Political spoilers

More pods in the Park, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008

I am going to revisit my post about our Canadian federal leadership at some point, but I'm also going to break yet another of my silly rules and talk briefly about the American leadership race and the upcoming November election.

Ralph Nader has 'declared' again and really, this is all this race needs, a second spoiler candidate to split the left-of-centre vote. If John McCain ends up president of the United States, the first two people I'm going to blame will be Ralph Nader and Barack Obama.

I realize politics is a blood sport, and that the complications of the US political system (which we studied in school but as Canadians used to a multi-party system I think most of us dismissed as - well - far too complicated for its own good or for our understanding) mean there may be some sort of subtleties I'm missing. Let me also state that I'm not Hillary Clinton's biggest fan. It's more a case of wanting to like her than of my actually finding anything she says or does inspiring.

Here's the thing though: Ms Clinton has been nothing but transparent about her intention to run for president ever since she first entered the political arena in her own right. Correct me if I'm wrong, but she was the first candidate to declare that she was going to seek the Democratic nomination in 2008. I'm not going to call Barack Obama names or say he's a Johnny Come Lately. I will call Ralph Nader The Spoiler, and his comment about the fact that the Democratic Party can't get it together and his cynical addendum that if it hasn't managed to get itself together in the eight years of Bush rule it should just implode because it's irrelevant was highly self serving. Nader doesn't play well with the other children and I'm sorry, but I think his refusal to either change the political process in the US so a multi-party system is adopted or play by the rules and actually seek the nomination of one of the two parties that are mandated to represent its citizens is just churlish. In fact, I think it's childish.

But I also think it is extremely unfortunate that Barack Obama has chosen to run in this particular election. I don't think American Democrats should be facing a choice between electing the first female president in their nation's history or their first black president. The primaries to date indicate that voters are almost equally split between these two candidates. In the Canadian system this wouldn't be so much of a problem, because at a national convention with multiple ballots, the leader would have been selected a long time ago. Obama, Clinton and Edwards would all have made good showings on the first ballot, and by the third or fourth ballot they would have been the only three candidates left, with Edwards functioning as King- or Queen-maker, throwing his support to either Obama or Clinton or setting his delegates free to choose one or the other. And then everyone in the party would have started to focus on what really matters: getting a Democrat elected this time around. Because that is what matters. And if another Republican president is elected this time around, I may change my mind and agree with Ralph Nader. Because this is just getting stupid: a country heading into recession because it's spending billions waging war halfway around the world while its own citizens have 'democracy' but not health care. A country that doesn't take its leaders to task when those leaders lie to the citizens they represent doesn't deserve to be a superpower. It sure doesn't have any claim to be a model of democracy for any other country (how about those weapons of mass destruction, has anyone found one yet? the search has been on for a while now).

So once again I find myself agreeing with Gloria Steinem. Hillary may not have quite as cute a smile as Barack Obama. Warmth may be something she struggles to convey via electronic media (something John Edwards can emanate without even lifting a finger, it seems). But she deserves the support of her fellow Democrats, and I hope she gets it before it's too late. She's done her time in the trenches, she's got not only the desire but also the experience to lead, and somehow I don't think she'll run again if she doesn't get the nomination this time. I'm not sure whether Obama will seek the nomination a second time if he doesn't get it this year. But I think the fact that Hillary's campaign for the Democratic nomination has been going on for so long means this is it: go 2008 or go home.

Here's a not-so-recent Op Ed Gloria Steinem wrote on the subject for The New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html?_r=1&ex=1357534800&en=737e0fe8e3afc0f0&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin