Obama: Even the Conservatives' Right Choice

To follow along with James Carville's Biblical imagery, Barack Obama has parted the Presidential Red Sea to lead even principled Republican conservatives to the Obama Land of unifying and transforming America. In the March 24th issue of The American Conservative, Andrew J. Bacevich writes a clear and persuasive argument for his readership's voting for the Illinois senator called "The Right Choice? The conservative case for Barack Obama."

This is a must read. Among other satisfying points, he slams George W. and his policies and repudiates John McCain as the next president. Here are some clips of the piece:

...For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it is.

Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush's misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. ...

So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival.

To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war. Yet the ripples from this small war will extend far into the future, with remembrance of the event likely to have greater significance than the event itself. How Americans choose to incorporate Iraq into the nation's historical narrative will either affirm our post-Cold War trajectory toward empire or create opportunities to set a saner course....

Give the neo-cons this much: they appreciate the stakes. This explains the intensity with which they proclaim that, even with the fighting in Iraq entering its sixth year, we are now "winning" -- as if war were an athletic contest in which nothing matters except the final score. The neoconservatives brazenly ignore or minimize all that we have flung away in lives, dollars, political influence, moral standing, and lost opportunities. They have to: once acknowledged, those costs make the folly of the entire neoconservative project apparent. All those confident manifestos calling for the United States to liberate the world's oppressed, exercise benign global hegemony, and extend forever the "unipolar moment" end up getting filed under dumb ideas.

Yet history's judgment of the Iraq War will affect matters well beyond the realm of foreign policy. As was true over 40 years ago when the issue was Vietnam, how we remember Iraq will have large political and even cultural implications.

As part of the larger global war on terrorism, Iraq has provided a pretext for expanding further the already bloated prerogatives of the presidency. To see the Iraq War as anything but misguided, unnecessary, and an abject failure is to play into the hands of the fear-mongers who insist that when it comes to national security all Americans (members of Congress included) should defer to the judgment of the executive branch. Only the president, we are told, can "keep us safe." Seeing the war as the debacle it has become refutes that notion and provides a first step toward restoring a semblance of balance among the three branches of government.

Above all, there is this: the Iraq War represents the ultimate manifestation of the American expectation that the exercise of power abroad offers a corrective to whatever ailments afflict us at home. Rather than setting our own house in order, we insist on the world accommodating itself to our requirements. The problem is not that we are profligate or self-absorbed; it is that others are obstinate and bigoted. Therefore, they must change so that our own habits will remain beyond scrutiny....

Yet if Obama does become the nation's 44th president, his election will constitute something approaching a definitive judgment of the Iraq War. As such, his ascent to the presidency will implicitly call into question the habits and expectations that propelled the United States into that war in the first place. Matters hitherto consigned to the political margin will become subject to close examination. Here, rather than in Obama's age or race, lies the possibility of his being a truly transformative presidency.

Whether conservatives will be able to seize the opportunities created by his ascent remains to be seen. Theirs will not be the only ideas on offer. A repudiation of the Iraq War and all that it signifies will rejuvenate the far Left as well. In the ensuing clash of visions, there is no guaranteeing that the conservative critique will prevail.

But this much we can say for certain: electing John McCain guarantees the perpetuation of war. The nation's heedless march toward empire will continue. So, too, inevitably, will its embrace of Leviathan. Whether snoozing in front of their TVs or cheering on the troops, the American people will remain oblivious to the fate that awaits them.

For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The
choice turns out to be an easy one.

This shows the magnetism of Obama and his movement. If he can pull in some of these Republicans, he can create flow in our culture and politics -- cross-generational and cross-party support. It won't be everybody, but -- hey, won't be bad.

*****

A quick aside: David Brooks' piece, "The Long Defeat" in the New York Times, today was dead on. He said the door was closing on Hillary, and he asks why she's going on like this when it's hurting the Democratic race to the White House. When will Hillary give up? "She possesses the audacity of hopelessness." Not only that, she's inflicting it on all of us.

One more thing. You can't forget there are two giant egos involved -- Bill and Hillary's. Bill also has to accept that he's been beaten. Besides getting impeached in office (that was terrible though he stayed in the White House), he hasn't been beaten in a political race since 1980. Bill is definitely charismatic and persuasive -- used to getting his way -- and hates giving up his crown of Boy Wonder.

Comments

[LudwigVan]

This and the Kmiec article are wise reads. The Republicans ceased to be the party of Reagan and Goldwater in 1994, when they became the party of Gingrich, Rove, DeLay and the whole lot of Machiavellians that wanted to gain the world and lose their soul. They became the party of Nixon all over again. It turned me, a Reagan Republican in the 1980s (though I wasn't eligible to vote until '89) into a Clinton Democrat in the '90s, and now an Obama Democrat. My 70 year-old mother, an ex-Republican herself, supports him now.

