CINCINNATI, OHIO — I had to come all the way to Ohio to see just how right President Eisenhower was.
The 34th president had famously warned his fellow Americans about ceding too much power to a military-industrial complex — but the perniciousness of those vague words was readily apparent when I accompanied an Obama volunteer to the home of Tammy Marcotte, a 33-year-old living in an upper middle class suburb of the Queen City, where I have come to document the last throes of our election.
Marcotte started by telling the Obama canvasser that she was still “undecided” — undecided! The very a word sends a delightful charge up the spine of any political worker (the chance to actually influence someone! It’s like getting the Glengarry leads!).
Then she excited the volunteer even more when said he one issue was “jobs.”
Jobs?! That’s the ultimate hanging curve to these Obama troops. “Well, you know, Ohio has lost 200,000 jobs in seven years, the most since the Great Depression …” the worker said.
“No,” Marcotte responded. “I’m interested in only one job — my husband’s.”
The husband, it turns out, makes Meals Ready to Eat for the U.S. military — “and if Obama pulls us out of Iraq, he’ll lose his job.”
And there was the very danger that Eisenhower warned against — the notion that Marcotte’s, and no doubt tens of thousands of other Americans (many of them actually peace-loving), are so heavily connected to a war economy that ending the war would be bad for their bottom line.
So Obama loses another Ohio vote because his desire to bring our troops home safely would necessarily — and negatively — affect the good, hard-working Americans who feed them.
The volunteer didn’t really know what to say. But I do: War truly is hell — and not just because it’s bloody, destructive and dehumanizing. It also makes good, honest Americans vote against their most vital national interest: peace.
War, after all, pays the bills in the Marcotte home.
