I have great compassion for the obstacles that still exist for all minorities in America, and I don’t believe that we have reached full equality by any means. When you look at the representation of black men, Hispanics, and any shade of woman in Congress, it’s pretty sad. I have a lot more hope for my generation when we reach the age when we get to power than I do for the last. I don’t see color, I see character. I look around at the fainting soldiers on the parade ground and I see a generation unafraid to prove itself through war. Shoulder to shoulder, the races mix out there, and it becomes about brotherhood and sisterhood, not about individuals. Never about skin color. In some ways, the military has become the perfect racial melting pot.
Interlude
A Passionate Night in Cincinnati, Ohio
Michael:
We spend a night in Cincinnati on our way to Detroit. Our dinner is at some local hoity-toity locavore joint where they slaughter the pig at your table and serve you the entrails cooked in butter you churn yourself; that kind of place. Anyway, as pretentious as it is, it is also delicious and we spend a couple hours lingering. Towards the end of our meal, we start talking with our waiter about politics. I guess I’m expecting him to be a Democrat because he’s a waiter and works at the kind of elitist restaurant me and other jerk-off liberals like to congratulate ourselves for visiting.
As it happens, our waiter Joe is an Independent/Libertarian. He’s a young guy, maybe twenty-seven, who believes in free markets and gay marriage. He also ardently opposes Obamacare. Like a lot of people we’ve spoken to on our trip, he talks about how he feels it’s unconstitutional for the government to mandate that people purchase health insurance. I ask him if the restaurant gives him health insurance.
No.
Does he have health insurance?
No, but he’s aware of the risk he’s taking by not purchasing health insurance, so the onus is on him. He’s young and healthy so it’s worth the risk.
What if his appendix bursts?
That’s a good point, he says.
Who’s going to pay for that?
He doesn’t know. The public, he guesses, because he can’t afford it. He’s a waiter.
So is it fair that he won’t buy health insurance but the public should pay for his appendectomy?
No. But it’s not fair that the government should tell him what he has to buy, either.
Maybe not, I concede, but he’s asking all of us to subsidize his health care for his principles.
The argument doesn’t resolve because these arguments never do. I’ve never met anybody opposed to mandated health care who walks away from an argument with a changed opinion, and vice versa. Ditto for every single issue. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who has ever changed their mind about any political issue. Once formed, opinions affix themselves like squid tentacles. The more you wriggle, the more they seem to tighten. It’s a curious thing. For all of our talk about civil discourse, for all of our high-minded optimism going into this adventure, I don’t think either Meghan or I have convinced each other of anything.
That night, we have a long conversation in her hotel room about President Obama. Her feelings for him are, to put it delicately, complicated.
There’s something I sometimes forget when talking to her about Obama. Her father lost the presidency of the United States of America to that guy. That’s got to be a tough pill to swallow. Think about it: if one of your parents was that close to being president, it might stick in your craw a little too. So it’s no surprise that she’s not the guy’s biggest fan.
But here’s one of the things I love about Meghan McCain: even though her dad lost the election to Barack Obama, even though she has every reason to buy into the whole “Marxist/Kenyan/Socialist/ Saul Alinsky/terrorist-loving crap,” she does not. Meghan McCain is committed to finding the good in her president.
It wasn’t always like that. After the election, she says she spent months in a haze, unable to do much of anything, afraid for the
future of the country, and worried like a lot of conservatives that men in black suits would soon be coming for her guns.
Then she started looking around and realized the country was still going. No, she doesn’t like Obama’s policies and, no, she doesn’t think he’s a good president, but Meghan McCain is open-minded enough to say this: “I want to love my president. I wish I felt about him the way I feel about my father. I want him to succeed because I want America to succeed.”
In other words, Meghan is a bigger man than I think I could ever be in her situation. Politicians talk about loyalty to country above party all the time. How many of them live it? How many of them are able to set aside personal grievances for the sake of the greater good? How many of them actively seek out the best parts of their political opponents instead of the worst? Not many. Meghan does.
