Oh where are candidates who inspire?

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

OCEANSIDE, California — There was a point in one of those debates when Sen. Marco Rubio (who gave a victory speech last night after losing in Iowa) was asked, more or less, if he considered himself the savior of the Republican Party. His underwhelming, cloying, and thoroughly contrived response was that Jesus Christ is the only savior he knows about.

That’s fine but it’s unoriginal and boring. And incredibly gratuitous. Not to mention that religious traditions have absolutely nothing to do with what the Founding Fathers inscribed into our original documents.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt inspired and led the nation in the greatest struggle the world has ever known—the defeat of Axis fascism. He never invoked theology but spoke to American character and courage. John F. Kennedy moved us to participate in the American narrative rather than to sit by and judge it. He did not create a messianic context for any of it. When he acknowledged his ultimate responsibility for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he didn’t transfer blame to any gods.

Ronald Reagan dared Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” He didn’t do it in the name of anything but freedom itself. What we have now vying to become President of the United States is mostly a group of blow-hard dwarfs who inspire nothing but ratings via a greedy and compliant media. Hillary Clinton, arguably the most qualified and eternally-tested candidate, nevertheless spends most of her time bobbing her head with that painted smile that makes moldy figs like me quiver with weariness. Donald Trump, arguably the most boisterous, is so hideously reactionary and self-absorbed that one prays it’s just a bad dream.

All of the candidates are pills; tasteless, odorless, offering no nourishment and swallowed with obeisance because we just feel sick and have no other options. There is no music in their words, no depth to their messages, no stirring of the heart when they look into the camera and then come off like mannequins. I am so bored by this that I feel like I might pass away and be buried in Iowa.

There is no more poetry in the presidency. The men and women pursuing it have demeaned the office with their mediocrity; they have even diminished their own stature by referring to one another by their first names. Jeb. Hillary. Mario. Ted.  Bernie. It’s more like high school than high office.

I remember: our generation loved, truly loved, a good cross-section of our national leaders. In 1968, we were moved by the grandiloquent Rev. King, the strangely aloof but perceptive Senator Eugene McCarthy, and the elegiac and compelling and late-maturing Senator Robert F. Kennedy. National issues and presidential politics carried gravitas and attracted bold, courageous stewards of power.

We were not jaded. We actually had personal feelings of connection and intimate affinities with many of the men and women who led us in politics, music, poetry, and social justice. And we mourned the martyrs of the time, the iconic Kennedy brothers as well as Dr. King, but also a host of guitarists and lyricists and writers and countless, faceless soldiers, nurses, chaplains, and students and housewives who marched and even died in favor of a better society that cherished values more than valuables.

And the words of the more famous ones—from the Beatles to Bobby—are words that we recall, as clearly as we remember the words of our parents, or the first movie we saw with that certain date, or what transpired in the city high school which I attended from the inception of the federal government’s civil rights legislation in 1964 through Woodstock and the Apollo moon landing of 1969. We actually marked the coordinates of our personal lives via the events and personas of our times.

Ted Cruz may have won some caucuses last night in Iowa but who really cleaves to his words or knows his soul?

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Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer based in Oceanside, California.  He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)