I will obviously be voting for Obama. He is one of the most amazing people in two generations to run for president and have a legitimate shot at winning. Quite simply, if this country does not elect Barack Obama, we do not deserve him.
It would not be easy to justify my enthusiasm, which comes from closely following his campaign over the course of a year, in a reasonable amount of space here. But if you look at his positions on the issues, check out his history, and watch a few of his speeches—and not just the big addresses, but the usual campaign stumps, too—it seems obvious that anyone who is not a doctrinaire conservative or a strict ideologue would support Obama without hesitation. The margin of Obama’s victory this year will depend on how successful his campaign is at introducing voters to who he really is and what he stands for.
Barack Obama represents so much of what is still good about America. Obama’s family is a healthy and a happy one. His racial diversity and his affluence are both a testament to American opportunity and egalitarianism. But most telling of all, Obama has spent his entire career leaving his mark on the world by serving the interests of his community—as an organizer, civil rights attorney, constitutional law professor, and finally an elected representative. He chose this destiny for himself because he wanted it. Judge a person by their ambitions, or by their ideas, or by both, and Obama comes off pretty well any way you slice it. And did I mention he’s left-handed?
In his political engagement, Obama educates himself on the details underpinning important issues. He interacts with people purposefully rather than adversarially. He surrounds himself with a diversity of opinion. He writes much of his own material for his speeches and positions on the issues—a political rarity. Obama’s intellectual curiosity, his grasp of issues at the policy level, his constitutional scholarship, and his commitment to socioeconomic justice are more than just refreshing after the preposterous Bush era. Given our current state of affairs, these qualities are indispensable. They put Obama in a position to be one of the most transformational presidents in American history, and we need something like that right now.
When it comes to the issues, I contemplated how much detail I would provide here. I think too detail would detract from the point, so I’ll keep it abstract. A candidate’s ideological stance is more important to me than all of the above combined, because it is the ideological stance that calibrates his or her arrow of intent. Obama wants to take this country and all of the people in it forward, upward, and leftward. I choose those three words carefully, and will explain in greater detail if asked, but hopefully they speak for themselves. While I disagree with Obama on numerous minor and moderate points, as well as a few major ones, I fully support his arrow of intent. I am confident, based on what I know about him and have learned of his positions on the issues, that he will make a serious effort to expand and protect women’s rights, mitigate our environmental impact, secure energy independence, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, establish a single-payer healthcare system, reverse some of the wealth capture that has delivered so much of America’s riches to the rich, lift up the poor, adequately fund and restructure public education, expand government oversight of the private sector, excise the influence of religious interests in the federal government, end the war in Iraq and regroup our strength in Afghanistan, bring the free(wheeling) markets under tighter regulatory control, promote racial and cultural harmony while addressing numerous race-specific social problems, reinforce the standing and rights of workers and consumers, restore our tattered alliances with nations, enshrine net neutrality and extend high-speed Internet access, balance the federal budget and reduce the trade deficit, reform our immigration policy, refurbish and popularize our space program, flush out some of the huge influence enjoyed by high-powered corporate lobbyists, redeem the importance of science and technology in our public square, renegotiate our trade agreements, clamp down on irresponsible oil drilling and strip mining operations, and create good-paying career-level jobs to replace vanishing production ones…to name a few of the things that are important to me.
That’s a long list. Obama himself laid out his top priorities thusly:
If I haven't gotten combat troops out of Iraq, passed universal health care and created a new energy policy that speaks to our dependence on foreign oil and deals seriously with global warming, then we've missed the boat.
Indeed, if you add infrastructure to that list, and assume that he’ll at least hold the line on women’s rights, I would say that these few accomplishments alone would constitute a successful first term. However, I have a lot of confidence in Obama and I expect more from him than that—especially given the likelihood of a friendly Congress throughout his first four years in office.
Now, all of this is merely a cursory attempt to justify why I am voting
for Barack Obama. To spend just a bit longer here, there are also some compelling reasons to vote
against John McCain. I could, if I wanted, mirror my entire post up to this point, and it would be more than half accurate. But I’ll spare you the trouble of reading all of this again.
The worst part about John McCain is the Elephant he worships. But what does that mean? Here is an example. If you go Republican this year, this is what you are voting for:
We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself.
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That was then. Now, the Republicans have proposed giving a
trillion dollars to the very same Wall Street profiteers whose irresponsible risk-taking and shameless economic plunder have ruined this nation’s financial health for the foreseeable future. Not only is this going to be the biggest corporate bailout in American history, at taxpayer expense!, but it amounts to a wholesale nationalization of great swaths of the financial sector. So here we are at last: After a generation of free-market, laissez-faire worship championed by such notorious individuals as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, where America lived the nightmare that deregulation was god and government was at its best when twiddling its thumbs and staying out of everyone’s way, resulting in massive wage stagnation and debt accumulation for ordinary citizens, all of a sudden the robber barons have come running to the government in a blind panic about being on the receiving end of the glorious corrective power of the market. These people would be a joke if we weren’t paying our arms and legs and houses for them to put on their act.
