Mark Kirk stooped to the microphone. On the eve of his final month on the campaign trail, he spoke in the same muted, less guttural Chicago drawl that hummed in the ambling crowd. An eerie hush settled over the suburbanites and Kirk began simply enough, thanking everyone.
He began again, citing his, “thoughtful independent leadership,” before repeating his new mantra of, “promises made, promises kept,” and then ending with the peremptory “God bless the United States of America.”
But there lurked, buried beneath the olive branches, the kind of exclusionary tactics we’ve come to expect from all candidates.
Makeup thickly applied on his face, like a fleshy colored egg wash, Kirk exhaled the same truculent criticisms of Democrats that have defined this campaign season.
Pledging to end “Washington’s partisan divide” out of one side of his mouth, Kirk implied Democrats don’t have the same intestinal fortitude as the “serious people” on the GOP ticket out of the other.
While Kirk’s words are far more innocent than the grotesque rallying cry, “let’s take back our country,” his verbal jabs still landed flush. Because of candidates like Kirk, the political conversation this election season more closely resembles the prelude to sedition than the run up to a 21st century election. Like a stray boat caught in a hurricane, both the Democrats and Republicans are drowning under the riptide.
The Republicans drop bombs from jet planes emblazoned with “the governed do not consent” and “true faith.” The Democrats keep trying to peel back the label of “self-appointed elites” by crafting Regular-Joe colloquies like, “No! You can’t drive.”
Aided by our immeasurable naked anger, these politicians attack each other without addressing the voters, leaving us begging for them to acknowledge us in some way. They once did but they do not now.
Once, political speech tantalized this indefensible hope we bury inside ourselves. No matter what partisan lines we draw in the sand, each year we wait, hushed around our own tree of desire, a glint of expectation, hoping our dreams materialize in front of our eyes.
Half a century ago, John Kennedy was the answer to all of this, of course.
Whenever Kennedy appeared at the podium – wearing grooves into the sides of the lectern with his thumbs, bobbing back and forth with the quiet intensity of a Hasidic rabbi leading a nation of Americans in paean salute – we sat captivated. We hung on his every word and with each sentence our feelings of pride and devotion to country swelled. We, even if for just those few minutes, lived this American ethos that asked “not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” This man really meant to challenge us.
But where is our Kennedy?
After all the promise of Obama’s campaign and his historic ascendance to the presidency, his administration has been an anticlimax. Maybe his story, like too many stories before his, is simply a brave effort that failed. Carter. Reagan. Even Kennedy, cut down in all his glory, failed to live up to the promise of his rhetoric and all the mystique his oratorical power imbued in his Camelot. Yet our current politicians barely emit a dulling incandescence, their grandiose ambitions misplaced in themselves instead of this nation.
Americans are not stupid. Understand that, no matter how much we thump and wail, we remain a crowd of sane people. We know that belief cannot be produced at will. When the only thing at stake is a seat in our capitol, maybe we don’t need to believe. And then we can stomach the gradual averaging out of these photographs of men who hold no real promise.
But now we need something more than handsome politicians. We need something more than another biography in emperor’s clothes. We need someone who pushes us beyond the dispassionate calculations of tax breaks and makes us care – not just when it counts – but every single day.
On the car ride home from the Kirk rally, I tuned my Pontiac’s radio into WLS. “Beyond the Beltway,” a long running political talk show crackled to life. I heard the smarmy crackling voices of the host and his guest, a local, insignificant Illinois politician. All I heard was a jangling melody of despair, just babbling static on a lonely night. The candidate made promises, but I felt nothing.
And that’s what was so disappointing.
Jason Seher is a Medill Senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
