United States. Even though the US is the global superpower, it is seen as a relatively new country still finding its way, so like a mother watching her teenage son who’s bigger and stronger than she is but still needs to be woken up in the mornings to go to school, there’s a sense in Europe that if only America listened to them, they could impart some parental wisdom that would help with the growing pains.)

And, finally, similar to the way in which the most unlikely people are supporting Obama, everybody–and I mean everybody–wants to claim a connection to him.

So kind of a random collection of stuff, but le voilà, and there will be more as Tuesday approaches. Coming up next time: What the French think about early voting! (And boy do they have opinions on grocery store voting machines…)

There haven’t been any earth-shattering, American political demonstrations this week, even with the clock ticking on the election. Nevertheless, on my quest for a better understanding of the Italian political psyche, I conducted a few interviews.

I spent fall break in Munich and Vienna, which did not offer much blogging fodder. But on the crowded trains back into the country, I met several Europeans who shared their take on the importance of image in the upcoming election.

After a quick reprimand for putting my feet on a seat, the Greek man next to me on my struck up a conversation with me. We couldn’t understand each other very well, but we quickly became friends. After half an hour of chitchat about my studies in Art History, I started to question him.

On the cover of the Austrian magazine he was a picture of Sara Palin. Even in broken English, my Greek friend clearly conveyed his dislike for the GOP VP choice.

But while he prefers Obama, he said, it’s mainly for the intelligent and accepting image the candidate brings to the table. He admitted on policy, he was not 100 percent behind the Democratic nominee.

My Greek friend was not alone. One Neapolitan, who’d crammed into space between cars on the Eurostar train to Florence, had a simple reason for supporting Obama – he reminded him of John F. Kennedy. There was no hard evidence in his reasoning, just a gut instinct. Image was important to these Europeans.

And it’s a topic that my friends here cannot seem to shake. It seems like a silly reason to hope for one candidate victory. But there is something inherently positive about the image Obama offers to our nation. It’s something akin to competency and tolerance in the eyes of many of my American interviewees.  Clearly, at least a couple of Europeans feel the same way.

I’ll be back with more closer to the big day.

• 43% self-identify as Republicans; 35% as Democrats; and 22% as independents which seems contrary to accepted perception of college students in general
• 55% support Barack Obama (including about 17% of Republicans, and about 70% of independents); 38% support McCain; 5% are undecided. Compare that to UPenn, where 81% of the undergraduates support Obama.
• 55% say they will vote by absentee ballot
• Sarah Palin is viewed “Very Unfavorably” by 45% of students (the other candidates all have a plurality of votes around 30-35% as “Favorable”).

A little more conservative than people argue? Perhaps. It would be interesting to have comparative data for how the political affiliations have changed over the past fifteen years as the school has risen in rankings. Also, it would have been awesome to have been doing this all fall to get read on how the campus was trending on the election. Blast!

ETA: I’ve always perceived the campus to be largely moderate with some leaning towards center-right; at the same time, 55% support for Obama is totally not surprising — even just given the t-shirts and buttons on campus this year. Neither political side has much to get worked up about at Vandy, basically.

To the surprise of no one, the level of discourse in the comments on YouTube has been at its usual magnificent peak. It would have been so much better if they had just done the song.

A few additional thoughts on the spot:

Gallup says only about 4% of voters are truly undecided at this point, so the ad tonight functioned more as reinforcement, with shades of a GOTV. In that capacity, the rate of return here can’t be all that bad; Obama had the money to do something like this, and considering the high production values and message clearly tailored to middle class voters in the Rust Belt, the ad was successful in conveying several of Obama’s specific policy goals while maintaining positivity free from attacking McCain. We’ll know tomorrow how many people actually viewed it, but in the meantime, Obama succeeded in that pursuit
Clearly, the economy, jobs, and outsourcing were the thrust of the ad; each of the family stories brought up outsourcing in some way or another, and his tax plan. Now, politically, the branding of the Bush tax cuts with deregulation has done the GOP no favors. But it seems between Joe the Plumber and the revelation (…the video’s a little vague actually for “revelation”) that Obama has eyed massive redistributionist policies in the past, McCain’s up a little on taxes and the economy according to Rasmussen. McCain still won’t be, even on the off-chance he’s elected, a powerful economic force.

