The Franchise

Introducing "The Franchise," a group blog dealing with electoral politics

Dear Swarthmore students, faculty and staff,

The Phoenix invites you to contribute to our new community blog, “The Franchise,” a forum for debate on the 2008 presidential election. It is our hope that the blog will feature a diverse range of commentary. Community members of any party affiliation are invited to submit entries or post comments.

Please email mrevkin1 to learn more about contributing.

August 28, 2008 | 1 comments

Change: not a one man show

Some questions have been lingering in my mind since Obama’s speech and the diversity workshops that I had last night. I went to msn.com and saw a poll about whether Obama’s speech last night earned people’s votes. About 61% said yes but about 21% said no, saying that his speech was mostly style and show with no firm substance.

So I present this question: Is Obama simply a celebrity or is there substance to his words? I mean his speech was amazing last night, and he described all the changes that he would make. I absolutely agreed wholeheartedly on many of the points that he made about the American promise, particularly his assertion that while government is not your babysitter, its job is to create opportunities for Americans. Personal responsibility is not always enough to ensure one’s wellbeing; it takes a government to generate the kinds of opportunities that enterprising citizens can seize as leverage for their own success.

But as much as I would like to believe that he will be able to do all he says he will do, I’m still a little skeptical. The word “change” carries such ambiguous connotations and everyone defines the word differently. We really don’t know what is going to happen in the future and whether or not Obama will keep all of the promises he made in last night’s speech. But we should also not, as responsible citizens, pin all of our hopes on government or on a single man.

Another question that I had after the diversity workshops last night pertains to Swarthmore’s trademark “liberalism." Swarthmore is a place that fosters intellectual discussion, not a place that shuns it. Discussion are much better when people disagree about their basic beliefs. These disagreements should not be paths to hatred but a starting point for discussion and possibly even friendship.

Yes, there are definitely some beliefs that you can loathe your neighbor for, but loathing your neighbor for his or her political beliefs sounds a bit…yeah. So maybe Swart…

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August 29, 2008 | 1 comments

Is "experience" overrated? You bet your ballot it is

Boca Raton, Florida, my hometown, is an astonishingly dull place, and accordingly I had a lot of free time on my hands this summer, which I spent watching the talking heads on cable news stations. Admittedly, Bill O’Reilly is really, really funny for the first twenty minutes, but there’s only so much of FOX News that I can handle in one sitting. So, out of desperation, I turned to the commentators of CNN and MSNBC, all of whom seemed to be obsessed with one thing during this presidential election: experience.

I’ve managed to distill the following information from cable news, after many hours of careful observation:

• Barack Obama lacks experience.

• John McCain has experience.

• Joe Biden has some experience, particularly about other countries.

• Sarah Palin has experience as a mother.

• FOX News likes to repeat that they have the most experienced reporters in the field.

• I have experience in making fun of Bill O’Reilly.

But nowhere in all of this have I actually been sold on the concept that experience is relevant in selecting a presidential candidate. It’s been taken as a given that having done one job in the past is the determining factor of how effectively one will perform a similar one in the future; my question is, “why?”

Experience in Washington, I’ve come to realize, is a code phrase meaning “this person has played the political game and will uphold the system as it exists.” It has little, if anything, to do with specific policy positions or actual, job-relevant knowledge.

For instance, Barack Obama’s career as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago is consistently downplayed by both his campaign and the media, despite it being an extremely salient argument in favor of his presidency. This is puzzling for two reasons: first, his sample responses to his own law school exams were what started me on the path to supporting him in the first place; and second, a candidate with a demonstrable grasp of …

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August 30, 2008 | 0 comments