It’s not easy for her, just as it wouldn’t be easy for me to seek out the best parts of the kid who beat the shit out of me in high school.
That’s why it drives me crazy when people knock her; she’s one of the few people I’ve met in politics who isn’t absolutely certain of her convictions. People in her position are generally nothing if not sure of themselves, positive of their own rightness. And why not? They are usually surrounded by people who tell them they are right, who lobby them, who cajole and sweet-talk them. They rely on think tanks dedicated to reinforcing their vision. They watch television networks that do nothing but echo their message back at them. It feels good when people tell you you’re right all the time; of course I wouldn’t know what that feels like because I’m married, but Meghan probably does. She could easily live in the political positive-reinforcement bubble, but she does not.
I see her searching, I see her listening, I see her questioning her own assumptions about things. About guns, about health care, even about her own spiritual faith, about everything except the military. We Democrats like to believe we are the open-minded ones, but we’re not. We’re usually just as doctrinaire as the other guys; the only real difference between us and them is that we’ve got more vegans. I’m pretty sure they don’t have any.
When people talk about the country being polarized, I think a lot of times what they are talking about is their frustration that the other side is unwilling to listen to them. Unfortunately, what most of them fail to realize is that, oftentimes, they are equally unwilling to listen. If this trip has taught me anything so far, it’s that most people just need to shut the hell up and pay attention to what their neighbors and waiters and fellow Americans are trying to say.
And, by the way, I’m just as guilty of ignoring that advice as everybody else.
Dearborn, Michigan
Motor City Mosque ‘n’ Roll
Michael:
It’s weird that one small American city in Michigan is both the worldwide headquarters of one of the most famous American industrial success stories and the city with the highest concentration of Muslims in the nation. It almost sounds like the setting for a high-concept Hollywood romantic comedy.
Maybe Ashton Kutcher plays an ambitious young vice president at Ford who falls in love with a beautiful but hilarious Muslim assembly line worker played by . . . actually, I don’t know who would play the young Muslim woman. When I google “funny Muslim actress” I get exactly zero results. To prove how odd that is, when I google the made-up phrase “porky little booger” I get one result, which means that “porky little booger” is a more commonly used term than “funny Muslim actress.” In any case, they meet, fall in love, then have to navigate the treacherous rapids of each other’s lives and disapproving families. In the end, they conquer their differences and live happily ever after. Possible title:
Guess Who’s Coming to Ramadan?
Dearborn embodies the contradictions of modern American life. This is where the First Amendment is currently being put through its paces, as well as being the hoped-for epicenter of an American manufacturing renaissance. It’s a topsy-turvy kind of place, yet driving through, Dearborn strikes me as surprisingly normal. It could be any American city. Except that a lot of the women wear head scarves. And a lot of the signs are in Arabic. And Bob Seger lives here.
Our first stop is the Ford Rouge Factory Tour, billed as “Detroit’s #1 Automotive Attraction.” (No word on which automotive attraction is number two.) The tour starts at the Henry Ford, a large campus combining various Ford buildings, exhibits, and Greenfield Village, one of those immersive historic towns where people stroll around in period costume and engage in authentic old-timey activities, except nobody here is doing anything because it’s so damned hot. It’s like a half-assed Walt Disney project whose theme is “The World of Boring.”
Shuttle buses drive visitors from the Henry Ford to the Rouge Factory complex about ten minutes away. As we enter the factory grounds, I am stunned at its size. The thing is massive, spread out over hundreds of acres, holding ninety-three buildings and containing 15 million square feet of floor area. Just to give you an idea of how big that is, it’s almost twice as big as my house!
The self-guided tour starts at the Epcot-like Legacy Gallery, where a line of gleaming, historic Fords are displayed, all of them made here at the Rouge. I love looking at old cars, even though my automotive knowledge extends no further than an ability to identify steering wheels and cup holders. The last vehicle on display is a new F-150 pickup, the same vehicle currently in production here. It’s a hulking, gorgeous thing, the Tom Brady of trucks.
