Obama

My friends, I am voting for Obama, you betcha. I first voted for a President in 1960 and to me the choice of a President has never been clearer.

The starting place is George W. Bush. His administration is a disaster – a war in Iraq that was unnecessary; a war in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban that was ended prematurely; a tax cut that skewed income toward the rich and along with a passion to deregulate contributed significantly to our present financial crisis; the disdain for scientific advice that has crippled the environment; a massive debt owed to foreign countries; the deterioration of the United States as a respected world leader; a management style that relies on gut reaction rather than on logic and reason; a weakening and disregard of government that has led to Katrina, collapsing infrastructure, and an unsupported, ineffective workforce; and as a final gift to the American public, the plan to change regulations during his last two months in office that will ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms, and would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards, and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Try as he will to separate himself from Bush, McCain cannot do so. His efforts to define himself make John Kerry’s flip-flops laughable. After the Bush/Rove campaign savaged McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary, he opposed certain of Bush’s policies during the first administration. But needing to become the GOP nominee, he effortlessly tossed aside these supposedly deeply held maverick beliefs to adopt Bush policies wholesale, including the extension of the tax cuts, which McCain had previously voted against as unfair. He proudly talked during the Republican primaries how he had voted for Bush legislation over 90% of the time.

Now that he is trailing in the election campaign, he has shifted course again and is claiming to be diametrically opposed to Bush. Of course the trick is to figure out which is the real John McCain. But in a way it doesn’t matter as his willingness to shift course shows only a desire to be elected and his disastrously run campaign shows a thought process unsuitable for a US President.

His attempt to blame Bush for our current ills stops, however, at the refusal to oppose Bush’s tax cut, which in the guise of Joe the Plumber has become one of his newest themes. Lowering taxes is his solution to almost all problems, as it has been in every Republican campaign that I can remember. The fact that Joe is making far less than the $250 thousand a year he would need as the owner of a plumbing small business in order to be subject to Obama’s tax policy and would actually receive a tax decrease at his current salary is just Bush- like ignoring of reality when it gets in the way of persuading the public to believe your repeated claims.

Every McCain/Palin campaign stop is replete with false threats and implications that everyone in attendance, the Joe the Plumbers and Wendy the Waitresses, are going to be taxed by Obama. I have always believed that this country has never done enough to stimulate the many small waitress businesses making more than $250K a year, but maybe they need to sacrifice some of that profit to the greater good in these precarious times. The Republicans have moved far away from the progressive foundation of US taxation to a country that now has the greatest inequality of income in decades.

Approximately half of the $364 billion Bush tax cut over its ten year period is going to the top one percent of Americans: those with incomes of $350,000 a year or more. The bottom 80 percent of the population, in income terms, gets less than 10 percent of the tax break. Somehow in the McCain/Bush logic, this is not a redistribution of wealth. Eliminating that tax break for CEOs, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street leaders and ‘redistributing’ it to the middle class is hardly socialism. It is righting a wrong that should never have been enacted.

McCain’s average man turns out to be the small business entrepreneur making a sizable profit ($250K after deducting expenses from income). But instead of honestly defending his and Bush’s proposal, he chooses to lie about Obama’s plans. In fact the proposal is the old standby Republican trickle-down theory of economics. Give the rich and businesses money and they will invest in new opportunities and soon there will be jobs for all. Trickle-down is an arguable theory but we never hear it defined as such by McCain. The alternative to trickle-down is making sure there are jobs for Americans (even if that means having government stimulate the economy) so that employees will have salaries to spend leading to profits for business, sometimes known as the trickle-up theory. It is time to give that approach a chance to succeed as the trickle-down application of the Bush years has led to the elimination of 780,000 jobs so far this year and the destruction of immense stock market value.

The reality of the situation we are in today is that the US faces enormous domestic and international problems. The Bush administration, on top of its massive debt (much higher than the published amount if you don’t add the Social Security surplus into the government’s income) has just committed $700 billion dollars into rescuing the economy and most observers don’t think that will be sufficient. As we continue to pay for two international wars and a war on terror, we let our infrastructure age, we allow 45 million citizens to go without health insurance, and our environment is increasingly at risk. These problems can’t be solved without giving the government more money. Obama has not fully addressed this problem, but he is willing to reverse the Bush tax policy and make a start. All McCain can fall back on is a pledge to lower taxes and the scare tactic to assert that everyone will pay more if Obama is elected.

