The Game of Politics

Nov. 3 will mark one year until Presidential Election Day 2008.

With Election Day approaching fast and primary elections approaching faster, candidates are frantically refining how they “play the political game.”

A game of voter pawns hungry for a candidate whose eloquence in speech and decisiveness of promises fulfill their immediate needs at the time. As the game heats up, the play gets nastier, the promises more compelling but less realistic, and the speech more driven toward distinguishing one player from another than the authenticity of the true individual.

Yet what this leads to is an inauthentic brand of buying and selling candidates rather than striving to find the best possible leadership for the country. It is not uncommon to hear that political campaigns are decisive promises almost never fully deliverable.

One candidate has recognized this. Barack Obama’s campaign of hope calls for a change in this political game. A politics less defined by party lines and more by individuals, for individuals.

Yet even a candidate in favor of refining the way this game is played is criticized for not playing the game and will suffer votes because of it.

Many, even of his own party, have questioned whether his promise to pursue a brand of politics that transcended partisanship disabled him to compete in the most partisan of arenas. That he hasn’t taken a hard enough stance on issues that starkly define him from others.

In response Obama has said, “The notion that somehow changing the tone means simply that we let them say whatever they want to say or that there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have, hasn’t been paying attention.”

In an interview transcribed in a New York Times article, Obama acknowledged that he had “held back” a little, until now. He asserted that it was a planed decision to introduce himself and his values authentically, before engaging opponents, responding to their stances and catering his own to distinguish himself. “At times, he said, he has taken lines out of speeches prepared by his campaign that he felt were “stretching the truth,”’ according to the NYTimes article.

This is the political game that should be played. A game of authentic honesty from candidates that reveal the decisions they will actually make.

Yes, this is idealistic. No, I don’t think that the “game” will ever stop being played. But a candidate who perceives the need for this change, regardless of whether he still must be a player in this election season’s game, is hope for the future.