A note to a Republican friend in response to his reflections on whether to support Obama or McCain
Dear friend,
Some would say the bottom line is all that matters, the answer to the question who are you going to vote for. But with you, I would agree that the reasoning is important. From your note it is clear that in the main your vote for Obama is a vote of no-confidence for McCain in the face of campaign decisions that give you grave doubt as to what kind of president he would prove to be. His decision to choose Palin, his uncertainty and flailing about in the face of the deepening financial crisis, his low-road campaign tactics and penchant for mind-numbing slogans instead of offering analytic formulations which suggest a grasp of the problems facing America, all are good reasons to not vote for McCain. It is also disturbing that McCain's entire campaign has been about tarring and feathering his opponent and not at all about the structural challenges that America faces at home and abroad. If McCain does have a broad strategic and systematic vision of the problems facing America today, his inability to express this vision is disturbing, for if he cannot express it there is reason to doubt that he will be able to approach the problems that arise in a holistic manner and make cogent judgments grounded in such a macro-level understanding or valid world-view.
All of this being said, your doubts about McCain hardly add up to a strong case for Obama, and I can understand your uncertainty on this score. His resume is short, his mettle untested, his ability to make the tough calls uncertain. The one thing we know about him is that he is smart, reflective, systematic in his approach to problems, and able to bring all relevant parties to the table in order to hear from all sides before making a decision. These are all good habits of mind, which suggest a prudent pragmatic orientation, which suggest an orientation that should be relatively capable of dealing with whatever comes across the transom. These habits of mind, are, moreover, the very ones which have been strikingly absent on McCain's part.
Do we know enough about Obama's inner convictions or political principles? No. With a short resume put together almost in its entirety while he had his eyes on the presidency, pragmatic opportunism is clearly his strongest suit -- though that is not necessarily a bad quality in the case of a president who is likely to govern with an eye to his reelection and legacy. In your note I hear your concern about where he really stands regarding economic questions. So far, I am struck by his refusal to demagogue on these questions. Surrounded by an advisory corps drawn almost entirely from Wall Street and/or the Clinton economic team, his tone has been moderate, cautious. If he is ready to declare himself a tribune of Main Street and the Middle Class, he has been unwilling to play the radical populist card or to steal a card from Nader's playbook and declare himself to be the tribune of the people. I think he will follow the Clinton model, offering a pro-middle class political rhetoric while advancing policies that receive the imprimatur of the financial elites. Whether this policy course will be up to the challenges of the times is another question, but it will be a moderate approach which his very well-heeled corporate supporters are comfortable with.
In foreign policy, while again his record is short and his true convictions are unknown, all signs are that he will follow a relatively centrist policy line, a consensus position that hews to the editorial line of Council of Foreign Affairs. While he has said a few things that suggest naivete and leftist instincts, I sense that his pragmatism and his relative inexperience in this area will also lead him to craft establishment approved policies, perhaps with a slight leftward tilt.
My bottom line, and I sense it is yours as well, is that McCain has not shown himself to be up to the task of meeting the challenges of the tough times ahead. His judgment calls during the campaign, while hardly a great indicator of how he would govern, suggest an imprudence and lack of reflective capacity that do not augur well. Obama's approach to the campaign, and especially since winning the nomination at which point his campaign operations took on something of the quality of a shadow government, do suggest a reflective and systematic approach to dealing with problems that could only serve him well when it comes to government policy formulation -- at least when there is enough time to approach these things systematically, Of course, therein lies the greatest unknown: how will Obama respond when there isn't time enough to proceed systematically? What kind of decisions will he make when he must trust his gut and go on imperfect information? We have no way of knowing the answer -- and a career in legislative office is not really a good indicator either. And while we do know more about McCain's instincts in this regard, the verdict in this regard is mixed, and we know that he errs frequently by making snap decisions in cases where in fact there was time enough for deliberation and thorough consideration of all the options and all the implications. Obama may end up failing by erring in the opposite direction, but I would rather place my bet (and it is only a bet) on his deliberate and pragmatic approach to problems since I think more of the problems that will face the next president are of the kind that are amenable to such an approach.
Time will tell.
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