Time for the decisions

[jducoeur]

So tomorrow is the big day. For most of my friends, it's really the most important voting day, since they're going to vote for whichever Democrat gets nominated. Time to talk a little more explicitly about my choices. I'm registered unenrolled, so I'm going to talk about both sides.

A lot of people have said, over and over and over again, that you should just vote your conscience based on the issues. Fine. Let's talk about The Issue. Because to me, there is one issue that *completely* overshadows the rest when it comes to selecting a President at this point: the destructive hyper-partisanship that has overtaken this country.

The thing is, I really don't care that much about what the candidates think about specific issues. This is the head of the Executive we're talking about, not a legislator. The President is influential on the issues, to be sure, but they are most important as a symbol. What they do and how they do it sets the *tone* in Washington, and that trickles down to the rest of the country.

And the thing is, the tone of the country nowadays *sucks*. I mean, there has been partisan bickering in American politics since before the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence, but it's exceptionally awful right now. The amount of pure vitriol I'm seeing on both sides is tiring and unpleasant, and frankly I find it counter-productive. Good legislation usually comes from compromise, and we're in an atmosphere that makes that difficult.

What I want, more than anything else, is someone who is genuinely good at bringing people together. To that end, the decision for me on both sides of the aisle is pretty easy. Obama has built his entire campaign around the concept of healing the national rifts: insofar as he is a symbol, that is what he is mainly a symbol *of*. No one can do a perfect job of healing the current mess, but I believe that he will make a sincere and principled attempt to do so, and I think he'll make very good progress. That matters enormously to me.

And the thing is, I don't think Clinton is capable of this. It's not that she wouldn't *want* to, mind -- I just think that she has, largely against her will, been built up into one of the great symbols of the divisiveness. I'm not sure that a Ghandi could go from her position to become a real unifier. Healing requires goodwill on both sides, and too many people on the right simply will not grant her that. That's not fair and it's not right. But it is the reality on the ground, as I see it. Regardless of her competence, skill and good faith, simply due to who she *is* she will be used to continue the divisions, by the vested interests in the right who want those divisions to continue and who have invested 15 years into manipulating her image.

On the Republican side, the choice is easy. I mean, McCain would win by default anyway. Huckabee strikes me as a decent and sincere guy, but he sincerely wants to create a theocracy. Fortunately, this makes him completely unelectable -- a Huckabee nomination would be the Democrats' greatest Valentine's Day present ever. I firmly believe that Romney is a borderline sociopath, dedicated solely to the acquisition of personal power. Insofar as he stands for anything, he's an umpty-millionaire who stands for keeping life good for other umpty-millionaires, but basically he'll say anything that suits his personal ambitions. And Ron Paul, besides being too much of a libertarian extremist for my tastes, simply hasn't gotten enough media attention to stand a realistic chance. So McCain is the only plausible option who isn't terrible.

But that aside, the fact is that I do respect McCain, again precisely because of the unity thing. While I disagree with him on most issues, I do respect a lot of what he's done. He was willing to cross the aisle and work with Democrats in times when that was considered absolute heresy among the Republican party, and when it didn't really gain him much politically. He's earned his maverick reputation, and most of the ways in which he has opposed the party line (such as immigration) have been cases where I agreed with him. He's a hardcore conservative -- don't make the common mistake of believing he's actually a closet progressive -- but he's a thoughtful and sincere one, and I can respect that even if I disagree with him.

So basically, I like Obama because he's the Democrat who I think most Republicans can cope with (without incurring the wrath of the brainwashed masses), and McCain because he's the Republican who the Democrats can do business with. That matters to me more than almost anything else.

There is one other consideration, to be fair: I care about having a President who is going to push honesty and probity in the White House. In this respect, the President's style matters quite directly: as the head of the Executive Branch, he or she may not decide the laws, but will decide how things actually get done. Eight years of lies and secrets have been corrosive to the body politic, and I want someone who will put that right.

I think most of the candidates would do decently in this regard, frankly -- even the much-despised Romney might well be honest enough. But again, Obama and McCain strike me as the best bets. Both appear to be men of a good deal of introspection, who have shown reasonable judgement and honesty in the past. (I'm willing to forgive McCain's period of pandering, since he got better.)

I think both would be likely to fix the worst problems with the Executive -- and again, I care about that a *lot* more than about the other issues. In general, the issues people mostly talk about are, in my view, largely second-order. We have to fix *how* the country runs before we fix *what* it's doing. And I would welcome an Obama vs. McCain general election, because I think both would stand a decent chance of making things better...

Comments

[asim.livejournal.com]

And I would welcome an Obama vs. McCain general election, because I think both would stand a decent chance of making things better...

I'm an Obama supporter, but that's the match-up I want, and for much the same reasons. As I put it earlier today "I'm so damned tired of voting out of fear."

[mindways]

You've pinpointed exactly the largest issue I care about - while I desperately want to swing the government back away from the neocons' extremism, I don't want to do it in a vindictive "OK, it's the Republican turn in the barrel" exacerbating-the-rift kind of way. Like you, I think Obama's in a better position to do that than Clinton is.

I'm a bit more disillusioned with McCain than you are, though I'd still vastly prefer him to Romney. (Partly for the reasons you detail above, partly due to their respective postions on executive powers.) That appeal might make him more dangerous in the general election, of course, and I honestly can't figure whether I'd rather that he win the GOP nomination (making for a more tolerable Republican candidate) or lose (making for a less-likely-to-win Republican candidate). I'm concerned and faintly appalled that Romney's done as well as he has thus far.

(At least Giuliani's out of the race, though. What I read about him scared me.)

[jducoeur]

Oh, sure -- I quite agree. The danger with McCain, of course, is that he's the one Republican who is moderately likely to *win* (I give him even odds against Obama, and about a 70% chance against Clinton). So there's always the idea of voting for the "poison pill" -- try to get the Republican who you think is unelectable nominated. But that's a dangerous game, especially when you're talking about Romney, who is a clever and ruthless campaigner. I think Romney would be crushed against Obama, but would stand a very good chance against Clinton: he would turn it into exactly the sort of viciously dirty race that he's good at, and I don't think she can rise far enough above the fray to make enough of a contrast.

So I think it makes more sense to vote for the Republican who won't suck quite so much, who isn't likely to be a *disaster* in the White House. You're correct that the executive powers thing is a vital issue (and one that I really should have thought to bring up): McCain would be fairly likely to bring some sanity, whereas Romney would almost certainly continue the Imperial Presidency. I understand that McCain is far from perfect (frankly, he's turning into an annoyingly crotchety old man), but his experience at working with Democrats would stand him in good stead if, as seems likely, they control Congress. I suspect that that particular spell of divided government wouldn't be too awful.

And yes -- Giuliani scared the heck out of me, and I'm happy to see the back of him...

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't trust Obama - it's like there's no "there" there. He's inspiring, but I'm not looking to hire Tony Robbins for President. I look at those things on which he's actually ventured to state specifics, and they feel naive at best. I look at his advisors, especially in terms of foreign policy, and I feel that he's bringing back the worst of Carter, with a touch of Reagan for contrast (two kinds of bad). If he takes the nomination, I may have to hold my nose and vote for McCain, distasteful as that might be.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

I used to identify myself as an independent, probably even voted for Republicans somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the time. And now I would simply like to see the Republican party eviscerated. Their "big tent" shelters everything that is worst in America — bigotry (both racial, which they pitch under the radar, and sexual orientation, which they display proudly), insularity, the promulgation of unearned privilege, fear of foreigners, anti-intellectualism, plutocracy, theocracy. In power they have shown themselves to be cynical and rapacious beyond belief, to have no regard whatsoever for the common weal. They have shown themselves to be incompetent to govern — worse, to have no interest in competence.

