"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Facing the Music: America's Barack Period
Posted 11:53 a.m., Nov. 4, 2008
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It was a warm night in early September. I was waiting for a bus to take me to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, speaking on my cell phone with a good friend, a conservative Democrat by temperament, about the presidential candidates.
My friend supports John McCain. He worries, he said, about Obama's lack of experience.
I respected him for that, still do. I understand completely.
Setting aside the attacks against Obama aimed at painting him as a potentially evil-intentioned Manchurian candidate, setting aside his bizarre choice of running mates--a lot to set aside, I admit--I believe John McCain to be a good man.
Still, I cannot support McCain, I told my friend. I am prevented by a little presidential exercise that I keep running in my head.
"Suppose that instead of John Kennedy, McCain had been president in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis," I said into my iPhone. "Think about that for a moment.
"Now, suppose Obama had been president at that moment," I continued. "Which one of them sees us through? Which one of them takes the crucial misstep that gets us all turned into super-heated radioactive dust?"
Having observed both these candidates for so long, having established an impression of the character and biography of each man, there really isn't much doubt in my mind.
Missiles Over Miami
Had he been in office in October 1962, I believe Obama would have played it cool, just as John Kennedy did. He would have accepted the counsel of all the advisors in his orbit--not merely the military commanders--and made a reasoned decision, just as Kennedy did. He thus would have insured that my birth 27 months later would safely take place.
And McCain? It's a gut check, I remember telling my friend as the bus approached. But I can't help but feel that he would have been attracted to the arguments of the hawks, like advisor and Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, who wanted to bomb the Cuban missile silos--even while acknowledging he could take out no more than 90 percent of them. (A claim later refuted during post-crisis analyses as unrealistically high.)
Had Kennedy--or McCain--caved to LeMay's pressure, there is almost no question that one or several American cities would have been obliterated by a nuclear strike. America would then have retaliated with ICBMs against both the Cubans and the Soviets--prompting the Soviets to launch against the U.S. in turn.
The population of the world would have been decimated.
Of course, less than two weeks after my bus-stop conversation, my prevailing view of Obama became standard currency because he reacted calmly--presidentially, many said--to the market collapse of mid-September. McCain meanwhile thrashed, first denying that "the fundamentals" of the economy were anything but sound, then angrily threatening to fire the Commerce secretary, then "suspending" his campaign--while forgetting to pull has attack ads, then ...
The litany is too well known to continue reciting it.
Like many millions of Americans who might under other circumstances have cast my vote for McCain, later today I will be supporting Barack Obama with my vote.
I do that with not the least fear that Obama is or ever was a Muslim. (Even though, like Colin Powell, I make no assumption that Muslims, like Unitarians, are automatically disqualified from the presidency.) Born in Hawaii two years after statehood, Obama is as American as I am. End of story.
Obama's lack of experience is a concern, though his intellectual heft, paired with his very grounded and steady temperament, suggest to me he can learn and adapt rapidly. McCain, though much more experienced on many fronts, has also never been an executive of any kind, and would have just as much to learn as Obama. I'm not as certain of his teachability.
I am also not worried about the phony, late-inning charge that Obama is an incipient socialist. He may be liberal--and I assume he is considerably more liberal than me--but no man who has earned $4 million on a book deal is going to remain a Socialist for long.
Obama: Lingering Concerns
That said, I have two worries about Obama.
First, for all his measured calm before the storm of the financial collapse, it is anything but clear how Obama will seize the reins of executive power to help guide the nation out of its economic morass, the pain of which will only be felt after today's election.
In the debates, disappointingly, he refused to answer questions about which of his sacred-cow programs would have to be slaughtered in order to accommodate the massive infusion of cash that the Treasury is dumping on Wall Street. His declaration that he will cut "programs that don't work" is less than reassuring; it contains the possibility that he may determine they all work just fine. Not all of them do. More worringly, Obama has not touched the third rail of Social Security/Medicare.
