Yes, we are a nation divided, torn by civil war, but this war of ideas is not partisan-based, not between red states and blue. Instead, it is between those who would define America by its imagination and those by its innocence.
At times, the two presidential tickets seem to read from the same script: Like the Puritans who carved a New World out of the Old, both will whittle a New World from the Washington of Old.
However, how they transform the political process differs. The McCain camp believes in the transformative power of American innocence and the Obama camp in American’s imagination.
McCain is a so-called maverick, uncorrupted by Washington. At the Republican National Convention, he expressed his belief in the potential for humankind’s perfectibility: “Everyone … deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers.”
The fact he endured five years of torture further resonates in our Christian society. A virtuous innocent, McCain experienced physical and emotional suffering for sins not his own.
I wrote last week at Scoop08.com that Palin’s performance at the vice presidential debate projected a seductive and highly electable innocence. She emanates a disdain for imagination and intellectual curiosity, as manifest in her fear of questions.
“I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear,” she said at the debate. In earlier interviews, she also made it clear she thinks little of the self-questioning process, as when she told Charlie Gibson she “didn’t blink” when McCain asked her to join his ticket.
This disdain for imagination should sound familiar. It echoes that of George W. Bush — a man drugged by the illusion of American innocence.
We could hold Bush accountable for many transgressions — instigating the Iraq War, neglecting post-Katrina New Orleans, promoting irresponsible economic policies — but we haven’t and won’t. The overall belief in the righteousness of his mission renders him unimpeachable.
Opposite innocence is imagination. Beholden to this way of thinking is the Illinois senator.
Obama’s favorite philosopher is Reinhold Niebuhr, the Christian theologian who warned against the innocence myth. Niebuhr wrote, “Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem, are insufferable in their human contacts."
Obama further derives his political thinking from two leaders of boundless imagination: Dr. King and JFK. At the Democratic National Convention, Obama evoked their memories.
America’s promise, Obama spoke, is what led Americans to “hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream” and the fulfillment of that promise requires “a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our intellectual and moral strength.”
Why should it be so surprising that the greatest dreamers among us have the greatest grip on reality? Imagination requires a deep understanding of the world in all its complexity. Dr. King and JFK were dreamers but not delusional — their acute ability to comprehend the world allowed them to successfully superimpose their visions upon it.
Contrarily, belief in the America’ fundamental innocence requires a narrow limited view of the world. Leaders like Bush, Palin and McCain forsake failure and, in doing so, forsake reality.
Now, more than ever, a belief in American innocence is dangerous. If what W.B. Yeats wrote is correct — that in dreams begin responsibility — then responsibility dies with innocence.
We are only innocent if we have no imagination; we are only blameless if we dream alone.
But no one dreams alone. We are in Bush’s Dream, Bin Ladin’s Dream, our neighbor’s Dream.
And we, dreamers all, are responsible.
Read Murakami lately? Oedipus Rex? E-mail Rosie at rservis@asu.edu.