So, regardless, while I’m not happy per se where an Obama presidency will take us economically (capital gains increases, a refusal to move jobs overseas at the expense of American industry as a whole, free trade agreements denied), I’d feel considerably better about the entire enterprise if the subject of Iraq hadn’t been used as a segue to talk about domestic energy production. He briefly discussed direct diplomacy as well, but only in the context of “failed” Bush policies. I mean, not that I expected a dissertation on realist political theory or anything tonight, I just expected a little more.

We’ll likely elect the man president, though, and some part of me is hoping the extended infomercial failed not out of distaste for Obama but for this reason:

“This is a bad precedent to set for future campaigns. At some point, they’re just going to raise enough money to purchase all of the airtime on a major network for the two days leading up to the election. Then, they’ll compete. Then, they’ll get their own 24-7 networks. Then, Fahrenheit 451, but by then, we’ll be glad to watch our informational materials burn. At least that would be one less medium they could use to contact us about the finer points of their tax policies.”

I have no problem with Obama actually buying the air time (free markets!), just a little concerned after this exhausting election cycle where it’s all headed.

Katherine Miller is a junior at Vanderbilt University. She blogs daily at Right-Wing Vitriol.

He settles on hypocrite. But then is all, “Hey, maybe, restrictions on political financing…aren’t good?” Which, yes, welcome to being a Republican with John McCain as your candidate. There’s nothing wrong with Obama buying the road block — just pretending like we got here because of his virtuous campaign. Campbell Brown, of the network who has denied the Obama Variety Hour, would like to remind you just why Obama denied public financing:

So Obama could form his own 527 machine! But how could anyone have known he was being insincere about his intentions what with this spellbinding beacon of sincerity:

Now, clearly, this is for security, and with all the crazies in the world, it’s for the best. But isn’t voting the most important thing in the history of the written word, as every spoken word, hand-jiving, t-shirt wearing, white backdrop, smarmy, two-minutes-too long, B-list celebrity Rock the Vote / MoveOn.org ad tells you? Surely, the security and integrity of an American electoral system that will probably produce a victorious Barack Obama is just as important as the security of just one party, right? God, no. And shame on you for even thinking it might be.

Katherine Miller is a junior at Vanderbilt University. She blogs daily at Right-Wing Vitriol.

The McCain campaign’s favorite line of attack this week is that Barack Obama’s plan to roll back the Bush Tax Cuts and give new tax cuts to the middle class is socialist. This came after Obama made the comment that it was time to “spread the wealth.” I’ll willingly admit that this was very unfortunate wording from a candidate who rarely makes verbal blunders. But poor wording is all it was.

First of all, if opposing the Bush Tax Cuts is socialist, then McCain was socialist for most of Bush’s time in the White House. He apparently saw the light once he started running for President…funny how that works. I guess he was enlightened by the Republican base of CEO’s with billions of dollars and rednecks with delusions of billions of dollars.

The other leg of Obama’s tax plan is cutting taxes for Middle Class families. I’ve never heard a Republican argue that less taxes is socialist.

So is Obama socialist? No. at least not because of his tax plan. One could make the argument that his healthcare proposals lean toward socialism, but that is not what the McCain campaign is arguing.

And McCain’s not socialist either. But Sarah Palin might be. She routinely touts the fact that while governor she helped the state government take stricter control of the oil industry in that state. She then took a portion of the profits from those oil companies and sent her constituents checks. Socialist? very. Bad? not necessarily.

American society is in no way free of socialism. We have public schools, public roads, fire and police departments, social security- all things that could be considered socialist, and no one suggests getting rid of these things, save for a few leftover Ron Paul supporters. I’m of course not advocating a socialist state. I think it’s important to recognize the tremendous wealth that capitalism has brought to our country. However, when “socialism” is discussed in American politics it is rarely a true policy discussion, but rather a meaningless ideological hot button used to scare the masses.

