WWJVF?

I’m in a quandary. Well, several. One is what to write about, but, as always, coming to it from an inordinate amount of time off it is hard to get jump-started again, and I’m thinking “quandaries” will be a good topic because that’s what ends up fueling my internal monologue every other second of the day, for example:

oh god should i snooze the alarm clock one more time or just get up come on katherine you should just get up oh but it feels so good to not be up come on katherine you should get up should i have orange juice do i feel like making a sandwich who should i vote for for president does my vote count anyway who are my real friends shut up stop being so insecure why can’t you just be happy with what you have does this make me look fat who cares no one’s looking and people already love you for who you are the real question is who should you vote for for president should i go to the duke reunion fuck it’s been five years what the junk am i doing with my life why do you want to go anyway it’s just consumerist bullshit living in the past and most people aren’t going you shouldn’t need that for validation oh but it’s so green and golden there in springtime who should i vote for what should i be how should i feel what the fuck should i have for breakfast!!!!

Um. Yeah. Just a TMI-snapshot of what it’s like to inhabit my brain for 2 minutes. I’m seldom without a quandary, or several, of varying levels of importance. Today, they are, in ascending order:

1. How can I live with the fact that spring break will be over in less than 24 hours?
2. Will I ever be able to buy a house?
3. Should I go to the Duke reunion?
4. Who should I vote for for president?

The first two are relatively simple: you can’t but you have to anyway, and no. The third is not complex but is still ponderable. Part of me really wants to go. But the more I pontificate, the more expensive flights will become, already the only ones I can find return Monday, so I would have to miss school which I’ll already be missing enough of at the end of the year for the sake of being in North Carolina…and most of my close friends aren’t going so there is always the danger of being dearly disappointed, but then there’s Dr. MM and TMDJBRBB, and the loveliness of Durham in spring if all else failed. But there is also the danger, for one living so tenuously in the present as is, that the slightest tilt toward indulgence of living in the past would severely throw off my equilibrium. But then the part of me that craves ritualization aches at the thought of five years passing by without some sort of ceremony, a memorial, a moment of silence at least for the lives We Once Were. But does that have to cost me $500? I suppose not.

Which brings us to quandary #4, the main subject of today’s discourse. Who Would Jesus Vote For? And, once we’ve established that, should I vote for the same person? I would greatly appreciate input on this subject because for all my research and soul-searching and waiting for signs, shadows, wonders, I am still stuck in the decisionless wasteland of my mind.

My absentee ballot for the primary came in the mail last week with its strict instructions to be filled out in black pen in the presence of two witnesses (which I found extremely funny; I mean, I know why they do that and of course I’ll get it signed by two witnesses, but just the thought of me summoning two witnesses to watch me fill it out and to act as audience to my final throes of (in)decision making, especially when you get down to the district court judges at the bottom of the ballot whom NO ONE has ever heard of and who are not even google-able but who unfortunately will probably make the most difference of anyone else on the ballot but who get elected because we like their middle name or their gender better than the alternatives—which is probably how the president ultimately gets elected too, come to think of it).

I’ve been frustrated in my attempt to participate in this, the American political process at the most basic of levels, because once you get below the gubernatorial level there is really no information on anybody—even if they have a website it’s basically a geocities page with their name and some not-very-catchy slogan with the requisite misplaced apostrophe and no other information. The most amusing thing I have found so far in all my sleuthing is this page, on which Roderick Wright, one of the candidates for district court judge, makes a very formal invitation to this girl whom he may or may not know personally to have lunch with him, right above a comment by someone who doesn’t know the girl either but is commenting because she “looks damn good in those photos”.

But the foibles of local politics aside, I am still hung up on the humdinger of them all: the Clinton vs. Obama question. I have done research, I have scoured their websites, the commentary of other websites, read their speeches, and solicited the opinions of my friends, and I still remain paralyzed. In the beginning, I was leaning toward Obama because I’m a predictable twentysomething: I liked him. He was inspiring. He “made me feel hopeful.” He gave good speeches. He said that his worst quality was having an unorganized desk, rather than something like “caring TOO MUCH about children.” And, the most typical reason of all, my friends and students liked him. And who doesn’t want to look cool in the eyes of their friends and students? And the question of supporting the 200 years of American presidential patriarchy (when there is finally a female alternative) was conveniently canceled out by getting to support an oppressed racial minority—a win-win situation all ‘round. But I needed more than this. I still do. I need MORE of a reason than “liking” him, wanting to be his friend, and feeling like part of a youngun’s political club to justify actually voting for him. I need a reason, a real rational reason, to choose him over Hillary. And so far, I don’t have much of one.

(Editor’s note: I referred to Clinton by her familiar first name in the above line for alliterative effect. It bothers me how everyone feels like, after generations of calling politicians by their last names, now that there’s a woman in the mix we are automatically on a first-name basis with her. I mean, her campaign has chosen that, making her posters and bumper stickers say “Hillary” on them, but I still think it’s a patriarchic presumption for the masses to make.)

The only things I really have against Clinton are her vote to authorize war (which I think was more complicated than Obama likes to make it sound and the senate on the whole was shamelessly manipulated by the Bush administration) and various things that Bill Clinton did while he was in office. Most of the average-Joes you hear interviewed on NPR about why they like Hillary say that “they were pretty happy with Bill, so why not.” Well, to that I say it’s easy to be remembered fondly when your successor was the worst president in US history and when throughout your time in office the economy was pretty OK and we were mostly at peace. But, although everyone likes to put BC’s sexual capers at the top of his list of flaws, I prefer to top the list with Rwanda, finish it off with DOMA and “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and pepper a bit of NAFTA in between. I remain torn, because I know that a lot of these were political concessions and it’s not an easy or black-and-white decision, when you’re president, whether to save hundreds of thousands of African lives, but all in all there’s a lot I’m not proud of on the part of the only democrat who’s held the office in my lifetime.