I'm not pretending Barack will win over hardcore Republicans, but he's already done for the Democrats what Reagan did for the Republicans. He's broadened appeal and helped make the Democrats no longer the party of out-of-touch liberal elites, with the help of Dean and others of course.

When he was here in Austin at a town hall meeting a few weeks ago, he was talking about fiscal and personal responsibility, another way the Dems are more "conservative" than the GOP now. I wish I remembered the exact quote - it might be in a YouTube video on Obama's own channel; I need to look it up. He's also talked a lot about fathers needing to stop abandoning their children, and the need for kids to work harder on their education, things like that. A strong values message.

[ChandraSF]

The article makes a good point about Bill Clinton being beaten for the first time since 1980. The country has not had an opportunity to tell Bill how it feels after the embarrassment of 1998-99 (impeachment). He should see the less than stellar support for his wife partly as a rebuke to him. The more he injects himself in the current race, the more he fans that fire.

[jhamm1]

Republicans resenting the Iraqi War? What a concept.

While I've heard some in the pro-HIllary camp as branding Obama's non-partisan appeal as conducive to anything but subjecting Republicans to the ridicule they so richly deserve, the fact remains than, in order to enact change, we need to secure the White House in the first place, and if that includes swaying the appeal of moderate conservatives, so be it.

[Herrington]

HuffPost's Pick

Does it surprise? Obama is no god. He is a man as much as your high school history teacher or your gym coach, your beat cop, your crossing guard.

We have gathered up the hopes for our destiny and have held them close as the country seemed to go completely mad. Now a brilliant lawyer, and simply that, has opened a small crack in the looming edifice of our doom. People are rushing in behind.

Given the confidence and practice, any one of us would say the same things Obama has said about war, the economy, race, the environment and, most significantly, the government.

So no surprise that conservatives are finding appeal here. They are made of essentially the same stuff as liberals, and the whole argument of small vs. big government has gotten way the hell off topic.

[WilliePilgrim]

I've been noticing this phenomenon for some time and Obama's recent speech on the racial situation has added weight to the impetus for long time republicans to recognize that McCain is not the conservative in the sense that most philosophical (as opposed to ideological) conservatives would prefer and they too see that bridging the gap over race which divides us is somehow more likely with Obama. It is natural and nobler still to disagree with an opponent's position on any number of issues and to work in opposition to them, which I'm sure they will do, as part of a process where differences express legitimate concerns instead of the polarizing witch hunt and villification that's become our political process as of late. Who knows perhaps one day we will analyze the political field as the spectum it is where there exists an up and down axis as well as a left and right, and find common ground where before we saw only the shadow game of media projected and amplified acrimony and divisiveness.

[Binea]

well said,thank you willie.

[PioneerKing]

Too funny!!!
Beth, good try! The conservatives have realized how screwed up they have made things, the war, the economy, et. cet. that they now want to give the job to the black man.
Beth, the conservatives know that Obama will never succeed. If they give him the job then they will never have to worry about another black person becoming president and the democrats will be muted for a generation.
Pretty good way to obfuscate. I like a good smoke and mirrors political strategy.

[newshawk14]

I found your reply to be both racist, and even worse, utterly moronic. Do us all a favor and
simply read, but don't post.

[tangolopez]

You must understand pioneerking is a Hillary supporter. Do you expect them to be intelligent? oh, pls.

[MiamiLitg8r]

You say "conservatives know that Obama will never succeed. If they give him the job then they will never have to worry about another black person becoming president." So, in your view, Obama, as a black man, is genetically incapable of a successful presidency? Your myopic view of a individual's potential for success, where you assign dubious group characteristics based upon superfical skin tone, is not only intellectually lazy, but imprisons you in an incredibly small world, unable to truly understand the complexities and nuances of individuals. Unable to assess a person's potential because you can't get beyond skin color. Such limited sight is the reason why the Jim Crow South struggled economically for years until it reaped the economic benefits of balcks' integration into the general economy resulting from the civil rights movement in the early 1970's. No, there's no anger here, I only feel sorry for small-minded bigots like you.

