My Perceived Narrative Fallacy

John McCain flew fighter planes, was the son of an Admiral, and stayed tough through five years in a POW camp. Barack Obama never served a day in uniform, sitting in an Ivory Tower and criticizing from afar before only VERY recently becoming involved in foreign policy of any kind. These narratives fit in with the overarching teleology outlined by a mass media driven by simple stories. It's the Democrats' "mommy problem." When you want taking care of in the form of social programs, you get a Democrat, but when security's at stake, you want a Republican. Our current candidates reinforce every engrained subtext of the modern American political soap opera painted so vividly by more or less 5 companies and all the media outlets they own.

But it's wrong. The world is flat, said Thomas Friedman on the cover of his latest book. It's a small world after all, sang some animatronic Disney World characters. Globalization, said every news outlet while it was the economic buzzword of the year. These are catch phrases whose depth of truth we may never know, but in them lies a kernel of wisdom. We live in an increasingly interconnected world, and one in which a simpler, older world view is disastrous.

McCain probably couldn't define "macroeconomic ramifications" even if you let him use the internet (as learning to "do a Google" is still on his to-do list for 2008). He doesn't realize what kinds of consequences policies have, and it is becoming increasingly obvious how little he knows about a global economy that connects everything we do.

John McCain is extaordinarily weak on national security. You can see his weakness in his energy policy: the more we turn to oil, the more we indirectly finance terrorist organizations who seek to undermine us. Dictatorships are emboldened by deep pockets created by high oil prices, and the US loses power (as well as stock market and dollar value) every time the price of a barrel sweet light crude ticks up another notch.

McCain is weak on national security in his healthcare policy, which would create an unraveling effect in the insurance market to the point where Americans would be comparatively disincentivized from taking the kinds of economic risks that lead to innovation. That would threaten our place as a world leader, a position we used to occupy alone but no longer do.

McCain is weak on national security in his technology policy, which is more or less non-existant. While Senator Obama wishes the president to have a technology advisor and to incorporate awareness of always-advancing human capabilities into the decision making process, McCain can't use a computer. How is he expected to make decisions about our economy, about our military, about our future, when he can't understand the electronics on which our whole world now runs? We have robots helping soldiers, computers helping spies, and a presidential candidate who can't "do a Google" or recognize that knowing nothing about economics or technology is something the leader of the most powerful national on Earth should try to rectify.

So the next time you see a narrative drawn depicting Obama as having the edge on domestic policy while McCain is a more trusted, steady and experienced hand who's strong on national security and a war hero, think about how much of that is just a story. Think about what kind of mind you want in the oval office, confronting a complicated world on your behalf. Think past the 10 word answers, the 15 second sound bites and the 30 second TV ads. Or perhaps, just think.