But should Hillary Clinton be saddled with the sins of her spouse (which, by definition, according to DOMA, is her male companion to whom she is joined in holy matrimony)? I don’t like that any more than I do the argument that she WILL be good because Bill was. But nor do I trust them to be entirely separate entities—I have to wonder, is she inclined, as he was, to sacrifice gay rights in a political compromise, if SOMEBODY’s rights have to be sacrificed? Is that better than sacrificing, say, the environment? Probably so, in the long run. But do I take it personally? Hell, yes.

I decided to look at gay rights as an issue that might help me decide between Clinton and Obama. Given almost-sameness in basically every position and every plan they espouse, I thought it might be a dealbreaker. But it’s still difficult. Both devote a section of their websites to their thoughts on the issue. Both are afraid to say the M-word. Obama, king of crowd-pleasing sound-bites, likes to refer to us as his “gay brothers and sisters,” which for some reason makes me kind of uncomfortable, like I’m visiting a church and they’re referring to me as one of them when I didn’t ask or want them to. Both have posted “open letters” on various gay websites to reach out to us, but Obama has made only two gay-themed statements/interviews whereas Clinton has made six. Should sheer numbers sway me? Perhaps not, but the fact that Clinton’s letter appears on OurChart.com? I find that pretty ballsy. And funny. I wonder if she’s ever watched The L-Word. But it was a good letter.
And here’s Obama’s.

They both pretty much amount to the same thing—similar promises (which don’t include marriage), similar rhetoric about the country “fulfilling its promise to everyone.” But, although Clinton skirts around the marriage issue (a good strategy; it almost gets lost in all the other good things she’s saying), Obama says “I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment,” the not-too-subtle implication being that he’s of that camp that, for reasons either personal (read: religious) or political, he believes that the word “marriage” should be reserved for a man and a woman. Is he doing this to not alienate conservative-Christian democrats (are there such a thing? There must be). Or is he doing it to not compromise his own faith, what he believes to be sacred? I don’t know, but either way amounts to the same thing and is something I find extremely dangerous (not to mention hypocritical...separate but equal, anyone?). The more I learn about Obama the more I hear his morality and reasoning couched in a religious background, and although I’m not so naïve as to think a president can get elected without God in this country, it gives me pause. Obama’s religion seems deeply personal to him, and he doesn’t have enough of a record for me to see evidence of his acting on principles of the separation of church and state. So many people say he reminds them of Martin Luther King, Jr. I can see why; but most people forget, because of his civil rights legacy, that MLK was first and foremost a preacher. His cause was a good one, a righteous one, we all agree, but his justification for it was Jesus. Jodi and I went to see one of King’s daughters “speak” at Wake Forest when we were there, and left in the middle of what was a full-fledged sermon, vicious and exclusionary of anyone who does not believe in the Word. So, when wondering WWJVF, I think the answer could very well be Obama. But I’m really not sure that that makes me any more inclined to do so. But to be fair, when you throw in what some journalists dredge up about Hillary's faith, I don't know what to believe.



The final elements of my decision-making have to do with elements independent of either candidate’s stand on issues. I have Greg telling me that if Clinton is the nominee, McCain will surely win, so we have to fight for Obama with all our might. I have the consideration of age vs. youth—is it good to have a young, energetic president or is the “experience” thing really tantamount? And, finally, I have my allegiance to the second sex to consider. I will be the first to tell you that women do not automatically make good leaders—Margaret Thatcher, case in point. Either way you look at this election, a barrier is being broken—the chance to rumple (not break, not destroy, not erase) centuries of white supremacy in our leadership, or centuries of patriarchy. As much as I try to quantify one of these as being more important than another, I cannot. But I do know that all the women I know over about 35 are Clinton supporters, and I don’t think younger women, or men, often fully recognize the very recent struggle that women have, and are still, going through.

Jodi’s in a feminism class right now and every day comes home with a new realization of how her life really has been affected by the oppression of women. If her mother hadn’t taken her out of swim team because “her shoulders were getting too big” (at the age of 6!) she could have won awards, been truly competitive. If her high school hadn’t required female students to take sewing, Child Development, and Grooming and Deportment (eyebrow-plucking), maybe the experience would have been more rewarding, she wouldn’t have left in 11th grade, and she could have pursued higher education or more fulfilling lines of work before now. My mom has spent years in jobs where women get paid less than men. In California, I’m surrounded by women who truly have no idea how to value themselves apart from their appearance and their perceived beauty in the eyes of men and the world. I don’t think there is another woman who’s going to be in the position to run for president anytime soon, and I don’t know that Clinton will have another shot if she doesn’t win this time. Obama has the momentum going, and he will definitely be around for years to come. After all, this is just the primary; Obama has wide support…if it came down to him versus McCain, I would happily vote for him. But now, when good is pitted against good (or at least middling vs. middling) should I give Clinton the chance she deserves, one which she may never have again?

Perhaps I’m taking myself too seriously. My vote surely doesn’t count that much. And if I take too much longer to make this decision, it won’t count at all.

So What Should Katherine Do?