I chose the post name just because it sounds sort of official. You should know that although Matt J and I agree on many of the points I’m going to try to make, I think, I do not speak for him and you should not hold him responsible for anything I say. Or do. What do I care?
(Note: I just finished writing what follows. It is not complete. I do not intend to complete it at a later time. I just want any reader to keep in mind as they read the many, many words that follow that this is not inclusive of all my thoughts on this campaign. Also, as usual, I tend to ramble a tad, so I apologize in advance for that.)
It’s been difficult to watch this election unfold. Each candidate and their running mate have said and done things of consequence that have been ignored by the mainstream media, and each candidate and their running mate have said and done things that are not of any consequence that have been blown up by the media. Each side has attempted to exploit the other with “gotcha” moments that are truly petty and have no place in (what I like to think would be) a real election. This is commonplace in elections, so why bring it up? Both of these candidates pledged, at a time that seems like long, long ago, to keep this campaign season clean. I can’t pinpoint who first violated their pledge, or when, but it doesn’t really matter. The point is that I actually believed them; John McCain, the maverick, the bipartisan senator, the guy whose name I invoked many times in the past several years to describe my political affiliations, and Barack Obama, the fresh-faced young guy from Illinois who promises to lead us in a departure from politics as usual, the one who understands that Americans are largely sick of the status quo in Washington. They both let me down. And that was when the race between them was just beginning. There have been many more letdowns since, but there have also been many reasons to be encouraged. A summary of these events and my observations will, I hope, explain my decision regarding for whom I am going to vote tomorrow.
Obama critics attacked his stance by claiming that he, an Ivy League-educated, wealthy elitist did not understand or care about the economic concerns of the common person who was hurting at the pump. These criticisms are petty and foolish. Giving Americans a break at the pump is not going to solve any problems, it will make them worse. I will not be the first to convey this sentiment and I will certainly not be the most articulate, but I believe the idea is very simple. We use a lot of oil. Without getting into the reasons why we need to cut back on oil, allow me to make the statement and assume you will agree that we need to cut back on how much oil we use. The most visible way that most of us use oil is by putting it into the tanks of our cars in the form of gasoline. This is the way that most of us can see how much each drop of oil we use hits our pocketbooks: you literally watch the digits that represent your dollars spin on the pump as the gas flows into your tank. How high the number goes affects how willing people are to fill their tanks. If the number goes up, people will get upset and act accordingly; before the price of crude oil went down recently due to the dips in global markets, public transportation use went up and cries for offshore drilling went up. (I will return to this point in a minute.) If the Clinton-McCain tax holiday had taken place, Americans would have been encouraged for a few more months to continue to think that their addiction to oil was probably bad but not really as bad as people made it out to be. All the while, their gas would have simply been made cheaper at the expense of future generations, and they would not have been forced to react in the ways they did.
Taking more public transportation and calling on Congress to allow offshore drilling are two important reactions on the part of Americans. The increase in public transportation use represented Americans’ willingness to change something in their daily lives in response to the higher prices, which is a good thing. The demand for Congress to allow offshore drilling represented Americans’ awareness that the government needs to do its part to respond to the situation. Let me emphasize that this point is relevant regardless of your views on offshore drilling; the point is that the people went to Congress demanding a solution. Let me also emphasize that I do not believe that the government’s role is to solve all our problems; this just happens to be a problem in which the government does need to make itself heavily involved. These two reactions would not have taken place at all and have in fact subsided since the price of gas went down. It is important that they did take place because it’s an indication that Americans will be able to cope when they are forced to finally make real changes concerning their energy choices and consumption. In fact, their impressive reactions are one of the reasons why I personally support a federal tax that would put into effect a price floor on gas, but the platform on which I would run for president is not at issue here.
I was largely unimpressed by the presidential debates, with several reasons unique to each candidate. One reason that was common to both was the fact that they said things that were entirely unrealistic and most likely untrue. I suppose that saying things that are unrealistic and likely untrue are designed to woo undecided voters with promises, but the effect on me was disenchantment. Each candidate was asked directly by moderators on multiple occasions which of their proposed government programs would have to be suspended or reduced on account of the economy turning sour, and each candidate tiptoed around the question, not wanting to be the one to break the bad news to voters that (gasp!) some campaign promises were going to be broken. This was a bit puzzling to me; not that the candidates were reluctant to admit that they would not be able to meet all of their goals, at least not right away, but that neither of them seized the somewhat unusual opportunity to have a legitimate excuse onto which they could blame their inability to fulfill all of their promises. The debates would have been a good time to begin laying the groundwork for the inevitable excuse, and neither one did, instead insisting that they could save the world despite the sagging economy; and by the way, while offering generous tax cuts! I’m not saying that excuses are a good thing, I’m saying that being unable to be honest or even realistic is a bad thing. My final note on this point is that Obama came the closest to admitting that some of his plans may have to be delayed or cancelled, but that came only after numerous questions from multiple moderators, and he never fully answered the question. But he came closer than McCain.