It's true that he probably could not do those things without losing crucial voter support. And we don't yet know the extent of the financial calamity we're face with. So his lack of forthrightness is understandable. But it is a concern.
Secondly, I am worried about Obama's approach to foreign policy. Not that it won't be an improvement over John McCain's unrepentant neoconservatism. Obama's words of a year ago, spoken in Audobon, Iowa, before the caucus there, do indeed carry weight.
"The day I'm inaugurated, not only will the country look at itself differently, but the world will look at America differently ... because the leaders of other countries will know that I've got family members that live in small villages in Africa that are poor, so I know what they're going through."
--Barack Obama,
speech in Audobon, Iowa
October 2007
True. Obama's experience living overseas during his formative years matters, despite what McCain or Hillary Clinton might suggest. He understands, for instance, that Indonesia--where he lived from 1967 to 1971--is not a nation that naturally rejects modernity for its citizens. It is not a natural hotbed of jihadism, though jihadism has indeed taken root there. But Islamist forces there are relatively new, he told Fareed Zakaria in an interview last summer, and their emergence can be traced in part to the Asian financial collapse of the late 1990s.
"You can see some correlation between the economic crash during the Asian financial crisis--where about a third of Indonesia's GPD was wiped out--and the acceleration of these Islamic extremist forces.It doesn't say that there is a direct correlation. But what is absolutely true is that there has been a shift in Islam that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries, in order to make sure that opportunities are there, that there is bottom-up economic growth."
--Barack Obama,
"Fareed Zakaria GPS,"
CNN
July 13, 2008
This is an important insight. It suggests Obama knows there is considerably more work to do to curtail the forces of terrorism than trying only to root them out with guns and bombs.
What concerns me about Obama is that, rather than representing a continuation of neoconservatism, he represents a return to international "realism." His models for foreign policy are Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, George Kennan. That is, make no mistake, an improvement over the foreign policy of Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol and Doug Feith. But it has its own problems.
What concerns me about Obama is that, rather than representing a continuation of neoconservatism, he represents a return to international "realism." His models for foreign policy are Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, George Kennan. That is, make no mistake, an improvement over the foreign policy of Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol and Doug Feith. But it has its own problems.
It was international realism--the cynical notion that, for instance, Middle Eastern despots might be bastards, but they are our bastards--that ultimately created the conditions that spurred radical Islam and gave rise to Wilsonian neoconservatism.
The columnist Tom Friedman has pointed out that America treated the Middle East like its own personal gas station for generations. As long as fuel prices were kept low, the U.S. happily turned a blind eye to the human rights abuses of, say, Saudi Arabia against its own people.
The Saudi royal family, however, was perfectly happy to allow its people to vent their inevitable frustration and rage against the Americans--while crushing any revolt against actual Saudi domestic policy.
You might have noticed that almost all of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
Our long support of Middle Eastern dictatorships in the name of stability was a key ingredient in the stew of foment that created the jihadist movement. Returning to that mind set, without some serious adjustments, is simply to retrace the path that helped ignite radical Islam's rejection of all things Western.
Perhaps we could pursue some kind of policy of "enlightened realism?" (And just what that would look like, I'm afraid, I'm not smart enough to say.)
Final Determination
The saving grace is that Obama, unlike John McCain, seems to have the suppleness of mind to navigate these treacherous waters. He seems to have the capacity, again unlike McCain, to think on his feet without tripping himself up.
In the present environment, that is not merely a luxury. It is vital.
So while I do have concerns about what an Obama presidency will look like, they are far outweighed by my concerns of the status quo presidency, particularly on the foreign policy front, that John McCain represents.
I'll be casting my vote for Obama.
If you are making a different choice, I respect and salute your decision.
Whatever choice you intend to make, just make one, people.
Make one. And vote.
Watch Fareed Zakaria's interview with Barack Obama.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
