My Vote Today: Barack Obama and Joe Biden

Despite the pleas of a number of my favorite (and even not so favorite) readers, I have kept quiet until now about who I planned to vote for.

My support for any candidate or party is something I tend to keep on hold until getting very close to voting. I don't believe in unconditional support for anyone or any organized political institution.

There are also some issues I care about more than others, and my approach is subjective, dependent on ever changing postures and issues. I mull things over, reconsider, change course, and sometimes change back.

I have known and admired Senator John McCain since 1993. I have met Senator Barack Obama several times personally and have studied his record, habits, and words very closely. I have colleagues and friends who work at the highest levels in both organizations.

Despite my having applauded John McCain's political career and often brave policy positions many times in the past, I can't support him and his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, tomorrow.

The reasons I can't support John McCain are three. First, despite having a credible and impressive record in the United States Senate on a great number of policy issues, he chose to make military and national security issues the primary foundation of his campaign. Rather than recruiting Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Armitage, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, Robert Zoellick and others to be the primary sculptors and advisers to his campaign, he neglected most of these and ignored others in favor of foreign policy hands that reflected militant neoconservatism and strident, pugnacious nationalism.

Rather than conveying that he was a national leader who understood war and peace and would be cautious with deployments of troops and American commitments, McCain telegraphed a "recklessness" when it came to U.S. foreign policy and key national security questions.

Secondly, amplifying this recklessness, John McCain failed to make competence and a clear understanding of what America's history and great debates and challenges are an absolute requisite for anyone he would put in line for the presidency. He chose Sarah Palin who I doubt knows much about the very DNA of the nation. I have heard no evidence of her knowledge or awareness of the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers, the Civil War, womens' suffrage, the civil rights battles of our near term history, or many other great debates and challenges in our past. I don't get the sense that she is ready in any serious way to drive the ship of the United States of America. I think had McCain selected Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Joseph Lieberman, or even a Meg Whitman as his running mate -- this race would be tighter. Picking Palin was a reckless move -- amplifying significant doubts about John McCain's judgment.

Thirdly, I am a fan of some leading members of John McCain's team -- including Rick Davis, Trevor Potter, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin. I have seen them all in better times managing better challenges and issues. Holtz-Eakin is one of the least partisan economic policy players in Washington and has provocative, constructive ideas on a wide range of domestic policy issues. McCain allowed Senator Phil Gramm to squelch Holtz-Eakin's views and work early in the process and to make every answer to every problem the single refrain of "tax cuts." McCain was largely unprepared and had not thought through what were obvious fragilities in the U.S. economy.

This was a failure of leadership and judgment.

The reasons why I am voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden are several.

I think Obama's limited record and the fact that so many have affixed their expectations and aspirations on his campaign -- despite the fact that these aspirations between different groups are in fundamental conflict with each other -- have made supporting Obama a challenge for me.

I'm not someone moved by the questions of race and identity about his past. I know others are, but these qualities of leadership and "breakthrough" are not so high on my list when voting for national leadership.

I admire sharp-edged thinking, the establishment of clear priorities, a commitment to move the nation's interests forward and the conceptualization of a broader global vision that may help to promote opportunity, stability and justice.

On the whole, Barack Obama has convinced me he is capable of seeing America's challenges in these terms -- though i think that there are a great many close advisers around him who want to continue the "third term" of the Clinton administration -- or whose vision is defined by inertia and incrementalism -- rather than the big leaps forward that Obama frequently flirts with.

This nation is at a pivot point in its history. We have to change and rethink things. We need to anticipate crises and tests of America's power -- exactly as Joe Biden suggested will happen. He is right.

America needs a new global social contract -- and a domestic social contract that reshuffles the costs, opportunities and responsibilities between our stakeholders at home and abroad. Winner-takes-all capitalism and unilateralist foreign policy has to be shelved. We need a "smart globalization," not manic neoliberalism.

America needs to re-engage, needs to end an idiotic, self-damaging Cold War against Cuba and its people; needs to put the Middle East Peace Business out of business and produce and impose if need be a two state solution that respects Israel's needs and Palestine's.

We need game changers with Syria, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran to offer them compelling reasons to take Libya-like tracks out of the international doghouse. We need to understand what Russia's and China's highest national priorities are and see if we can help them achieve what they want in exchange for helping us on Iran, nuclear proliferation, climate change, the global economy, and other important global causes.

We need to reconnect with and re-marry Europe because that partnership is vital to momentum and to being taken seriously anywhere else around the world. We need to respect the Arab world, the Muslim world, need to stop making false choices between our relations with the Saudis and other Arab states on one hand and Israel on the other.

We need to buy the opium product of Afghanistan and redirect the production targets of farmers and warlords there, deal with the Taliban, and do what needs to be done to help pragmatic leadership in Pakistan seduce its tribal regions to support national goals with the U.S. not antagonizing an anti-Western nationalism there.

We need to see the checks and balances of our form of democracy restored and the usurpation of unprecedented and dangerous powers by the White House rolled back. We need to pursue accountability for the collapse of trust at home and abroad and reform the nation's balloting process in order to make certain that citizen voices are heard restoring again a representative form of government.

I think that on the whole Barack Obama represents the kind of leader who knows that we need to find our own 21st century versions of John Maynard Keynes and Dean Acheson and have to regain global leverage as "systems designers" and "systems integrators", collaborating with other globally responsible stakeholders to re-engineer the world and create a new equilibrium.

These are terms that I think Obama thinks in -- and they are very much the kinds of benchmarks that inspire the work that Joe Biden and his team have done.

As I have written before, I am a great fan of Joe Biden's work and approach to problems. He takes risks with ideas -- and we need that.

