The Wire and Obama

While I'm sure I'm not the first person to tout The Wire, I can't help myself. My wife and I just finished season 2, and all I could think was "God, I still get to watch 3 more seasons!". Which is a weird thing to say about a show that is about urban decay, and how our social structures (altogether, the police, unions, local government, education and the media) are all sick and further contribute to many of the problems we now face today. What separates the show from many others that have tackled similar themes, is that they don't try to paint good guys and bad guys, rather, that people are simply acting in ways that the social structures will allow (or encourage). We tend to want to believe that people are inherently good or bad, yet, it's so rarely the case. Now, of course, none of this is new, per se, but the impact of it affects us all. And that too, is the point of the show...you don't have to live in the ghetto to be directly affected or touched by drugs, crime, and all the other ailments that affect our society (no matter how many new suburban tract housing projects we build to try and hide from these bogeymen). So we can either turn a blind eye to these things and figure, "well, if it's not happening in my backyard, then it doesn't affect me". If we keep acting in this way, we become part of the problem. And in the end, we don't really improve our lives (maybe we do, at a superficial level), but our society as a whole becomes more divisive and dysfunctional.

So why am I ranting? I can't help but notice, in the Democratic Presidential primaries, these very themes playing out before our eyes. We have Hillary Clinton, who is running under the "experienced politician" role, while Barack Obama is running as the Washington outsider who has the audacity to think we don't have to do things the way they've been done. While I don't believe that either is the perfect candidate, I think you can certainly see evidence of the struggle to maintain the social structure as is (Hillary) vs. an attempt to rethink what the role of government is, as well as what we're looking for in a leader (Obama).

Now, I'll go ahead and disclose that I'm firmly supportive of Obama at this point, though I could be persuaded to vote for Hillary under the right circumstances (feel free to call me on my horrible taste in presidential candidates!). That said, I find myself gravitating more and more to Obama based on the chance that we might have someone who recognizes that we have a broken system and at least wants to take a different approach. Clinton seems very much interested in maintaining her political power and will do whatever is necessary to procure the presidency. She's even "letting" her philandering husband play bad cop so she can claim the high ground; meanwhile, he's digging her ditch deeper and deeper, as he tries to divide various voting bases thru fear (take a look at his comments in South Carolina concerning Obama's victory and the black vote for a good example). The Clintons have shown that they're not below selling Obama as a "black-oriented" candidate or as a Reagan apologist (neither of which seem to be true, by all accounts). The Reagan incident was particularly telling; Obama was quoted as saying:

"I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different.

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it...

I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

How did Bill and Hillary choose to retaliate? Well, let's see what they had to say:

Hillary Clinton, Jan 18:

My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years.

Bill Clinton, Jan 18:

(My wife's) principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas....I'm not making this up, folks.

Thanks to swamppolitics.com for the quotes

So not only did they flat out lie about what Obama said, but they twisted it in such a way that made him seem like a Reagan sympathizer (a big no-no for many Democrats). Change can come from all directions (both good and bad). More than anything, they want you to fear what could come (e.g. Reagan, god forbid). Really what the Clinton's want you to think is: Why choose an unknown, when you have a known? What they don't tell you is that the known is broken, and isn't going to change anytime soon. But that doesn't help them win votes, does it?

So what's that got to do with The Wire? Anyone who's benefiting from a broken system will continue to act in their own best interests, regardless of whether it's in the system's constituency's best interest. Maybe this is obvious to everyone but me, but it seems we've become so scared of what we could end up with that we don't consider what we could have. Is Obama that thing? Maybe not, but until we decide that we're not going to deal with the system and question some of the long-held "truths", we'll keep dealing with the problems (albeit in different forms). For example, as has been tackled in multiple seasons of the Wire, are we really lessening the impact of drugs on our society by taking a hardline approach and making a few busts a year to make it seem like we're tough on crime while not dealing with both the reasons people start doing or selling drugs in the first place nor how to enable people to choose a different life? Maybe we need to start questioning whether being "tough on crime" really reduces crime. Statistics don't seem to show it, but that's what we keep hearing from politicians and that's what we keep voting for.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that Obama has all the answers, nor that he's even capable of "saving" this country. But just the fact that he's willing to question many of the policies we've long believed were the only way, is a step in the right direction. What really drove it home for me was this (from the Las Vegas Sun):

"He also discussed his agenda for healthier cities, which includes early childhood education, job creation and drug treatment, all aimed at breaking a cycle of poor people with few opportunities going into the drug trade, which leads to prison, making them almost permanently unemployable."

How many times will we keep beating our head against a wall, before we try something different? I'm excited to see what Obama may be capable of, and whether this may force Hillary and any other opponents to drop the charades and really do the difficult thing: question the status quo, even when it doesn't directly benefit them.

Oh, and just for fun, who's Obama's favorite character from the Wire (also from the Las Vegas Sun)?

"Obama told the Sun his favorite character is Omar, a stick-up artist who steals from drug dealers and then gives the loot to poor people in the neighborhood.

“That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”

Now tell me any other politician that would openly admit to liking a gay man who steals from drug dealers and gives back to the very poor people most affected by the drug trade in those neighborhood...something tells me, Hillary would be most inspired by the bureaucrats in the show who continuously keep their employees from serving the very people their bureaucracies were set up to benefit.