Why I am (still) voting for John McCain
This is a deeply odd year in American politics. The economy is in the single strangest funk in anyone's living memory, the depth of which is basically unknown and unknowable. The incumbent is more dead than lame, and in any case he has ceded his powers over everything but foreign policy to a sort of council of technocrats (long may they live, I guess). Two counter-insurgency wars rage. And over all of this hangs the dark spectre of terrorism.
But none of this is as odd as the spectacle of me being tempted to vote for the Democratic candidate for president. I can make no secret of the fact that, like almost everyone else on my side of the aisle, on everything other than the war on terror, and to some great extent even on that, George W. Bush has been a disappointment. A deep disappointment. His legacy does not inspire confidence in the Republican party's chosen successor. And at the same time, the Democratic challenger is a breath of bracing air who has swept up in the intoxicating winds of his personal charisma a great many right thinking conservatives and libertarians. The great Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan's solicitor general, is only the latest, but what matters more to me are staunch friends whose judgment I trust implictily. It is not a good time to be a Republican, and especially to be a constituent of the Republican party's wavering libertarianish wing.
Despite all this, I have decided that I cannot vote for Barack Obama. In the face of all the countervailing forces I have listed above, in the face of George W. Bush's failures, his abandonment of conservative values, and in the face of the strong attraction of Obama, who, after all, is precisely my kind of guy, a lawyer, a Harvard lawyer, a calm unangry presence, a man who comes like me from overseas, and who appears to understand the life changing power of America to set free the talents of a larger portion of its people than anywhere else, I still judge John McCain to be the better choice for President.
Why? I admit that it is mostly a negative case against Obama, but still persuasive to me.
1. On what I believe to be the transcendant issue of the century, on what to do about international terrorism, John McCain is more likely to bravely take the unpopular but necessary path. He has stood against his own party on torture, and on the conduct of the war in Iraq. He is no stranger to being disliked, and I judge that the President will need to be disliked in the next eight years, especially by foreigners.
- But, despite Obama's strong dovish tendencies, will his advisors and world events push him to the middle? If so, I am less apprehensive about him, but should we risk it?
2. Obama is obviously a brilliant and thoughtful man, but if his brilliance and thoughtfulness add up to efficacy, he will be effectively pursuing an agenda with which I disagree. I do not agree with his health care proposals, his tax agenda, his protectionist inclinations on trade, his support for farm subsidies, his apparently overwhelming desire to regulate ourselves out of our economic troubles. I don't agree with his pro-union positions, on his positions on education or on energy. I don't agree with Barack Obama on almost anything. That he might be good at governing with that agenda does not make me feel better.
- But, he's advised by Volker and Buffett! How bad could he be? See number 5 below.
- But, how do my views match up with McCain? Not so well, but a little better.
3. I don't believe that Obama's brilliance and thoughtfulness will add up to efficacy. I agree basically that we need competence in the next administration, but I am not convinced that Obama is particularly good at running anything other than a presidential campaign. In fact, my innate skepticism of lawyers running things suggests that he will be bad at leadership, whatever his prodigous gifts of charisma.
- But, McCain hasn't run anything either. No, I don't really buy the "largest squadron in the navy" claim as being relevant to the Presidency.
4. On issues on which I should agree with the Democrats, Obama has been cowardly. The best example is gay marriage, which I think that the Democrats at least should support explicitly, with the caveat that it be adopted by states democratically. Obama, for what seem to me to be obviously political reasons, has adopted a cheap cop-out - full legal rights of marriage without the name. As Obama obviously recognizes (see this video), this formulation would have been unjust had it been tried with mixed-race couples, such as his own parents, and it is unjust now. I take his point that perhaps the name of marriage is a lower level priority than the legal benefits of the institution, but it is a real count against him that he hasn't spoken out on this matter. Ditto for drug legalization - although I am a conservative, nothing seems particularly conservative about the state imprisoning millions of people because they like ingesting bad substances. As I always say in these cases, I've not even smoked a cigarette, but if people want to smoke huge bundles of marijuana, why should I care?
5. I do not believe that Obama will heed his centrist advisors. We have been told again and again not to fear Obama's leftist tendencies (did he really say he would renegotiate NAFTA? Yes) because he is advised by such centrist luminaries as Warren Buffet and Paul Volker. But I tend to agree with Richard Epstein. Obama's record does not suggest to me a careful centrist, but rather a very thoughtful, inclusive, respectful, leftist. It is very good that Obama can disagree vehemently while respecting his opponent. But this does not help me particularly with my policy objections.
6. I will not abandon a team I've been playing for since I wrote desperate op-eds in my high school paper for Bob Dole just because it is going to lose. They'll need me, and the kinds of people people like me support, in the years of wilderness.
7. Joe Biden is a windbag.
- But, Sarah Palin. Enough said.
10/30/2008
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3 comments:
A very good set of reasons for someone with your set of policy preferences to vote for McCain, although I think you are expecting rather a lot for Obama to come out in favor of total legalization of drug trade and use -- I'm fairly liberal on social issues, and I'm not sure I support that.
My only demurral to your choice of McCain is that if you do vote for him, after the Palin pick (which is what forced Fried to vote Obama), I am afraid you are setting your party on a course toward a Palin ticket in 2012. Reject a ticket that has her and so wobbly a conservative as McCain on it now, and I think there will be a better chance to have a candidate both intelligent and conservative running against Obama in 2012.
If y'all want to go for a young, highly religious, very socially conservative, genuinely reformist governor, Jindal beats Palin in so many ways it makes me really sad for what it says about the GOP that she's seen as more likely than he. I don't care for him personally (I am troubled by the need to cover one's ethnic identity) or politically (his push to castrate sex offenders is ludicrous and unconstitutional). But if y'all want someone who walks the walk on all conservative values and still forms a complete sentence, he's the guy.
Thanks. Just to be clear, I'm not sure I'd want total legalization either. But you can certainly do or say something as a start.
I'd vote for Jindal. To be fair, though, I don't think she's more likely because of something wrong with the GOP but because she ran for Vice President this time around. I still think Huckabee is the best (meaning, most likely to pull off a win) of this sort of politician, though.
Sure, but who gets picked as VP this time around also is influenced by who is seen as a better candidate for the "base" (which is what Miss Uncongeniality Mccain seems to have been going for with his VP pick). The only factor that Palin has going for her that Jindal doesn't is that she is female, and while I'm very glad to see the GOP taking an interest in empowering female leadership, I think they could have gotten just as much mileage out of Jindal's being their first minority VP (which also would neutralize concerns about racial "dog whistles" from the GOP ticket).
And let's be honest, Jindal would not have had trouble reeling off the names of newspapers he reads, or explaining how to cut spending on health care while still providing services (as he did in Louisiana), or talking about how to make a college education affordable (after being president of Louisiana's university system). The executive runs a giant bureaucracy, and Jindal has proven that he can operate in a bureaucracy while also reforming it. Seriously, if he weren't a social conservative nut I would want him for the Dems as a candidate. As it is, I'll take an educated, competent social conservative nut over an ill-informed, track-record-less social conservative nut.
Huckabee didn't strike me as particularly strong on either foreign or domestic policy. He certainly is the most likeable of the GOP's 2008 candidates, but it's not like he had a ton of competition for that (maybe Thompson?). I think he would have made a good VP candidate in a lot of ways, but would have been a total fail on the "attack-dog" role.
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