McCain presents himself as eminently experienced especially in comparison to Obama, although he doesn’t think Palin suffers from this defect. John McCain does have knowledge of world affairs gained over decades of involvement. The question though is whether this will make him an effective President.

No one really has experience that mirrors the job of President or prepares one to assume the position, except for a sitting President running to be re-elected. The job is the most unique and complex in the world. What matters is the intelligence a candidate possesses and how it is used to make judgments. A President is inundated with conflicting proposals from many competent and thoughtful quarters and has to make the choices that will most benefit the country. You don’t learn to do this because you have traveled widely and met many people. McCain infamously visited a dangerous market in Baghdad when daily life there was lethal and returned asserting how peaceful it was, neglecting to mention, or just being unaware, that he was surrounded by 100 US soldiers and that access to the market was severely curtailed. VIP tours only reveal what the tour guides want you to see.

Assume for the moment that McCain’s experience does have resonance for being President. Although not credited during an election campaign by the general public or the press, the President does not inhabit every position in the cabinet, let alone all the Assistant and Under Secretary jobs in the administration. Just who will fill those key posts in a McCain administration? Be warned – they will be Bush Republicans. All those young staffers who were sent to the Embassy in Iraq immediately following the invasion, who did such a fine job administering that country and then returned to jobs as lobbyists and Assistant Under Secretaries are primed to take over more responsible positions in a McCain administration. Talk about rewarding the unaccomplished.

What is significant in the selection of a President is temperament. Of the two candidates that characteristic is diametrically opposed. Obama is a candidate who organized a brilliant campaign that defeated the Clinton juggernaut through cool analysis of what it takes to win primaries, a person who seeks out wise counsel before making decisions and will actually change his mind if the evidence indicates he should, and when faced with his first major public decision, chose a Vice Presidential candidate who can offer counsel based on his deep knowledge of foreign affairs. Obama is cool and poised in the midst of crisis as he demonstrated prior to the passage of the financial bailout and has the academic achievements and the debate performances that testify to his intelligence.

McCain on the other hand has shown shifting, impulsive, and erratic behavior throughout the Presidential campaign, choosing and discarding themes frequently as he searched for one that might deter Obama; stopping his campaign to return to Congress for the bailout deliberations, which helped derail the first compromise, lapsing into silence at the meeting with Bush, and then doing little to assure passage other than voting for the legislation. With the opportunity to make a vice presidential choice that would have resulted in a running mate who could be seen as a worthy successor and who might have locked up one of the currently contested states, he instead chose the disastrously unqualified Sarah Palin as a sop to the extremes of the Republican party. Palin has turned off the disaffected Hilary voters and many independents who just might have voted for what they thought was the old McCain and is now a significant drag on the ticket. Palin doesn’t seem to care as it is evident that she is running her own campaign to become the 2012 nominee.

As unimpressed as I am with how McCain has approached this campaign, a part of me would hope if he were elected that the old John McCain would reappear. But that hope has been thwarted by the character of the campaign he has chosen to run. If McCain wins it will be due to reasons that diminish what should be among the strongest values of the United States: equality, fairness, decency.

Certainly there are intelligent and reasonable supporters of John McCain who prefer him to Obama. But with the majority of people having lost faith in George Bush and his policies, McCain is facing an unfavorable election environment that is trending Democratic. His and Palin’s response has been to attack Obama in ways that appeal to the worst elements of the American public and if he is successful, it is they who will make the difference in this election.

Examples of this rhetoric that encourage division abound. Palin’s paean to small towns as the source of pro-America and patriotic attitudes and by implication writing off 80% of the country; the McCain spokesperson who contrasted the “real” Virginia with DC people who have moved in and taken over Northern Virginia; McCain’s brother who referred to the Virginia counties Arlington and Alexandria as “communist areas”; the Republican functionaries who use Obama’s middle name to imply that he is an Arab; the campaign event attendees who scream that socialism is imminent, that Obama will turn the government into a communist state, and that Obama is a Moslem who won’t salute the flag; the openly racist voters who cannot bring themselves to vote for an African-American; and the continued linking of Obama to Bill Ayers despite the facts that Obama was eight years old when Ayers was setting off bombs, that Obama met him after he had changed his life (remember the American ideal of giving people a second chance) and served on an educational board with him along with a group of well-known and respected Republicans.

