Oh Politic Where Art Thou?.

If you weren’t paying attention to my Asides feature, you may not have noticed that me and my conservative, house-church nemesis (tongue-in-cheek) Derek got into a little tiff this weekend over some political stuff. I actually really like Derek and have gone to a movie with him, his brother, and a friend. As a complete side note, he’s been hosting a rather insightful collection of posts on some of Frank Viola’s older work over on his site that you should probably check out.

Anyway . . . he made a couple of comments in the comments (ha) that assumed I was voting for Barack. And while I have blogged about my affection and interest for the Senator (here and here) . . . I also haven’t written much here about what I think of the process and the election, outside of why I won’t give money to a campaign. I thought it might be therapeutic for me to get a few things off my chest about the whole political process.

Let me begin with what might be a bit of a surprise. I actually like John McCain the person. I definitely don’t jive with his thoughts on war. Nor do I think his rhetoric involving “enemies” is very helpful in the short or long term. But as a person . . . I think we could be friends. I find him to be honest. I find him to be fairly engaging. And I find him to be pretty straight-forward and honest. I think he has backbone and dare I say virtue, although I did make the backbone comment in the past about a current 2 term president. All that to say, I still wouldn’t vote for him. But I think I just might like him as a person. He stands up for what he believes in. But not in a creepy, twisted logic kind of way. He explains his perspectives like a gentleman. And I don’t think he’s full of BS like some of the other political candidates (Clinton, Romney, Huckabee, Edwards – hell everybody but Obama, McCain, and Paul). But again, still wouldn’t vote for him unless you paid me handsomely. He still relies to heavily on the Straussian need for an enemy.

Now to Barack Obama. I stand by my earlier statements that he might not be the most seasoned candidate for President (Hillary’s “ready from day one” rhetoric is a joke) and I might not agree with all of his policies (even if they are still in their infant stages), but I think he’s the best person for what our country needs right now. Namely, a military withdrawal from Middle East conflicts, and secondly, someone who will be diplomatic enough to repair our image across the globe and do so in non-military ways. I also think he brings about a certain energy/hope/bipartisanship that engages people who normally wouldn’t be engaged in the political process. For example, Anna is currently downloading Barack Obama wallpapers and screensavers. Seeing her face and excitement after voting in the Georgia primary gives me hope that civil engagement doesn’t have to be complicated or detached. It can affect everyday people who don’t like to read huge economic or political works. The biggest concern that I see for Obama is letting other people influence him and in turn allow his policies to evolve into a diluted down, mash-up of his cabinet or advisers, in effect a politician.

However, with all that being said, I’m growing increasingly ambivalent towards the political process. I’m not sure if it’s just in my indie jeans to dislike anything that becomes popular or if it’s something more substantial. Lydia over on the Emerging Women blog asks some interesting questions as well about these crushes that we have for Obama. I really like the guy. I voted for him in the primary, but just barely (I almost didn’t vote at all). But he’s not superman. He’s not going to save our country. Or even fix it. He is but a man. And a politician at that. To think that he’s going to fix everything is to deceive ourselves.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that a President has less and less of a real impact on the “state of the world”, although you could certainly convince me otherwise with Clinton’s NAFTA, Bush’s war mongering, and Regan’s reversal of the New Deal as evidence. I guess I just contradicted myself.

But I’m just so apathetic to this whole process at this point. Perhaps it’s the length of the contest. Perhaps it’s the insane amount of money that gets spent. Perhaps it’s what you have to become and lose in order to move forward. Perhaps it’s my tiring of reading every blog that comes into my RSS praise the golden boy from Illinois.

Perhaps it’s just that I’m afraid that we are putting way to much stock into Obama getting elected and fixing everything.

Maybe he will. What do I know?

I also think that a couple of hours of talking with Chris Haw about Thoreau, Hauerwas, Yoder, and the Amish, to name a few, has completely clouded my hope in the American political project.

In the end, I’m just not sure how relevant politics is. Or rather, how relevant we should desire to be in the political process. This is not to say that Jesus wasn’t interested in the politics of Rome. Or that he didn’t attempt to subvert Rome in his own way. But that his methods of doing so was based on an effort at irrelevancy as opposed to relevancy.

Anybody still reading my ramblings at this point?