And unfortunately, that’s exactly how it’s being used here. McCain is probably going to lose. If people vote based on hope for the future, McCain is definitely going to lose. It seems the Democrats have the monopoly on hope this year. The Republicans are just hoping to maintain their monopoly on fear. With this kind of ideological baiting, it seems they probably will.

Always Useful, If Not Relevant

Via Captain Ed, Campbell Brown identifies and spits on the double standard Althouse tackled last night:

Politico reported this morning that stylists defended the $150,000 — adding that Michelle Obama’s campaign outfits routinely cost $2000. E.M. Zanotti, the American Princess, if you will, echoes Brown’s comments, but has something to add about that double standard (as well as a quality detailing of what labels the RNC probably went with, which I agree with, though I don’t think I’ve seen Palin in St. John):

“We’re brutal. If Sarah Palin walked out of her motorcade dressed in an ill-fitting shantung pant-suit with a too-short jacket and a pair of Payless heels, we’d have eaten her alive. And I’m nice to her, and here I am admitting to you, my loyal audience of five, that I, personally, would have taken her, brutally, to task for her choice of campaign finery. And I’m not even close to Perez Hilton. [...]

“Now, I don’t know if [...] whether the $150K is necessary, but you see, that’s the RNC’s problem. Not Sarah’s. We’ve long said that the RNC is out of touch with the Republican base and if you’ve suddenly discovered that, oh American media and great legions of liberal Obamatrons, well then you’ve just stumbled upon something we’ve known for years. [...It's] representative of a fault we’ve been conditioned to ignore for a long time, assuming that the only choices we had in candidates were people who were hand-plucked from the Washington cocktail circuit or the local political machine [...] Sarah Palin represents, to so many, the idea that the Everyman Candidate who goes to Washington to deliver remarkable, Jimmy Stewart speeches at the end of 18-hour filibusters with the intent of changing the way that business is done in the city that represents everything we hate about government, is not lost in the archives of an out-of-business movie studio. If the RNC wants to screw that up by painting her with Guerlain and stuffing her into the $5K suits we all complain about, they’re creating their own monster. Sarah is the woman who stops at Wal-Mart for diapers. Its the RNC that hires $10K makeup artists.”

Mark Mays said something similar in the comments on my post last night; I still would argue the cost incurred here for the RNC, not beloved anyway, is less than the one that would have been incurred for Sarah Palin, The Candidate if Palin had rolled out in clothing not properly tailored and with her roots showing. That would have been painful; admittedly, possibly a rallying cry for people around the country taking umbrage at Palin’s beatdown from the MSM, but as I think her personal attractiveness is an asset for her (in the same way that Reagan’s pomade and tuxedos had appeal), to risk the whole “Redneck Woman…who looks like a real Redneck” narrative would have played poorly. Again, a no win situation for her.

I don’t know how effectively that addresses the RNC’s NYC-DC Corridor Cocktail Party Mindset. But the manner they’ve been dressing Palin, with the patent leather pumps and knee-high boots, doesn’t quite conjure up “Inside the Beltway.” The $150,000 price tag can be attributed to something Zanotti mentioned: they were looking for high quality. I’d add: they were looking for it quickly. When you’re looking for something quickly, you go where you know you can find it (…dirty!). NY Mag, of course, rounds up everybody who could have possibly ripped on Palin yesterday, so if you’re so inclined there’s a reading list. Fortunately, they made up for it and the David Brooks Culture War by figuring out that it doesn’t take much to blow $150k for 67 days of campaigning.

But again, I don’t know that I can make an argument for the culture of expensive clothing on candidates. However, the reality of the campaign world, the Washingtonian political realm with Laura Bush and Nancy Pelosi alike in Oscar de la Renta, and the international landscape with Carla Bruni traipsing around with Sarkozy is that looking polished means something, and acquainting Sarah Palin with that world required a significant sum of money, that was insignificant to the relative rate of return for the RNC.

Katherine Miller is a junior at Vanderbilt University. She can be reached at kat.m.miller@vanderbilt.edu