Incrementalists are not jumping ahead and not taking the risks that tomorrow's challenges require of us -- and my hope is that Obama tempers himself and rejects the security blanket of taking too many personalities and too much thinking that will make his administration look like "Clinton III."

We'll see. I have concerns. I have hopes. But I want seriousness and a fresh run at getting America back on track to restoring health and solvency to its national security and economic portfolios.

To my regret, John McCain and Sarah Palin are not up to these challenges.

I believe that Barack Obama and Joe Biden may be -- and I hope to work with them, in my think tank role and in a constant run of constructive counsel here on this blog -- as they help move the nation out of the incredibly bad mess it is in.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

 

 

Follow Steve Clemons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SCClemons

Comments

[rkoenn]

A very thoughtful discourse on why one should vote for Obama. Many of my own thoughts were expressed here and the reasons I voted for him as well. And I too was once a fan of John McCain before he sold his soul to the far right wing and Christian right of the Republican party. John McCain scares me and I believe there is some embedded deep in his psyche that makes him unsuitable for the presidency. It is possibly something left over from the Viet Nam war, that belief that the US should and must win in all its' dealings with the world. This is self serving and self destructive. It also paints things in black and white and the believer in this cannot see the choices in between. We must win in Iraq no matter the cost, this is irrational and will cause more grief than good. We have to look at things from the other viewpoint, we may not agree but we should at least look and try to understand. Obama already has experience doing this and it will make our country greater. I am only hoping later tonight this country is released from 8 years of self destruction and that all our citizens come together for the greater good.

[musicisourhigh]

I liked that Steve Clemons explained his support for Obama in a clear manner. Another well thought out endorsement,.

Well written Steve Clemons and like you we are voting for Barack Obama. I hope people who are undecided will read your statement and vote for Barack Obama.

[robbor]

fortunately we've gotten to see how both McCain and Palin react and operate under pressure before the election ended. this is a part of them which is just as valid as all the good stuff we've seen and heard about. it took a presence such as Barack Obama to peel the mask of congeniality off their faces, exposing a rather dark side few have seen before. there's no regret coming from me.

[elliot123]

Gov Palin's trip from Alaska to DC for the inauguration planned on travel planning site www.tripcart.com

http://www.tripcart.com/MyTripCart.aspx?TripID=5840786

Lots of moose and joe sixpack references

enjoy

[themainpoint]

What America needs to understand is that no president can make change on his own and the status quo is here to stay unless Americans begin paying much more attention to what the lawmakers in Congress are up to and what they actually deliver.

What America needs to understand is that there will be no change unless AFTER we vote, we closely watch each member of Congress, and the president ,and apply immense pressure so they make the changes we want.

What American needs to do is to vote out each and every member of Congress or president who delivers excuses and not RESULTS.

What America needs most is to get the money and special interests out of elections and to have publicly funded elections so the citizens can take back control of this runaway government and ensure changes are made for the benefit of all the people and not just a few special interests.

What America needs is to understand that Bush could not have done nearly as much damage as he did unless BOTH parties in Congress stood by and allowed it---and in many cases they facilitated it.

[Lookin4truth]

Has Obama's eligibilty to run for president of our great country even been proven? That is the most fundamental question that, to this date, has not been verified. Why is his birth certificate "sealed" and not made public record? How is it possible to verify his age? Why are his campaign donations/donors not a matter of public record?? What is he hiding????

[breezyholler]

HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY STILL BE ASKING THIS QUESTION...LOOKIN4TRUTH...DON'T YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT IF McCAIN COULD HAVE DUG UP ANY DIRT THERE ...HE SURELY WOULD HAVE!!!!!!!....DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND ACCEPT REALITY !

[vant]

Some of you will still be asking this question four years from now. Give it up. He's an American. Deal with it. The only candidate in this race born outside the U.S. was John McCain, who was born in Panama.

[knowBuddhaU]

ThanksPleasePardonTersenessDueToWordCount

O brother, your terminologylogy is unreflectively mechanistic: "to regain global leverage as "systems designers" and "systems integrators", ...to re-engineer the world and create a new equilibrium."

Reductionism is dead, Steven Jay Gould said.

"Humbled by the Genome"
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/opinion/19GOUL.html?ex=1225861200&en=1cf2f993909d95f1&ei=5070

With it dies the Newtonian Mechanism metaphor for life. Machining the world has yielded global climate disruption. We urgently need an organic way of being in the world.

O brother, I trust you know yourself as a being aware of his own becoming, not a machine; neither is our source.

"Changing the Way Society Changes"
"What I want to question are the prevalent strategies for bringing about such corrections and the axiological presuppositions on which they pivot. Although it may be true that 'nothing succeeds like success,' it is also true that nothing more readily blinds us to inherent flaws in the means and meaning of our successes than 'success' itself. Critical inattention to the strategic axioms underlying the successful engineering of political and social change might, in other words, finally render our best-intended efforts self-defeating."
http://www.buddhistethics.org/6/hershock991.html#Change

Uncritical repetition of outdated reductionist and mechanist tropes will be exactly that: self-defeating.

There's only one way to achieve our shared destiny: the same way the sun shines, the earth quakes, and all plants grow, the same way you are hearing these words that never have been spoken:

from within!

[dlinguist]

That was amazing display of Kōan

[Penmaiden]

It’s not "really" the candidate- the Obama or the Mccain who is running, It’s their advisers, vice presidents and interested factions, at least put these guys pictures in the paper somewhere, (and dart manufacturers excellent opportunity here). Candidates can be lovable like Rover, but the others are ringing the dinner bell.
So you can make all the technology and polls and computer stuff and high paying analyst obsolete by just writing your own name as a write in candidate... What a way to show ‘em media elites...
http://rubent99.blogspot.com/