From Following Mao to Supporting Obama: My American Political Education
Wendy Liu
March 12, 2008
In his last "Letter from China" in The New Yorker, Peter Hessler described how the Chinese were scrambling to trade in their bicycles for cars. He wondered also, in the fast changing Middle Kingdom, how any one knew, for instance, how to run a car rental business where there had been none, or how any communist party member knew how to be an entrepreneur.
I have a similar question: How a former Chinese citizen, of the generation of "Red Guards" of Mao´s, knew how to be an American, especially a voting American? By scrambling, too?
It is hard to believe, but I never voted in China. It doesn´t mean that we didn´t have politics. We had too much of it: "Politics in command," "Revolution first, production second," etc. It also doesn´t mean that we didn´t know any policy platforms. We memorized the party platform, the "Four Adheres," for instance: "Adhere to socialism; adhere to people´s democratic dictatorship; adhere to the Communist Party leadership; adhere to Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong thought."
I stumbled into my American presidential politics 101, soon after arriving in the United States as a graduate student, in the form of a Saturday Night Live rendering of the 1988 Democratic presidential debate. It was as hilarious as educational. What surprised me later was the downfall of Sen. Gary Hart. I had thought that a fling like his should have been nothing to Americans, who loved, after all, the promiscuous Ewing family of Dallas, the television soap.
But I preferred the Republicans, if only in a knee-jerk kind of way. Nixon who went to China was a Republican and his party represented everything that was opposite of what I had too much in China. The policy of President Bush (41) of continued engagement with China even after the Tiananmen crackdown was another plus.
I watched most of the Bill Clinton presidency as a voter-in-waiting. They were good years for learning the two-party politics. What Clinton showed was that the Third Way could be better than either the liberal or the conservative way alone. Whatever Clinton achieved, he seemed to have done so by being a centrist and by combining Democratic and Republican policies, especially on international trade, welfare reform, balancing the budget, etc. Clinton was definitely Nixonian when he de-linked China´s human rights and trade status.
But Clinton´s scandal ruined his presidential image and record. To my puzzlement and disappointment, many Democrats defended him, in contrast to their rejection of Hart over far lesser offense. I looked to the Republicans. With my newly minted citizenship, I was ready to vote for a Republican president in 2000.
What captured my imagination of Bush the candidate were these words of his on foreign policy: "I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you… the United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."
Bush the President, however, turned his own campaign words on their head and turned himself into "the ugly American" -in-chief with the reckless war in Iraq and the alienation of many of America´s allies. Hundreds of thousands of civilian Iraqis killed just one year or so into the war made me a latter-day member of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. I switched to the Democrats and canvassed for the anti-war Vietnam vet John Kerry.
Now almost a veteran voter, I chose and caucused for Barack Obama, my 2008 presidential candidate. I did so for his clear stand against the Iraq War, his across-the-board appeal, his extraordinary power to inspire, his repudiation of old politics, his symbolic representation of all that is America, his intelligence, his genuineness, especially his personal path, making him both a shining example of the American dream and a true agent for change.
A woman president would be a change, too. But I would prefer someone who is more of her own politician than being part of a "two for the price of one" deal, confusing the experience of a presidential spouse with that of a co-president. After all, the Chinese had Jiang Qing, or Madam Mao, who became powerful because of her husband.
I guess I have scrambled somewhat with my American political education. My Chinese experience has influenced it, too. After all, there are things in common in politics, of everywhere, every kind.
I have a similar question: How a former Chinese citizen, of the generation of "Red Guards" of Mao´s, knew how to be an American, especially a voting American? By scrambling, too?
It is hard to believe, but I never voted in China. It doesn´t mean that we didn´t have politics. We had too much of it: "Politics in command," "Revolution first, production second," etc. It also doesn´t mean that we didn´t know any policy platforms. We memorized the party platform, the "Four Adheres," for instance: "Adhere to socialism; adhere to people´s democratic dictatorship; adhere to the Communist Party leadership; adhere to Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong thought."
I stumbled into my American presidential politics 101, soon after arriving in the United States as a graduate student, in the form of a Saturday Night Live rendering of the 1988 Democratic presidential debate. It was as hilarious as educational. What surprised me later was the downfall of Sen. Gary Hart. I had thought that a fling like his should have been nothing to Americans, who loved, after all, the promiscuous Ewing family of Dallas, the television soap.
But I preferred the Republicans, if only in a knee-jerk kind of way. Nixon who went to China was a Republican and his party represented everything that was opposite of what I had too much in China. The policy of President Bush (41) of continued engagement with China even after the Tiananmen crackdown was another plus.
I watched most of the Bill Clinton presidency as a voter-in-waiting. They were good years for learning the two-party politics. What Clinton showed was that the Third Way could be better than either the liberal or the conservative way alone. Whatever Clinton achieved, he seemed to have done so by being a centrist and by combining Democratic and Republican policies, especially on international trade, welfare reform, balancing the budget, etc. Clinton was definitely Nixonian when he de-linked China´s human rights and trade status.
But Clinton´s scandal ruined his presidential image and record. To my puzzlement and disappointment, many Democrats defended him, in contrast to their rejection of Hart over far lesser offense. I looked to the Republicans. With my newly minted citizenship, I was ready to vote for a Republican president in 2000.
What captured my imagination of Bush the candidate were these words of his on foreign policy: "I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you… the United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."
Bush the President, however, turned his own campaign words on their head and turned himself into "the ugly American" -in-chief with the reckless war in Iraq and the alienation of many of America´s allies. Hundreds of thousands of civilian Iraqis killed just one year or so into the war made me a latter-day member of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. I switched to the Democrats and canvassed for the anti-war Vietnam vet John Kerry.
Now almost a veteran voter, I chose and caucused for Barack Obama, my 2008 presidential candidate. I did so for his clear stand against the Iraq War, his across-the-board appeal, his extraordinary power to inspire, his repudiation of old politics, his symbolic representation of all that is America, his intelligence, his genuineness, especially his personal path, making him both a shining example of the American dream and a true agent for change.
A woman president would be a change, too. But I would prefer someone who is more of her own politician than being part of a "two for the price of one" deal, confusing the experience of a presidential spouse with that of a co-president. After all, the Chinese had Jiang Qing, or Madam Mao, who became powerful because of her husband.
I guess I have scrambled somewhat with my American political education. My Chinese experience has influenced it, too. After all, there are things in common in politics, of everywhere, every kind.
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