Why Obama?

[tongodeon]

I'm driving to Nevada this weekend to canvass for Obama. Unlike get-out-the-vote phone banking this means talking with swing voters and trying to convince them to change their vote. To get myself prepared I've had to ask myself why I'm voting the way I am. These are my reasons.
Why Obama:

1. The primary thing that's impressed me from the very beginning is that there's a light on upstairs. As Colin Powell said he has "a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge, and an approach to looking at problems". When he's asked a new question in an interview he doesn't start repeating a stump speech - he actually stops and thinks about it. He "shows intellectual vigor". This article discusses his capacity to "argue positions in a respectful way", or his manner of "thinking in my presence, rather than just reciting talking points". His thoughtful, deliberate, nonreactionary style that spurns drama. "What seems important or clever or in need of some dramatic moment a lot of times just needs reflection and care." I hope that Obama is a step toward turning around what I see as anti-intellectual trends in our culture, and dismayed by the consequences of having a simpleton in the White House.
2. His experience. I think that foreign travel, community work, and Harvard Law (graduating magna) prepare a guy pretty well for public office. Getting the crap beaten out of you by Vietnamese interrogators is a pretty powerful experience, but not necessarily the kind that leads you to good judgement or wisdom.
3. His ingenuity. A rookie who started with zero funding, few supporters, and ten-to-one odds has come out of nowhere to beat the Clinton and Rove teams at their own game.
4. He will not take our guns. The NRA has been scaring rural voters with this old line and it's just not true. Obama was a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago and understands the importance of the second amendment. He has discussed gun laws targeting previously convicted criminals and the mentally ill, but not law-abiding citizens. He will not take our guns. I will put money on it.
5. As a senior lecturer of constitutional law at Chicago Law School, Barack Obama is an ardent supporter of the entire Bill of Rights, not just the 2nd Amendment. In particular the first (establishment, church/state), Fourth (search & seizure), Fifth (restoring habeas), Sixth (speedy & public trial by jury), and Eighth (cruel & unusual punishment). These essential rights have been under attack by the Bush Administration for the last eight years and Obama has pledged to restore them. This is a vital issue for everyone from libertarians to lawyers.
6. His tax plan. You say that cutting middle class taxes at the expense of the rich is socialism. Is there a scary name for cutting rich people's taxes at the expense of the middle class? We've had 7 years of economic stagnation for people in the middle of the income distribution. Only the highest earners have reaped the rewards from our economic progress. Obama's new tax proposal is the righting of a ship, not the first step in a great purge. Take a minute and run your numbers. Due to the poorly understood principle of marginal tax brackets the rich get the same tax cuts that the poor do and the total damage isn't as bad as you think. (I promised matrushkaka more about this in an upcoming post, stay tuned.)
7. He's got his eye on energy. Presidents have been hiding their heads in the sand about peak oil for years as the evidence gets stronger. "There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy ... That's going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office." The world is going to run on SOMETHING after oil gets scarce. We've got a lot of coastline, a lot of sunny open land, and a lot of uranium. Our country could be the 21st century's Saudi Arabia, or at least claim next Silicon Valley, with the appropriate bootstrapping.
8. He is clearly pro-science, pro-rationalism, pro-education, pro-intellectual, and pro-reality in a way that has become foreign to the Republican platform. Read the endorsement letter signed by every Nobel science laureate. Read the endorsement column of Seed magazine. "Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Sen. Obama's embrace of transparency and evidence-based decision-making, his intelligence and curiosity echo this new way of looking at the world."
9. He's got a clearly articulated policy for disability which is important to matrushkaka and me.
10. His middle name. Barack Hussein Obama is not a muslim or a terrorist, but he will be a potent weapon against Islamic extremist propagandists who will have a much harder time denouncing the Great Satan and formenting xenophobia if its head of state is an African with the middle name "Hussein".
11. While McCain pulls theatrics like suspending his campaign, Obama has taken a cautious, consistent, well-thought-out approach to the economy. For example his bailout plan calls for distressed assets to be purchased at fair market value rather than face value under the McCain plan. (As mentioned in Planet Money podcast.) Obama admits that he's still learning about economics but has collected an impressive team of advisors: Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers.
12. He's post-partisan, which is one reason why so many Republicans and conservatives are comfortable supporting him. He's been this way for a long time - he identified with the liberals at the Harvard but he also went "palling around" with Federalist Society members and gave them their fair share of the Law Review appointments even though it pissed off liberal african-americans at the Review. ("Frontline: The Choice".) His promises of inclusive, united bipartisanship are not the same empty promises of Bush's "uniter, not a divider" sloganeering in 2000.
13. He's an excellent communicator. Simple, direct, and pragmatic. He hasn't always been this way - his early speeches used big complex rhetoric. Obama was flexible and learned quickly from his mistakes, another important quality sorely lacking in leadership the last eight years.
14. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. allegedly described Franklin Roosevelt as having "a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament". Obama would be a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament - the first in a long time.
15. The litany of traditionally conservative and Republican names crossing party lines to endorse him. Powell. McClellan. Pressler. Foley. Buckley. Leach, Chafee, Gilchrest, Riordan, Whitaker, Holton, Kmieck, Andrews, Fukuyama, Hauser, Hunter, Ruckelshaus, Adelman, Hagel, Hart, Bracevich, Friedman, Sullivan, Alison, Smerconish, and that Eisenower. The rank -and-file. Rednecks. They didn't just flip a coin. Listen to their rationale, not just mine.
16. Bragging rights. Do you know any old-timers who speak proudly about backing Nixon against Kennedy in '60? I can't guarantee that he's going to meet all the expectations that people have of him but he's a more promising candidate than any we've had in quite some time from either party.