On one issue that Obama remains completely unrealistic is his review of the budget. He has promised, as he did in his national TV spot that would have delayed the conclusion to Game 5 of the World Series had there been more than 3 innings to be played, to go through the federal budget “line by line”. This is an out and out lie. The federal budget for the 2007 fiscal year was about $2.4 trillion, which is another way of saying that it was many, many, many pages long. He is not going to go through the budget line by line. I doubt he would even go through it page by page. He may have a very large team of people go through it and give him a nice little summary, and maybe that’s what he meant. But that’s not what he said, and that bothers me.
I’m also bothered by his approach to redistributing wealth, particularly in national TV spot. Please read carefully: my problem is not (entirely) with the fact that he wants to distribute wealth. Rather, my problem is with the hypocrisy in the spot. Part of his spot focused on the idea that many of us have parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who immigrated here and worked hard so that we, their future generations, could have a better life. The point of the spot was to show that the government has been failing those hard-working ancestors by depriving us, their future generations, of quality education and healthcare. What I took away from that was a terrible inconsistency which forced me, again, to wonder whether a candidate was simply oblivious to a disconnect between two important concepts, or if they are aware and are just hoping that Americans are too dumb to see the disconnect themselves. The disconnect of course is that the immigrants who came here to forge a better life for them and their future generations were not lured by the idea that they could work hard to provide quality education and healthcare to others; they were lured by the idea that they could work hard and keep their money. The “land of opportunity” gig meant that if you worked hard you could make a better life for your family, regardless of your current socioeconomic status. The extent to which this was true is inconsequential; the point is that the two ideas don’t jive, and it makes me feel like Obama as trying to pull the wool over my eyes.
Hypocrisy, of course, does not have a political affiliation, and that’s not the point I’m trying to make. McCain has had his own fair share of hypocritical statements and actions, that’s just not the problem that I have with him that I am choosing to highlight. McCain’s never ending attacks on Obama’s position shifting is utterly ridiculous. It stems from the idea that changing your mind is a faux pas. Saying one thing and immediately turning around and doing another is what’s bad; changing your mind after conditions have changed is not. Sticking to your guns is effective in certain situations, but being able to take new developments into account and changing your strategy to reflect changes is more effective in other situations. McCain’s claim to being a maverick and his continuous pointing to his record as a measuring stick of consistency are inconsistent. He says he is a maverick because he reaches across the aisle to Democrats on certain issues, and that he has to examine each issue in its own context, not according to the party line (the issue of whether or not he does this as consistently as he claims is a separate one). He also says that he is consistent because he has always and will always vote to “finish the job in Iraq”, whatever that means. That strategy is not one of a maverick, or of a person who will examine issues as contextual facts change and develop. That strategy is one of a person who considers sticking to his guns more important than reacting to potentially very important developments, and that is a dangerous approach, not just to a war but to an economy, a volatile Congress, an approaching energy crisis, and so on.
A maverick also would not have chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. (I’m ignoring the pesky question, yet again, of whether the candidate really didn’t know what they were doing or if they were just trying to pull one over on voters.) Palin being a woman or being from Alaska or being a hockey mom does not make either one of them a maverick. By McCain’s own definition, a maverick politician is one who tries to reach across the aisle and work with the other side. Selecting Palin in only a very small way represented McCain trying to reach out to undecided voters. The only people who were swayed by Palin were people who are only interested in a woman occupying executive office, most likely embittered Hillary supporters. I suspect that the number of people who were undecided or leaning towards but uncommitted to Obama that instead swung to the McCain camp by virtue of him selecting Palin was marginal. Rather, Palin reinvigorated an otherwise dead conservative base. The GOP had a great couple weeks thanks to her but then the buzz fizzled. Her staunchest supporters remain people who were already going to vote Republican regardless of who was on the ticket. At that point, as an undecided voter, I liked Palin as a gimmick but I was again disenchanted by McCain. I’m the undecided voter! Aren’t I the one that you are trying to woo? How is this supposed to be appealing to me? It wasn’t, and it further tarnished McCain’s already heavily damaged maverick image in my mind. Choosing a running mate who reinvigorates your base is not something a maverick would do. A maverick would have chosen a Joe Biden, a Mike Bloomberg, or, in an alternate universe, a Hillary Clinton.