[PioneerKing]

Sen. Obama will get chewed up and spit out by "agents of intolerance."
Who would prefer to vote for Sen. McCain who has shown that his approach to foreign policy and national security is seated in a cold war theory that, contemporaneously, was useless and currently is an even more outdated approach to resolving our national security concerns.
None of the main stream media has bothered to ask Bush/Cheney/McCain - how they hope to maintain the troop levels that they speak of; when military recruitment is at an all time low and dropping. Based upon Cheney's thoughtless comments about our "volunteer soldiers," it is apparent that the republicans are not supportive of our troops and the impact that the war, and the multiple re-deployments, have on our soldiers and their families. The members of the republican congress, the republican talking heads and, the republicans elected at local, county and state levels, have shown that, disproportionately, it is not their sons and daughters who will fight in Iraq. Sen. McCain's son's deployment to Iraq did not find his son fighting on the streets of Baghdad or Falluja and his son will not be re-deployed multiple times to Iraq. How can America win a civil war in a country that it does not understand when America has not been able to address the remnants of its own Civil War? Regrettably, many Americans will not vote for Sen. Obama because they harbor racial prejudices.

[butchie65]

My Republican neighbor, who said he would never vote for a Democrat, IS voting for Obama.

[newshawk14]

Even my brother in law, who is a right wing troll and loves Drudge and Limbaugh, is seriously
considering voting for Obama. Will miracles never cease?

[Binea]

One thing I am certain of..he won't lie to get us into war,and he has already shown good judgement concerning which battles to fight.Conservatives have always feared liberals because they say Liberals are commies or socialist ,well If Obama is one he certainly isn't like a Castro and not like China since he has been pushing for the most transparent government we've ever had.I like this man..lets help him win.

[lbrillante]

I don't expect Senator Obama to be perfect. I do expect him to do his best to be honest and live up to his ideals and I believe that he expects that of himself. With the challenges facing our nation we need change more than ever.
OBAMA '08

[hypnotoad72]

What if he betrays you?

We do have challenges. We also need to choose wisely. And Obama's associates are doing more to discredit him. One has to wonder why.

[FreedomLoverX]

Hillary already has. McCain already has. I'll settle for "what if".

[LeftLeanWing]

What's been happening is that since no one can actually attack Obama directly they attack the people around him then blame him for anything they said or did.

[Disparaged]

David Broder's "The Long Defeat" was brilliant and so true! We need more "real journalists" who will put this type of logic out there for the minions to think about. Due to the fact that he is certainly not a Democrat, I am quite surprised to hear him espouse these sentiments. If only the supporters of Billary will read the article and then "THINK", they too will realize that she has thown the Dem Party under the bus and she is in danger of throwing the country under the bus (you know the old adage of throwing the baby out with the bath water). If she would just concede, we could go back to at least "feigning" respect for her!

[Mojane]

It's Brooks (not Broder). The Clintons seem to have put together their master plan when they met in college, scheming the future for each one, and now there's this bump in the road. Do they let that divert them from their destiny? Hell no. Like pit bulls, like moles drilling thru the earth......

[PioneerKing]

Or beavers - didn't Erica Jong call Hillary a beaver? Check Ms. Jong's last HuffPost

[PLUMPLUM]

Is there some kind of divine intervention happening here? This is a wonderful piece.

Also little correction: David Brooks, not Broder.

[LanceJetson]

I might pick another Biblical image if I were you, although I get what you're trying to say. Moses parted the Red Sea and led his people out of slavery. However, on the other side of the split sea lay 40 years in the wilderness and that generation never made it into the "Promised Land." (I am NOT saying that's what Obama would do, just you might want to pick your analogies more carefully....How about like Jesus calming the storm and saying "Peace, be still?")

[McSurgent]

The Rev. Wright tapes are just the beginning of Obama, the Chicago Years. At this point the media has not examined Obama and his brand of politics while in Chicago (and I'm not including the Rezko stuff). Our friends at Fox will soon enough be rolling out the spotlight I am sure with the rest of the media following. By the way as a Republican I voted from Obama for U.S. Senator as did alot of others. With the nut Alan Keyes as the Republican candidate, it was an easy choice. There are reporters in Chicago that will be unveiling the Obama Chicago story. Obama doing dirty tricks - unthinkable!

[butchie65]

It works both ways. McCrazy liked the woman, cheated on his wife when she was down and out. They will make him look like a complete jerk that he is. They have things on him, just like you say they have on Obama. Wait until he begins to show what kind of a temper he has. I jhope Obama gets him worked up to show Mr. Hot Head.

[PioneerKing]

But aren't dirty tricks part of politics. The republicans never minded dirty tricks from Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Ollie North and the Ronald Regan Iran Contra crew, the Keating Five, the Silverado Savings and loan posse, Duke Cunningham, Mr. Abramoff, and Mr. Reznick et. al.
What are a few dirty tricks amongst pols?
Oh, I get it only the republicans are supposed to engage in shady dealings.