Uplifting signs in U.S. political debate

[CHIMO]

In a speech that he gave in Toronto this week while taking time off from teaching at Harvard and being a pundit on CNN, commentator David Gergen expressed the kind of unpredictable opinion that a hyper-successful political insider like him needs in order to avoid getting typecast as a hyper-successful political insider.

What was most important about the U.S. presidential race, said Gergen, was not who becomes the next president but whether that person will be able to govern the country.

Gergen rattled off a whole series of indices of American decline, or at least of serious difficulties: two unending wars, a trade deficit, a fiscal deficit, a probable recession, high energy prices, millions without health insurance, the absence of any climate change policy, an almost worldwide collapse in American prestige.

No one, he pointed out, should ever underestimate America's resilience. Nevertheless, said Gergen, no incoming president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in mid-Depression in 1933 had ever faced so many serious problems.

http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/423121

[IndyOp]

1. Recently, encouraging signs have appeared of exactly the kind of seriousness

Gergen is looking for in America's political debate.

Thus, both Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee John McCain have proposed a classic bribe to voters – a summer roll back in the gasoline tax. Its single opponent is Barack Obama, arguing that it would do nothing for, if anything would worsen, the real problem of the U.S. addiction to oil.

The result: Obama swept North Carolina and almost won Indiana.

At the same time, in national polls 70 per cent of Americans dismissed as a "political gimmick" the proposal for a short-term break at the pump.

<snip>

Far from least, there's Obama's rhetoric. Clinton and McCain talk about improving today's America. He talks about the need for a new America. In his North Carolina victory speech, Obama returned to his inspirational style of an America "united by a common vision" and where people "are no longer defined by (their) differences."

In that speech by Obama, there was one passage with special resonance: "I love this country too much to see it divided and distracted at this time in history."

Wow. Interesting perspective from Gergen.