This week’s debate between presidential hopefuls from the US Democratic Party, former Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, is instructive on what we should demand to see—and what we do not see at all—in the conversations leading to our own presidential elections in May.
Sanders packages himself as a progressive candidate who wants to wage a political revolution. He says he will do away with the practice of big corporations making campaign contributions to politicians. This has been the reason that politics has not worked to the benefit of the people, he said. Government leaders act in the interest of the individuals and corporations who propped up their campaigns, undermining democracy.
He also believes his opponent, Clinton, is not progressive enough to be named the Democratic presidential candidate. If he is chosen to represent the party, he will introduce reforms to the campaign finance system that he hopes would arrest Americans’ apparent loss of faith in their own system.
But Clinton called him out for claiming he wants a positive campaign but resorting to innuendoes and insinuation to bring her down. What Sanders was saying, Clinton said, was that anybody who takes campaign contributions must be bought. Her opponent, the “self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism,” should end his artful smearing and debate on issues, instead.
Issues like universal health care and education, which even middle-class Americans have difficulty accessing. Sanders said that if he is nominated and then elected, will push for the overhaul of the universal health care system and for free college education in the country. Clinton, for her part, said she is not going to make promises she cannot keep. What she will work for, if she gets to the White House, is empowering the people to keep making progress in their lives and for their kids to reach their potential. She has worked long and hard and she has the scars to show for it, she said.
We may ask of the politicians presenting themselves to us here at home: What scars? What scars can they be proud of when they cannot even muster the courage to get up on a common stage and discuss their plans down to the detail, and express why they are for or against a certain measure?
What scars, when they themselves resort to smearing, artful or not, of the other candidates to boost their own stock instead of convincing the voters to support them for their track record and potential executive value?
Filipino voters often complain of being sweet-talked by their candidates who do such a great job at packaging their images without the commensurate effort on their substance. Perhaps we should not wait for them to elevate the level of discourse. We must instead demand that they get up there and tell us what they are going to do, and open themselves up to difficult questions.
That they refuse to hear the questions in the first place would tell us much about their fitness for the job they seek, and would guide us in making our choice three months from now.