Full disclosure: I voted for Bush in 2004. In 2004 it was no a secret that the “world” wanted someone who was not Bush to be elected, and that bothered me little. This is because it is my impression that the world wanted Kerry for the same reason millions of Americans wanted Kerry, and that is not so much that he was John Kerry but that he was not George W. Bush. While I did think that the Obama Europe Tour of this past summer was a little over the top, it also convinced me that the world truly wants Obama because he’s Obama, not only because he’s not McCain. It’s important this time that we elect a guy that will get along with the rest of the world. One of the president’s many hats is our head of state and it would help our image immensely if our head of state was well-received by not only somewhat obligated other heads of state but also by the people of other countries, who are not so obligated to feign friendliness towards an American president. I am convinced that if Obama is elected that it will also reflect well on the American people. The memories of non-Americans are similarly, pitifully, but also thankfully, as short as those of Americans; when an American travels to England or France or Japan or India now they are questioned about their feelings of Bush because the average non-American doesn’t understand the volume of votes against Bush and that the person they are speaking with didn’t necessarily vote for Bush. If Obama is elected, they might assume that the visiting American voted for Obama, and they probably will be a little happier about it. I’m in no way saying that people base their amount of hospitality towards Americans based on the visitor’s political affiliations but in my travels I have found that it does impact the hosts in a noticeable way. Electing Obama will show the rest of the world (or at least, serve them the same delusion) that we’re on the right track and not just interested in war, which is a very generalized version of their perception of the choice we’re making in this election. Showing the world that we’re interested in change is important.
Another hat the president wears is party leader. If McCain is elected, he will likely be facing a very Democratic Congress. There is potential for that to be a terrific situation; the maverick senator-cum-president who when faced with a strong opposition sees the situation as an opportunity to work together rather than a roadblock preventing partisan action. However, I think that he will try to stick to those guns of his and fight the Democrats. Nothing will continue to get done. Partisan divides will continue to deepen and widen. Fights will ensue in a nasty nomination process to replace Supreme Court justices.
Now is not the time for things to not get done. Now is the time for serious reform of our national energy policy, which directly impacts the economy, both in the short and the long term, foreign policy, and national security. Education and the economic impact of the baby boomers retiring also need serious attention. In a worst case scenario, Obama is elected and the floodgates burst open with Democratic reform and Supreme Court nominations. The Republicans are powerless to filibuster, much less vote down, borderline socialist legislation, and they instead hunker down to try to weather the storm until the midterm elections come to save the day. But this is unlikely. I’m not scared of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid dream team, precisely because of the first name on that list, the leader of the party. Obama has swung back to the center just in time for the election, like a good candidate, whereas McCain has inexplicably swung hard to the right. This gives me more faith in Obama. I could be falling prey to yet more wool being pulled over my eyes, but I feel like with Obama I’m at least taking a chance on a good thing, whereas McCain, as he fought hard to convince me, is a sure thing; surely to be stagnant.
I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. I think the constitutional law professor will appoint justices to the Supreme Court that will appropriately balance the political scales on the Court that they all claim to not be a part of. I think that he will use the de facto mandate he has by virtue of his party’s majority in the Congress to seriously attack our self-damaging energy policy. I think he will have the restraint to not abuse that de facto mandate. He will not just reinvigorate his base to try to coax supporters out of the woodwork, but also reinvigorate international support for the United States and for Americans.
The saying goes that the evil that we know is better than the evil that we don’t know. My take on that is that it’s only true if the evil you know is not so troubling and discouraging that you worry for the country’s future. I think that in this election we need to bet on what we don’t know, and that’s Obama. He may abuse his majority in Congress and he might blow it with Iran. He may go soft on Russia and he might appoint some radical judges. But those are just possibilities. You could make up similar damning possibilities for any candidate who ever ran. The difference in this case is that there is also the real possibility that Obama will be great. I do not see that possibility for McCain.
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