The Reality Trap

If your goals are entirely realistic, achieving them requires little effort. What then are they worth?

One of my favorite quotes is from a poem by Robert Browning (though the poem itself isn’t really one of my favorites):

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
 
Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto

I really wish Hillary Clinton would take this to heart.

(As for the implied sexism that could be read into “...his grasp,” let’s leave that alone, shall we?)

Throughout the campaign, Hillary Clinton has referred to many of Bernie Sanders’ positions as “unrealistic”, saying that he would never be able to accomplish them, that her positions were more attainable and thus more realistic. What she has failed to understand is that a good many of us don’t want a president who is only willing to fight the easy battles, that will only reach for the reachable stars.

One other thing that she hasn’t understood: Constantly modifying your position to suit what the electorate appears to want can undermine your candidacy. Frankly, her positions on many issues have hardly been as constant as the northern star, and deriving her actual beliefs from what she says has often been something of a challenge.

Her stand on the minimum wage is a good case in point. From the outset, her true position on this has been difficult to discern. Nationally, there is a strong effort to bring the minimum wage up to a level at which people can actually live; Hillary, while perhaps not seeking to undermine this ideal has never been entirely clear on her stance on people living above the poverty line, and the fact that she has had to continually “clarify” (change) this stance hasn’t helped.

First she came out against a $15 minimum wage and only supported $12, despite the fact that $12 is still below the poverty level. Then she appeared to support $15. Then she came out with a complicated and unworkable plan in which the minimum wage would be raised to $15 except where it wasn’t (it seems to me that this plan is specifically designed to keep the minimum wage lowest where it is needed most).

Hillary’s supporters all claim that her overly complex plan is more realistic, and that’s the problem; in this context, “realistic” is a trap.

People who settle for what they can get seldom make history; more often, it is made by people demanding what is right. History is not made by people who will only work within their boundaries, but by people who reach beyond them. There is an insidious nature to boundaries; if you accept them as such, then you become willing to settle for what’s within them rather than allowing yourself to hope for what the boundaries have convinced you that you cannot have,

I do not want a president who will stay within the boundaries; I want a president who does not believe in boundaries. I do not want a president who will only demand what’s reasonable; I want a president who will demand what’s right, and “reasonable” be hanged. I want a president who will fight for what the people need in spite of the odds, not one who will only take up a fight that he/she thinks is winnable.

I want a President who is more concerned about my needs than about his/her legacy.

Once upon a time I thought that Barack Obama would be the President I hoped for, and largely he was. If he fell short of my expectations in some areas, perhaps that’s the nature of politics and politicians. We all have to look at the candidate in front of us and judge them based on what we see, on how they present themselves to us, and hope that the president they will become will match what we saw. We hope that their promise matches the reality of their presidency.

I cannot think of a single case where a candidate’s promise fully matched the reality of their presidency, but for me Barack Obama came closer than most and I honor him for this, even though I still complain about his shortcomings as president. I’m just grateful that his shortcomings didn’t turn out to be as short as they might have been.

Hillary Clinton is another matter. The “promise” of her candidacy I see more as a threat to what I believe in, but far less so than the threat of Donald Trump and that’s what is deciding my vote right now. But my “support” for her is tempered by my disregard; in fact it cannot truly be said that I really support her at all.

This then is the tragedy of Hillary Clinton; if she’s going to become the president and succeed in the job, she’s going to need the support of people like me and right now that support is entirely hers to gain, if she just reaches past herself to grab it.

But I don’t see that happening. I don’t see her reaching beyond what’s within her grasp. And this is her tragedy; right now we need a President who will do precisely that. Her chief electoral advantage is that she isn’t Donald Trump, but her chief failing is that she isn’t the president we need.

The Blues Viking
The thoughts expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.