CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER Electoral serve and volley in Bali
By Muhammad Cohen
NUSA DUA, Bali, Indonesia - I love tennis even more than politics, so I spent
last week covering the Commonwealth Bank Tennis Classic, Southeast Asia's
biggest event on the women's tour. In Sunday's final, a year after Lindsay
Davenport kicked off her return from motherhood with a victory here, Patty
Schnyder won her first title in three years, beating 17-year-old Tamira Paszek.
This year's Bali tennis tournament field featured three former top 10 players
fallen into the teens and looking to return there, such as Schnyder. But it
also included players even the most dedicated tennis fan would be hard-pressed
to identify in a police lineup or by name on an attendance sheet. As Paszek
did, they hoped to steal a win or two off a player dozens of places higher in
the rankings, who may find the sun and surf, cooking class, fashion show, and
other events the sponsors provide more than tempting than practice.
Yet even in Bali, enjoying young women in short skirts swinging from the heels
and sweating buckets, that buzz in your ear isn't a teen barely a woman on the
verge of stardom asking to learn the ways of the world from a worldly yet
sensitive older gentleman under the tropical moonlight. The buzz isn't even a
mosquito. It's a couple of Americans far from home talking presidential
politics.
Healthcare crisis
Early in the week, watching a doubles match on a side court, one
uncharacteristically out of shape player was grousing about the umpire calling
for the play to begin while this porky player was waiting for medical
treatment. In the sparse crowd I heard one fan explaining the situation to
another who'd just walked in, noting they both had American accents. "So she's
just going to sit and wait," the new arrival said. He glanced at the
scoreboard, saw her team was a couple of games away from losing the match and
added, "In their position, you can't blame her for wanting to wait. Maybe the
other girls will cool off."
"And looking at her," the other guy added, "I bet she's not missing her gym
time." They both laughed and that got them started talking. The guy who'd
walked in was the coach of a player in the tournament, and I tuned in for tips
for my game and for handicapping the tournament. Instead, I got an even rarer
treat, a chance to hear genuine American voters with the two party tickets set
and the presidential campaign heading into the traditional post-Labor Day home
stretch. It was the equivalent of a bar room election debate back home,
conducted in the stage whispers of acceptable tennis match conversation.
The coach, let's call him Frank, asked the fan, let's call him Bob, "You're an
American, right?" Bob nodded. "Then we've got to talk," Frank said. "This
election matters, big time. I'm backing [Senator John] McCain."
"I'm leaning the other way [to Senator Barack Obama]," Bob said.
Dangerous world
"Obama," Frank said. "I just don't think he's up for it. This is a very
dangerous time for the world."
"I don't dispute that. But if McCain believed it, how could he pick the running
mate he did [Sarah Palin]?"
"That's a valid point ..."
"She makes the vice presidency the warm pitcher of spit it really is and that
McCain intends it to be," Bob said. "But, of course, she's not the one running
for president ..."
"That's right," Frank said. "McCain's got all that service, all those years in
the senate."
"He served himself."
"What do you mean?"
"The Keating scandal," Bob said. "Now he plays the big reformer. But he still
rides corporate jets. Look at all the lobbyists running his campaign. He's
learned to talk the talk, but I don't think he's walking the walk."
"That may be ... But, look, he does know the military, and we've got to win
this war we're in," Frank said. "McCain knows how to use the military. He was
in the military for so long."
Vietnam revisited
"I'm afraid he missed the lessons of Vietnam. He thinks there was a way to
military victory there. He thought we could win by bombing North Vietnam back
to the Stone Age."
"Exactly," Frank said. "Look what happened when we left. Millions died ..."
"Millions died while we were there ..."
(Fact check: Estimates of military and civilian deaths during American
involvement in the Vietnam War range from 2 million to 5.1 million. Vietnam's
government released the latter figure in 1995, including 2 million civilian
deaths in then-North Vietnam that the Hanoi government suppressed to sustain
public morale.
After the American withdrawal and the collapse of South Vietnam's government,
many in the south, especially ethnic Chinese, faced repression including
assignment to re-education camps and seizure of their property. An estimated 2
million fled - the so-called "boat people" - and as many as 1 million may have
died as their makeshift craft failed to reach safe ports. But unlike
neighboring Cambodia, there were no widespread, systematic purges in the wake
of the communist takeover.)
"We had no business being in Vietnam in the first place," Bob said. "It was an
unnecessary war of choice that wound up killing the economy and dividing the
nation, when the only thing we should have been doing there was getting out.
Just like the war we're in right now."
I know best
"I'll tell you, something else about McCain. All this talk about him being
maverick ..."
"He's his own man, no doubt about that," Frank said.
"He's pretty much fallen in line with the rest of the Republicans and the Bush
folks. But that's not the point. What's a maverick really mean? A maverick is a
guy who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, that he knows best and he
doesn't need to listen to anything anybody else tells him. That's not the kind
of guy I want to be president."
At that point, Frank and Bob silently agreed that it was time to stop talking
and watch the tennis. I saw them sitting together and enjoying play throughout
the tournament, but I didn't hear them talk politics again. For America's sake,
as long as the election is conducted freely and fairly with all the votes
counted, I hope that the two sides will get along this well at the end of it,
whatever the result. Maybe they'll have to fly the whole of the US electorate
out to Bali for that to happen.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
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