The Guy Who'll Get It for 'Em

There’s a great scene at the end of the old 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor. In it, Robert Redford and Cliff Robertson (whose characters, in the movie, both work for the CIA) are discussing a rogue CIA operation to invade the Middle East and take control of its oil resources. (The movie, and preceding book, came out in the midst of the oil embargos of the late 60s and early 70s.) Redford asks Robertson about the reasoning behind the agency’s plans to invade, and Robertson says that when the people suddenly find themselves without something that they always took for granted (oil, in this case), they won’t want their government to ask them what needs to be done. “They’ll just want [the government] to get it for ‘em.” I found a lot of validity and relevance in that statement. In the context in which it was said in the movie, it was a presupposition that, when in desperate times and faced with a crisis, the American people will simply want their problem fixed, and they won’t care so much whether the fix comes by fair means or by hook or crook. That’s not to say that the American people are, by nature, apathetic and amoral. Desperate circumstances, though, sometimes have a tendency to cloud our judgment, and as a result, we as a nation sometimes make decisions based too much on expedience and not enough on substance and scruples.

The Washington Post reported today that the Obama campaign, in the month of September, accumulated 632,000 new donors and raised more than $150 million. That amount more than doubles the previous record set for donations in a month ($67 million – also set by Barack Obama). Senator Obama has taken the lead in my state, Virginia, which only two Democrats have won in the last 60 years. Current electoral math shows Senator Obama on track to beat Senator McCain by more than 100 votes. Obama urged his supporters last week not to get cocky, as several key battleground states are still up for grabs. In my estimation, though – unless some extraordinary piece of news breaks in the next couple of weeks about Obama’s past – he has the election in the bag.

There’s no doubt that our country is in desperate times. We’ve heard both major candidates describe the current economic situation as the worst since the Great Depression, and it surely is. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their job and home, and the value of the U.S. dollar continues to decline around the world. Our country is spending more than $300 million a day to sustain operations in Iraq, and to date, we’ve spent more than $550 billion there and lost 4,185 of our precious troops. The American people want change, and it’s completely understandable. It only makes sense that we’d give our support to the candidate who’s made the themes of hope and change the centerpiece of his campaign. Before we all go out to our polling places in just two short weeks and pull that lever, though, let’s all take a little bit more time to think and make sure we’re making the right decision. In 2000, the American people voted for change. The personal and political scandals of the Clinton administration sickened our country, and our vote that year made it clear that solid morals and character were what we wanted most in our top executive. We elected a man, though, with little experience. Five years in the governor’s office, and before that a shareholder of a major league baseball team. We chose him, though, because he seemed the opposite of Bill Clinton. Now, eight years later, we’re leaning toward another candidate with little experience, and our chief rationale seems to be that he’s the opposite of George Bush. When you think about it, is that really change, or is it, as Senator Obama says, just more of the same?

The American people, on November 4th, are going to vote for the guy who they feel will “get it for ‘em.” In these next two weeks, let’s not allow ourselves to be enraptured by the eloquence of our candidates’ words and the mellifluousness of their speeches. Let’s dig. Let’s read. Let’s be sure. Because if the last eight years have shown us anything, it should be that we don't always get what we pay for.