Beautiful Imperfection

Pip Wilson penned the lyric and Fort Pastor wrote the song. The phrase “Beautiful Imperfection” seems to capture that for which I yearn as I turn my attention toward the Republican National Convention.

As I fly to Minnesota and reflect further on what I witnessed in Denver, the more disturbed I am by the nature of contemporary politics. I am still astonished at the sophistication the Obama campaign used to fashion and present their message in Denver. Save for the Clinton speeches, the entire event was scripted right down to the “town hall meetings.” And the scripting went beyond words to the music, the lighting, the camera angles, and even the backdrop.

Since I was sitting high behind Obama during his acceptance speech, I watched most of it on the giant stadium TV screens. There were many points during the speech when I wondered if I was seeing a “floating cross” behind Obama. The window framing behind him formed an almost constant cross when he was on the front-center camera. Had he been smaller, taller, or had the camera angle been slightly different, we would have seen a rectangular window frame. Instead, there was a moving cross gracing the screen every time the camera zoomed in on him from front-center. Given the use of Biblical imagery in his speech and those preceding him, I can’t dismiss this possibility this detail was any more of a coincidence than it was in Mike Huckabee’s Christmas greeting ad.

While I have never been to a Republican convention, I’m told that the Republicans can do all of this even better. Without the Clinton’s around to inject a bit of drama into the proceedings, if McCain allows himself to be handled, there is no reason to believe they can’t do a better job of scripting and conveying an image and a message.

As I go to St. Paul, I’m not looking for perfection, but I am yearning for some imperfection. I have no desire for a hurricane to make landfall, and I pray it dissolves into a mere depression. Nevertheless, the prospect of the real world raining on the parade of the pseudo-world of political consultants excites me. Not because I can’t appreciate the beauty of a campaign game plan well executed, but because I want to gain some perspective on who would make a good President. That is not judged by how well one can create an image and stay on message in a campaign, but on how a person deals, albeit imperfectly, with the challenges life throws at us.

The hurricane presents such a challenge for both McCain and Obama. How do you conduct a political convention or campaign in the midst of an event that will alter the lives of everyone in the path of the storm? The answer to that question will tell me more about the suitability of Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin than what I saw in Denver.

The decision on how to handle this convention is a decision that requires judgment. These are the kind of decisions Presidents are faced with daily. I’ll be very interested to see how McCain and Palin handle it. I’ll be very interested to see how Obama and Biden campaign in anticipation of the storm and in its wake. Their consultants will be telling both of them to stay with the plan, to stay on message, because to move off message is to risk making a mistake.

I’d prefer that if mistakes are to be made they are made before the election rather than after, so that we can judge accordingly.

That’s why I believe there is something to be said for beautiful imperfection. The more opportunities we have before November to find out how these 4 candidates handle real world challenges where no perfect response exists, the better. It is in imperfection that we can judge the true character of the contenders.