struggling to make sense of the political process.

Sen. John McCain appeared at Paradise Valley Community College yesterday afternoon and spoke to about 75 people, about half from the immigrant advocacy group Reform Immigration for America. McCain repeated his talking points: government should spend less money and presidents should lead. He also parried accusations of flipping on his support for the DREAM act and supporting FDA regulation of dietary supplements.

Photograph by Nathan J. King

The event was pretty much meaningless and if you didn’t go you are probably better off. About ten minutes in I felt that impotent rage that starts building in me whenever I listen to speech that is primarily rhetorical. Fifteen minutes in I’m queasy and disheartened and depressed. I realize as I have countless times before that I’m listening to an ad. It’s an act of marketing, not an act of communication. Which is horrifying and disrespectful and treats me as a thing to be manipulated– it’s predatory.

The big talking point the Republicans are hammering this week is “Presidents lead”. I don’t know what that actually means. Do you? I know it’s rhetorical purpose, but could those words have any real meaning. I’ll give it a shot.

Right off this seems true. Presidents leading would totally be a good thing (although it would be good if senators did too). Ok but what do I mean when I say that? After a few Google searches it seems that no one knows what leadership means. That is, leadership is so ambiguous that it is defined by outcome instead of process.

As I drudge through the corporate-jargon definitions of “leadership” (which seem to bear the same relationship to language as makeup does to the human face), the only common threads I find are about “inspiring cooperation” and “motivating towards a common goal”. But can this even apply to politics; where goals are not only different but often diametrically opposed? Probably not.

In politics it seems that if you succeed at a large and complicated task requiring the involvement of many people (like federal legislation) then you have exhibited leadership. If you fail than you haven’t, and that you did the exact same things in both instances doesn’t really matter.

Ostensibly Republicans want Obama to successfully lead them before they will cooperate or in any way allow themselves to be lead. Think about it for a second and you too can feel seasick. Of course the last thing Republicans want is to be lead by a Democrat (it would kill their ratings) but they do want to say that they want to be lead. Which of course is what this is all about– saying and seeming and marketing.

I know that in a way I’m just being silly. I know that when Sen. John McCain says “presidents lead” he is not saying anything at all about presidents or leadership. I know that while there is a non-Republican as president the Republican Party will do what it can to have the government be dysfunctional while shifting the responsibility for government function onto the Democrats. And I know that this responsibility shifting is what “presidents lead” is all about; and that Democrats can and would and will do the same thing when they have the chance. I uneasily know that to call anything McCain or Kyle or Obama says untrue is totally idiotic. Untrue implies some relationship to truth.