In the great American cliché that all politics is local, more than 150 people packed the gymnasium at Woodholme Elementary School in northwest Baltimore County Tuesday night for a presidential debate. Never mind that no actual presidential candidates were there. In the current hunger for political insight, and the darkening shadow of economic anxiety, and John McCain saying there are more important things on his mind than debating in front of the whole country, we’ll take what we can get.
In this case, we got Louis Pope pinch-hitting for McCain. Pope’s a Republican national committeeman from Howard County. State Comptroller Peter Franchot was there for Barack Obama and, when Franchot had to leave, Del. Dan Morhaim of Baltimore County stepped in.
For most of the evening, you could have heard a pin drop.
The crowd, a mix of ages and races and political instinct, was attentive and respectful — and remarkably silent — through questions about the country’s economic troubles, health insurance, failing public schools, evolution vs. creationism, money for college.
But there was one eruption of applause.
Pope was explaining how McCain was his own man, how there were differences between him and George W. Bush, how McCain disagreed with Bush on plenty of big things. He paused for a moment, as though searching for examples.
“Like torture,” said Pope. “McCain believes we shouldn’t torture. He doesn’t agree with Bush on everything.”
“But he agreed with him 90 percent of the time,” Morhaim countered. “He had a lot of opportunities to vote against him. How about Iraq? That was a big thing.”
Big enough that the mere mention of the war seemed to stun the air for a moment. And then it set off applause that started in the back of the gymnasium, and it moved in waves all the way to the front, and for a few moments it filled the place.
Also, it seemed to come from some distant state of mind. Oh, yeah, the war. It goes on in Iraq, and in half-forgotten Afghanistan as well. Remember when we used to think about it a lot, and read about it, and watch the footage on television every night?
Now on the television, on Wednesday night, there was Bush for 14 minutes, declaring a “serious financial crisis.” On Capitol Hill, they’ve been spending days trying to hammer out a $700 billion plan to salvage the best of an awful situation.
(Only Pope seems sanguine about the economy. The worst crisis since the Depression, as everyone in Washington calls it? “I don’t know if it’s the biggest crisis since then,” Pope told the auditorium crowd. “We’ve gone through the savings and loan crisis. We had 9/11 … We’ve gone through catastrophes before.”)
Meanwhile, from his presidential campaign Wednesday, we had McCain asking for a time-out on tonight’s scheduled presidential debate, thus setting off a great national debate about — well, about debates.
But, in the gymnasium at Woodholme Elementary School, it was this quick little remark about the war in Iraq that set off the crowd’s biggest show of emotion. The war goes on and on, killing soldiers by the thousands and civilians by the tens of thousands, and draining money by the billions.
So there was another question, and it went back to the beginning of all troubles of the last eight years.
“After 9/11, America had the sympathy of the world,” the question started, “but now much of the world is furious over the war. How do we regain American prestige?”
“I disagree with the premise,” Pope said. “We’re still the most beloved nation in the world. When there are problems, the world turns to America. The 21st century belongs to America.”
Well, there’s some truth to Pope’s remarks, and some doubt. The world may love many things about America, but not this war in Iraq. Nor do Americans love it. We wonder why we got into it, and why our intelligence was so bad. We wonder about the way we’ve fought it, and mostly we wonder how we’ll get out of it, and when. The numbers are clear in poll after poll.
But, as all politics is local, you didn’t need a poll the other night at the Woodholme Elementary School. You could hear it in the applause. Yes, the economy scares us. And, yes, we worry about health care and schools and crime.
But somewhere, in the back of our consciousness, the war remains. And we wait to hear how the candidates — the real ones — will bring it to an honorable close.
