Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, when people shied away from discussing a president’s disease and disability, we have gone to another extreme: constantly analyzing the image of politicians and even cutting them open at times to see what personal information we can evaluate.Of course, a recent case that comes to mind is the public response to John Edwards’ decision to keep his 2008 presidential bid despite his wife’s stage 4 cancer. Not to understate this unfortunate occasion, but no one has the right to criticize the Edwards family as being too ambitious. Some Americans say that in the event Edwards receives a presidential nomination, they may not vote for him because his wife’s illness could become a distraction. I find this obtrusive and insulting.
What happened to the days when a person respected another person’s decision? If the man says he can do it, we should let him do it without further regard.
But this is only one example among many of how America often fails to value the important qualities of a candidate. As politicians boost their own images and try to ruin others’, Americans are always there to buy into it. All I can remember from my childhood of the Clinton administration is the countless number of jokes about Clinton’s extramarital affair. Yet it wasn’t until I started reading books about John F. Kennedy that I discovered he did the same thing.
And no one can resist watching President Bush carry tree branches or call Afghanistan “wilder than the Wild West.” Everyone, critics and supporters alike, are too obsessed with the cowboy image he tries so hard to create.
However, John Edwards is not guiltless of making politics too personal. In a 2004 debate with Vice President Dick Cheney, Edwards had to bring up the fact that Cheney’s daughter is gay. This was clearly a crafty political move to make Cheney look like a hypocrite because of his conservative stance on gay marriage.
Parents and schoolteachers have long trained their children to become knowledgeable and concerned about politics, but many of us have failed to do that. If Franklin Roosevelt were in office now, instead of 60 years ago, we would watch untold hours of cable news to keep up with the latest developments on his polio instead of what he would be doing to handle poverty.
The bottom line is that we need to care more about what politicians do in politics, not in their own personal lives.