Sidenote:Oh, and did I mention that it’s the damned Bush administration that’s handling this crisis? You know…here’s a gamble I don’t want to take: Bush’s State Department: Secretary Colin Powell, on the strength of his reputation, waved around a vial of white powder in the halls of the UN that helped lead this nation to an unjust war. Bush’s Federal Emergency Management Agency: Michael Brown may have been a fashion god, but, since his actual job was emergency relief logistics, thousands of people died. Bush’s Defense Department: Secretary Rumsfeld sent half the forces he should have into Iraq, put a bunch of right-wing teenagers in charge of reconstruction, and subsequently saw the Iraqi state blow up to smithereens, taking four thousand American lives with it. Bush’s CIA: Director George Tenet might have been able to prevent the September 11 attacks if he had been paying attention, and he never did catch Osama bin Laden. But at least he caught himself a nice Medal of Freedom on his way out the door. Bush’s Justice Department: John Ashcroft’s greatest accomplishment was putting a bra over the statue of Justice. His successor, Alberto Gonzales, one-upped him by approving a policy of torturing prisoners. Justice is a dish best served with Laffy Taffy. Bush’s Labor Department: Yeah, I bet you’d forgotten that we actually have a Labor Department. Not coincidentally, Secretary Elaine Chao, Bush’s only remaining original Cabinet member, is in charge there, and has spent her eight years quietly letting mining companies get away with dangerous operations and shoddy maintenance, resulting in cave-ins and poisonous gasses and all sorts of wonderful stuff. This, of course, is when she wasn’t busy eroding the standing of unions and workers. Bush’s Supreme Court: Now with four conservative voices on the highest court in the land, including John Roberts and Samuel Alito appointed by Bush himself, America has finally gotten the jurisprudence it deserves, exemplified by decisions such as that in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. What’s that, you’re not familiar with it? Hrm. Bush’s EPA, FDA, and USDA: Let’s fire scientists who criticize the administration’s policies and make Americans have enough melamine in their diet. Bush’s Forest Service: What good are these trees? Chop them down! Bush’s Energy Department: Anybody remember when Enron cause all those lights in California to go out in 2001? No? Here’s a more recent one: Remember when Exxon earned a $40 billion profit in 2007? You know…which is only two zeroes more than former Exxon CEO Lee “The Waddle” Raymond “earned” with his retirement package, presumably paid in gold bricks. How does the Bush administration fit into the picture? I’ll refer you to the Independent Branch.
Now, given a track record like this, what do you suppose are the odds that Bush’s Treasury Department and his Federal Reserve are going to acquit themselves honorably in this financial crisis—a crisis that happens to be the direct consequence of the very same economic policies that the Bush administration has espoused and implemented so religiously?If you vote Republican this year, you are voting to endorse and prolong the economic ideology of a bunch of hypocritical pirates. Not only has the GOP utterly discredited itself on economic grounds, but John McCain in particular buys into all of this laissez-faire-ordures, or at least that’s what his voting record and his campaign rhetoric would suggest. That’s where the “John McCain votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time” talking point comes from. If you’re voting for McCain, you’re voting for a Republican economic agenda…in which case you are either a robber baron or a moron.
Reality rarely reveals itself so clearly.That’s the problem with Republicans. For fourteen years they have put the Elephant above the Stars and Stripes, American people be damned and America itself be damned. McCain, whatever his personal virtues, is a member of the party that got us to where we are today. He may style himself as a maverick, and there have been occasions when he showed some spunk in the Senate, but the way he has run his campaign is a glimpse as to how he will run his administration. In the course of this campaign, McCain has bowed to the Republican hard line every time that it mattered.
Take this thought to its logical conclusion: The most important consequence of a feeble McCain presidency is that he would allow the White House to become a vehicle for the interests of the corporados who have been so emboldened and engorged by the policies of the current administration. Even if I was sympathetic to McCain personally—which I actually am to some extent—you have to remember that the people who will have McCain’s ear are meaningfully and unsettlingly different than those who will have Obama’s ear. Obama’s small-donor fundraising base and his refusal to accept the stickiest kinds of lobbyist money are no small matter when we arrive at the question of an independent Executive Branch. I’ve had friends who made contributions through their businesses that were actually returned by the Obama campaign due to its strict standards on what kinds of lobbyist money to accept. While the value of this policy is no doubt greater for its PR appeal than anything else in the short term, it is also the truth that large campaign contributions tie a politician’s hands once elected to office. With Obama having such success at getting his campaign funded ten or twenty dollars at a time, he will enjoy much greater freedom once he finally does make it to the White House.
To vote for McCain is to vote for that Almighty Red Elephant, not just on economic issues but on foreign issues: He has favored a Bush-style doctrine of unilateralism. And civic issues: His tax cuts for the rich, combined with the deficit, the debt, and the recession, would cripple the government’s ability to tackle the issues of infrastructure and healthcare. And social issues: We’ll just sum that one up with the words “Sarah Palin.”