Ford F-Series pickup trucks have been the top-selling vehicle in the United States for something like thirty-five years in a row. The pickup is a curious symbol of American individualism and ruggedness. In a nation where a third of the adult population is obese, it seems likely that the heaviest thing many of those drivers are hauling around is themselves.
Meghan:
This wasn’t my first trip to a car manufacturing plant. Ready for it, kids? Yes, I went to one during a campaign stop with my father, although it was with a huge crowd and the entire traveling press corps around, so I didn’t really get to fully absorb the experience. I felt like this stop was an important one for Michael and
me, given the intensity of focus on the auto industry that has come into play in politics in the last four years.
Our first stop before observing the production line is the Art of Manufacturing Theater, which is kind of like a Ford Imax theater with special effects built in. Michael, Stephie, and I sit down in chairs that lean back and take in the film experience (complete with heat and water misters for an added 3-D effect of what an auto plant is really like). The video goes through the history of the Ford company up to the present, when they are looking forward to the future of hybrid and green technology.
I cannot help it. I really like the Ford Motor Company because of its refusal to take the bailouts, and because it seems like a family-owned company with a real moral investment in America and the automaker’s future. Of course, the film we watched wanted me to get that impression, but there’s something about giant trucks and “Built Ford Tough” that tugs at my love of all things having to do with American individualism, ruggedness, and a refusal to be pushed around or made to believe that America and our companies are anything but strong, built to last, and the best of the best.
As you may have noticed, I like people and companies that are unabashedly all American and proud of it. It’s not that I think people who do not choose to fly American flags and drive American-made trucks aren’t patriotic or don’t love America; I just like people who proudly display it like I do. Granted, I have a tendency to take it to the extreme at times—I came very close to tattooing a heart with an American flag on my ankle after we killed bin Laden.
Dearborn is a curious place, populated by all the people who work in this plant. Sadly, the cities of Dearborn and Detroit no longer have the Rock City and Motor City connotations they once had. Instead of images of the high-flying times of rock ‘n’ roll and auto production, now the images that come to mind are more associated with the recession, in particular the downfall of the American auto industry and the housing market crash.
During the campaign I once heard the city of Detroit described as “America’s canary in the coal mine.” Describing anything as a canary
in a coal mine is in and of itself a warning. It’s a reference to the caged canaries miners kept in the tunnels as they mined. If the canary died, it was a warning that poisonous gas had leaked into the mine and they needed to evacuate as soon as possible. It does seem as though Detroit has gone from being a symbol of the triumph of American industrialism to a grave warning sign about the direction in which the entire country could be headed.
For example, the last time I visited Michigan was for my first book tour, when I went to speak at the corporate headquarters of Borders Books in Ann Arbor. I remember telling a friend that I was going to talk to the people at Borders; my friend reacted by saying, “Will Borders even be in business when your book comes out?” I was a little shocked by her statement and that this was something she even thought could happen in the short months before my book was released. Growing up, after school I would frequent the local Borders bookstore at the Biltmore in Phoenix, to hang out, get snacks, and write papers. I loved that Borders, and the idea that such a giant chain would go under seemed impossible. I had spent so much time in the oversized bookstore, reading, writing, avoiding going home after school; the idea that it could go under just seemed unfathomable to me.
I went to visit the Borders corporate headquarters and spoke with some of their employees, followed by a question-and-answer session about my book, my time on the road with my father, and my role in politics. There were a lot of people there and they were all incredibly warm and engaging. All of them also seemed very enthusiastic about working for the company and the long legacy it had as a retailer. I remember a lot of laughs and having an unusually great time, considering it was an event where I had to “work”: give a speech and schmooze with Borders employees in an attempt to get them excited about the release of my book. I also spoke at the annual dinner held for authors of books that were going to be coming out in the next few months. I just remember all of it being extremely well done, organized, and overall a really pleasurable experience. The board and representatives made me feel welcome, and
the event was held in a gorgeous hotel; I left feeling like I had the support of the entire company for the upcoming release of my book, a special feeling for any author to get from a corporate book seller.