Why Not McCain:

1. Sarah Palin. I didn't understand the choice then and she seems like an even worse choice now. McCain was as good as the Republicans could do this year, but it should be an embarrassment that Palin even made the short list for this job.
2. The Supreme Court. They've already got enough conservative justices to make sane conservative decisions. More conservative justices will open the door to the kind of crazy that Bush tried to get past. Not just abortion, which you may or may not care about. Suspending habeas. Wiretapping without FISA. Signing bills not passed by Congress. Firing of attorneys for political reasons.
3. He misunderstands the way the world is now. One of the big failures of Iraq was alienating our potential allies with unilateral action. McCain still thinks we can dictate what's going to happen in the world on our terms. Economic or military, we cannot demand that the world march to the beat of our drum when the world knows that our drum is broken.
4. He's been selling himself as "Obama Lite". Talking about "change". Promising "to reform how business is done in Washington." McCain's campaign website speaks out against "his own party's out-of-control spending, against the Administration to change a failing strategy in Iraq, and ... an energy bill that was full of giveaways to Big Oil companies", and promises to "end the war in Iraq". McCain's platform wants health care "available to all and not limited by where you work or how much you make". He promises to set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, meet America's labor needs with both low-skilled and highly-skilled immigrants, and he even accepts evolution. In the VP debate Palin agreed with Biden on supporting full legal rights for homosexual couples.
5. He's sold out much of what made him great. I would have gladly voted for the John McCain who Bush destroyed in the 2000 primary, but the John McCain of 2000 is not the John McCain running today. This is more a failure of the Republican Party than the candidate himself. The Party required that he start bowing to the Religious Right, compromise on torture, vote with Bush 90% of the time, and run his campaign with the slimeballs who destroyed him in 2000 in order to inherit Bush's mantle.
6. He's not just flip-flopped on any number of issues away from his positions as an independent maverick. He now supports the ethanol subsidies, the gas tax holiday, and permanent Bush tax cuts that he formerly opposed. He's stopped talking about global warming and climate science.
7. His Republican Party has sold out much of what made them great. Somehow Ronald Reagan’s party of western individualism and limited government has ended up not just increasing the size of the state but turning it into a tool of southern-fried moralism. It is time for either a return to sensible centrism or a new offshoot if the Palins in the party will not follow.
8. From global warming to evolution to abstenance-only education, Republicans have favored ideology over science and become anti-intellectual in a way that genuinely concerns me. Sarah Palin has been continuing this trend.
9. He has shrunk to become a small man campaigning on small issues. Crazy preachers. Bill Ayers. Joe the Plumber. Elitism. Which areas of the country are "the real America". These would not be issues worth talking about even in the best of times.
10. The McCain campaign and RNC have not just tolerated but explicitly encouraged the worst sort of xenophobia, racism, and fear mongering. Most of McCain's supporters are not racists. Some are, and the RNC has deliberately stoked those fires in dangerous ways, deliberately targeting areas and communities where racism is strongest.
11. McCain lies more than Obama. Not because he's a bad man - he isn't. Not because he's a compulsive liar - he isn't. Because he has to. Because the reality of the world that we live in today favors Obama, and McCain has to fabricate more of his own truth to stay competitive.
12. I've already voted for him once, in 1994, when he was my senator. Back when Republicans were a foil for Clinton rather than a beard for Bush. Back when McCain represented the conservative self-reliance of Arizona rather than the full neoconservative, evangelical, anti-intellectual spectrum that the Republican party inhabits now.
13. I believe that democracy means meritocracy. I believe that we should reward success and punish failure. Failure is a learning opportunity, and the Republicans have failed. "Winning" with a failed policy, as happened in 2004, just means the continuing opportunity to fail even bigger and more publicly. McCain should have kept his colors even after his 2000 defeat but he chose to hitch his wagon to George Bush's rising star. That was a mistake. McCain positioned himself as Bush's heir apparent, employs Bush's staffers in his party, and votes with Bush 90% of the time. I don't want to extend an eight year losing streak to a 12 year losing streak. I want the Republican Party take a breather, rediscover themselves, regroup, find some new leadership that the whole nation can be proud of again, and come back stronger.