I am no fan of the Democrats with all their deadwood and tired ideas. But seeing the utter pettiness of the Republican in power (breaking out the solemn machinery of impeachment over a blow job; firing prosecutors for inadequate party loyalty — and then the spectacle of the Attorney General of the United States sitting in front of Senate Judiciary Committee lying through his teeth and not even bothering to provide plausible cover for his lies) leaves me with the conviction that there is nothing salvageable there. Kill it and let a new party be born from the ashes.

[jducoeur]

I somewhat agree, but I'm not quite as despairing as you are. Basically, I want to see the current Republican power structure broken and crushed. This is part of what I'm enjoying about the current campaign, frankly: every time Rush Limbaugh gets red in the face about the idea of McCain winning, I quietly root for him a little more.

I really *don't* think that every Republican politician is evil. But a fair number of them are, and the rest have been altogether too supine in allowing the bad eggs to get away with murder. The result is, I believe, going to be an election in which they at *best* barely win the Presidency, and get crushed in Congress. (And at worst, they get seriously wiped out.) Either way, it's likely to have salutary effects on the party, although it'll probably take a few years for it to sink in, as they begin to figure out that they need to rebuild in order to become electable on the national stage again...

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

What dlevey said. You write that you want Obama because he's a decent man. True (as far as I know), but the last time we tried this we got Carter. Who was a profoundly decent man, and who is the absolutely best ex-President we've ever had, but as far as *being* President, he seemed to me to be completely ineffectual. As opposed to Clinton - if you look at what he accomplished and the legislation he got through, even in spite of all the intern dirt thrown at him by Republicans, it's pretty remarkable.

[jducoeur]

While I understand the comparison with Carter, I think it's altogether too glib. Carter's problem wasn't that he was decent, it was that he was *weak*. He got to the White House entirely due to a unique situation, opposing an incumbent President who had lost the faith of the country ten minutes after taking office. He had little political or diplomatic skill, and under normal circumstances, he simply wouldn't have made it in.

So I refuse to fall prey to the false association that decency necessarily equals weakness. Frankly, I think Obama's run a pretty damned cunning campaign, maintaining the moral high ground but giving just the right counter-punches when they needed to be made. It's not a campaign of weakness, it's one of diplomatic insight: figuring out what makes people tick and using that to advantage quite nicely. I see a man with a fair amount of steel, but who understands Teddy's Roosevelt's idiom for power, and isn't espousing the current fashion for political machismo.

The only candidate who concerned me as weak, frankly, was Edwards -- his Iraq plans were just too over-simplistic, and would have caused Carter-esque problems. Obama and Clinton both strike me as striking a nicely middle-ground tone that is appropriate to the situation. I'm quite confident that either will do fine in terms of foreign policy. (Which is really what we're talking about here.)

I'm mildly worried about McCain (who *is* a smidgeon naive in terms of foreign policy, in the other direction -- he's a little too over-confident about the brute-force approach), but I suspect that he won't commit the kind of atrocities that Bush has, simply because he's not quite as stupidly stubborn. I think he's a little too committed to the war, but unlike most of the Republicans, he's in it for reasonable reasons and shows a measure of sense on the matter...

[serakit.livejournal.com]

But using Bill Clinton's accomplishments to tout Hilary Clinton is a fallacious argument because she's a different person, unless one follows it with the idea that it would be continuing a White House dynasty and putting someone back who has already been there but just have him working through his wife this time.

[laurion]

Well, now that I, and most others have voted, it's just a matter of waiting to see the results. Interestingly, after I'd been to the polls, I found Lawrence Lessig's take at http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/20_minutes_or_so_on_why_i_am_4.html , and he seems to also be concerned with honesty, but he also focuses on morals and the war. When that man has something to say, he doesn't hold back. Please note that I'm not trying to sway anyone here, or to say 'Lessig says it, so it must be right!', I just wanted to share another non-policy based argument.

I hope you get your preferred general election.