These extremists were categorized succinctly by a comment on the FiveThirtyEight.com blog:

They consist of deep south states, prairie gunslingers, anti-tax fetishists, end times Rapturists, militiamen and Millenarians, jingoists and misanthropes, survivalists and skinheads, racists, and the odd Alaskan secessionist including the First Dude.

This problem is deeper than the extremists. There are too many unthinking people who just believe what they do without any reasonable basis and cannot accept ideas different from the few they have.

Today’s Washington Post had an article about a small Missouri town that is almost 100% for McCain/Palin.

“Obama has got enough things different, you know, his name, his color, his religion that people don't know what to make of him”. The Post quoted members of a group having breakfast who said they trust gossip and e-mails from friends over missives from politicians, which is why they spent breakfast trading misinformation about Obama. They think Obama will raise their taxes and legalize same-sex marriage, even though he has said explicitly that he will do neither. Obama is a practicing Christian who routinely talks about his "love of country." But, at their table, Obama is better known as a man of African heritage and Muslim roots whose patriotism to the United States remains suspect.

"He needs to be 100 percent American, like we are".

"Yeah, and the truth is he's just not. I can't trust him”.

“At least with McCain, you've got somebody who served the country, was a prisoner of war and understands what people like us stand for. Obama scares me”.

The division of the American public into two warring camps who can only see one side of an issue and want to crush their opponents into oblivion is what disturbs me most about the Bush administration as exemplified by Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, and that approach has now been adopted by McCain and most eagerly by Palin.

Following 9/11, the country was united behind George Bush. I even told Republican friends that if an election were held at that time that I would vote for Bush. But instead of building on that unanimity, Bush/Rove concluded they could parlay the success immediately following Afghanistan into a narrow victory in 2004. They were not interested in a landslide win, but wanted to obtain 50% plus one of the voting public. Getting consensus meant having to compromise; winning narrowly meant their agenda would carry the day because all they needed was the Republican base. In doing so they wrote off the interests of half the country, instead of uniting it, and have continued that philosophy through today.

Abortion is the clearest manifestation of this mindset. If you are opposed to abortion there is no other side and any proponent of abortion is in favor of murder. But according to polls more than half of the country is not in favor of eliminating abortion. Giving women a choice about their bodies or concluding that abortion is less of an evil than bringing an unwanted child into the world are positions derided by anti-abortionists. There is no willingness to compromise.

The reality is that there are deeply held beliefs on both sides of this issue. I realize it is easier to be for abortion and to assert that your belief does not preclude abortion proponents from following their beliefs but that if you are opposed to abortion it is impossible to see it continuing to exist. McCain rails that he will do everything he can to defeat Row v. Wade and appoint judges like Samuel Alito. If he were successful, if he could create nine like-minded justices, and if every state banned abortion, abortion would not cease to exist. Rich people would fly to Canada or Europe and do what they want. Poor people would revert to illegal and dirty back alley accommodations and be fortunate to escape with their lives.

Obama recognizes the passion on both sides of this issue and seeks to find some common ground that both sides can accept. Education about sex, rather than abstinence only schooling, more effective adoption laws, and a willingness on both sides of this issue to figure out how to reduce the divisive nature we find ourselves in. There is a profound difference in the candidate's approaches with only Obama showing the intention to find workable compromises. The same philosophy is needed across the range of difficult issues facing the US and if we don't come together we are in danger of a stalemate that will impact the ability of this country to succeed..

If McCain wins this election, his negative campaign almost guarantees that there will be a continuation of the poisonous environment that exists today. A Democratic Congress will be opposed to the programs that McCain proposes, rightly or wrongly. Sarah Palin will probably be ignored by McCain and will be free to roam the countryside building up support for her far right beliefs and her hoped for accession to the throne. The rest of the world will conclude that we have not changed and that our racist history still is a significant factor in our lives. McCain will fail to stir the population to support his programs and fractured government will reign.

Obama’s strongest suit is that he is a pragmatist who will seek to change our approach to politics. He will be seen as a transforming politician by people throughout the world. His calm demeanor and articulateness (the eloquence that McCain and Palin denounce) will provide the best opportunity to convince people that the difficult steps the country needs to take to escape its current morass will be understandable and supported. While racism will not disappear, it will be dealt a significant blow.

Obama offers hope for the future and an excitement not seen since John Kennedy. What a refreshing change from the past. Of course harsh reality may impinge, but McCain cannot touch this ability to change the mood of the country, saddled as he will be with his age, with his tendency toward impulsive behavior, and with the specter of Palin in the wings.