I know there are plenty of brain-alive people out there who will actually, willingly vote for John McCain while under the substance of neither liquor nor narcotics. Do they
really think that the United States needs more creationism taught in its classrooms? That CEOs don’t have enough tax breaks? That healthcare should only be available to those who can afford to buy it? That Christianity needs to be forcibly affirmed in the public square? That undocumented immigrants should be rounded up and deported? That corporations are unduly burdened by labor unions and safety standards? That the minimum wage should be abolished? That the environment is irrelevant? That pregnant women are worth less than a glob of cells?
That is where the Republican Party exists today. That is how badly they have degraded our national discourse.
That is what it means to vote Republican this year.
John McCain himself is a tragic figure, eight years past his pull date, and surrounded by whirlwinds beyond his control or comprehension. I think his intentions are good but his judgment bad. I think his ethics are strong but his premises absurd. And he comes with no few flaws of character that are independent of his party: He is not intellectually curious like Obama is. He is not well-studied the issues central to his passion. He is not a constitutional scholar. He does not discipline himself like Obama does. His family history is heartbreaking and more than a little creepy. His ideology would plunge the nation further downward into the dysfunctional dystopia of modern conservatism He did not earn his high wealth; it was all given to him by powerful associates or obtained through marriage. His gaffes are not few in number, and they paint a consistent picture of someone who only C. Montgomery Burns would have any reason to vote for. And yet people call
Obama the out-of-touch one.
The only people who are truly out of touch are the ones who believe that John McCain represents something good or golden. He may be a person of some character, but he would make a poor president by himself, a worse one with Sarah Palin by his side, and an altogether rotten president with the conservative establishment giving him his marching orders.
Obama is someone who possess the ability to take control of this country. With McCain, or Palin, we will see the weakest president since Jimmy Carter. That’s not what America needs right now, especially when the people at the wheel are going to be James Dobson, Thomas Friedman, and the aforementioned suckling pigs who can’t wait to get their trillion-dollar bailout.
(Speaking of Palin, I have to say that she takes an easy choice this year and reduces it to the point where it is not a choice at all. What a colossal blunder on McCain’s part. Of Palin, we have since learned that she spent her time as Governor of Alaska playing Pol Pot, billing the state to sleep and eat at her own home, firing people for getting in her way, forcing rape victims to pay for their own medical treatment, and abandoning the interests of her people so as to improve her own status. Classy.)
The final word in all of my considerations is one of intent. Having looked at who the candidates are, where they stand, and what kinds of special interests they will represent, all that remains is to ask
why these two people want to be president.
I can’t answer that for sure, but I can take a good guess. Obama, for his part, has occasionally gone against my grain—such as his support for a limited continuation of the Bush administration’s government-sponsored religious programs. Even so, I respect his strategic thinking. Religious people eat that shit up. And yet there is always something more…some genuine empathy toward and attachment to the people he speaks with. It’s as if he is actually interested in them. You never hear about Obama losing his temper or not paying attention at meetings. It’s enough to think he actually cares. Indeed, Obama’s campaign strategy has looked like some brilliant, radiantly beautiful marriage of ruthless calculation and genuine interest in
all of the American people. The last time we saw both of those elements together in force in the White House was probably during FDR’s time. This is part of what makes Obama so amazing. I think he is an idealist who wears the skin of a pragmatist. I think he has a clear picture of what’s wrong with this country, and nearly as clear a picture of what needs to happen to make things well again. I think he wants to do that because, to him, it would affirm and strengthen his sense that he has lived a meaningful life, and that his endeavors have been for good and will outlast him significantly.
John McCain, on the other hand, I think wants to be president because he—and perhaps more accurately his wife Cindy—sees it as a prize…a status symbol and a bully pulpit.
I hear from a lot of people that they don’t think there is any meaningful difference between the two major parties. Usually these are people who don’t follow political news closely enough to know what they are talking about. However, to the extent that the two parties sometimes do overlap in bad ways, a cynic should take a look at where that congruity is coming from. Some Democrats are nearly as susceptible to corporate money as most Republicans are. For instance, someone like Joe Biden betrayed progressives when he helped Republicans kowtow to the credit card companies by eliminating most ordinary people’s access to bankruptcy protection even as the economy was beginning to unravel. He lent his support because MBNA, based in his state of Delware, lobbied him. Then there was Bill Clinton, who slashed welfare and negotiated NAFTA…again betraying many people on his left. His actions were not so much the result of lobbying, but rather a strategic plot to capture the American center, which succeeded.
What this means is not that Democrats are no different than Republicans (sorry, Nader), but that individual Democrats have competing priorities and Democrats as a whole are not the party of infallibility. When you look at the actual policy accomplishments of the Democrats and the Republicans, the differences become clear, even if some maddening congruities remain. To reduce those congruities, what we need is stronger legislation that limits the power of concentrated money in politics, more nonpartisan oversight of government operations, and better <i>Democrats</i> who are sympathetic to the full spectrum of Americans but approach the challenges facing our nation with the mindset of a true liberal. People who are cynical toward both parties would do well to get involved in politics and put the pressure on the party that is nearest to them ideologically. To borrow an Obaman turn of phrase, that’s how you become the change you want to see.
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