Misgivings:

No relationship is perfect, and there are some things I don't like about Obama.

1. His inexperience. His résumé is admittedly thin for the world's biggest job. But what is there is extremely encouraging, from the thoughtful tone of his positions to the masterful way he's run his campaign.
2. He was wrong about the autism/vaccine link which I view as a test of scientific literacy. Not as wrong as McCain, but Obama should have known better.
3. Snarky comments and cheap shots about McCain's age. If his health is a problem, question his health. If his memory is a problem, question his memory. No diaper jokes.
4. I'm concerned about too much Democratic dominance, just as I was concerned about too much Republican dominance. I don't think that Democrats will attempt to abuse their power to the appalling extent that the Republicans did, but I'm uncomfortable with the kind of broadly sweeping power that breeds corruption.
5. Obama's tax cut plan is not realistic. The same people who criticize Obama's plan have said that McCain's plan is even less realistic. Basically I don't think we can trust either one, except as an indicator of "what they'd like to do" rather than "wht they will actually do".
6. Obama pledged to accept public funding for his campaign and then reneged on that promise. He did this because it was a major advantage for him, but still.
7. The Obama campaign has touted their refusal to take lobbyist money (which is legal), but allegations that they're willing to take money from fictitious donors or via questionable payment methods without preserving AVS records in excess of FEC limits seems credible, deserves to be investigated further, and is a serious problem if true.
8. He voted for retroactive telecom immunity and abstained from a ban on waterboarding. McCain voted in favor of waterboarding which is even worse but no excuse.

Other Reasons

I don't find these reasons personally compelling, but you might.

1. You're tired of making excuses. The smooth-talking new guy with the fancy education thinks it's so easy to drive this thing? Let's put him in the driver's seat and see how it goes.
2. You're tired of defending John McCain's platform, especially the parts that you don't actually believe in.
3. You don't need to give up your ideals or your identity. You can remain an economic conservative and a social traditionalist while still making what you think is the best choice for your country.