Tête-à-Tête-Tête

I don’t read the HuffPo, but a friend e-mailed me this article… A friend who voted for Bush in 2000 and Peroutka in 2004. He’s voting Obama in 2008 because of the Republican view of how the military should be used and because of Obama’s healthcare policy.  I’ll talk about me after a very apporopriate excerpt:

John McCain used to know that the country was larger than any crowd he could ever draw; that it was filled with ordinary people who live their lives in the middle of a political spectrum, too busy making ends meet, to be driven to extremes by the fevers and fears that consume so many of the talk-radio set. He used to be aware that in order to win, a candidate could not simply preach to the converted, snarl and run with a resentment aimed at the fringe, the mixed mobs of the curious and angry that turn out for Palin.

Now, with time running out, he has only a few days left to try and reclaim himself, to find the man he once was, the whole man who could charm a crowd with his version of the truth. He criss-crosses a country filling up with fear and debt, a land fighting two wars as it fights for a weekly paycheck, a nation where more people worry about General Motors than think about General Petraeus. Political campaigns, like much of life itself, often revolve around one universal issue: the absence of money.

So, when John McCain tosses out a name from yesterday, William Ayers, it means nothing to people who want only to be told about tomorrow. These are the people who vote, the people who have seen the distant dream of retirement crushed by the collapse of so many 401K’s in — what? — less than a month. They have no time for spite or a candidate’s smirk or snarl. They are consumed with concern for the value of their home, the stability of their job, the immediate future of their family.

For many people - enough to turn an election - the economic climate will be what drives this election.  For the record, I think they are picking the candidate that will do a better job of restoring the economy - the candidate most in tune with the thinking of FDR, who took office at time fraught with similar challenges.   I agree with them, but can’t say that their concerns are what drove me to the Democratic Party in general and to Obama in particular.

The economy? I don’t know. Maybe the doom-sayers are right, and Obama will bring us a depression - I doubt it. But they have no more chance of being right than the other side. I would sacrifice a lot of my voting preferences for a feeling of security that my family will survive (not that I do a good job of it!), but I don’t see any advantage in voting for the party that brought us to where we are today (even if their candidate rightly criticized an element of the GSEs financial reporting unrelated to the current crisis a few years back, while our guys - unfortunately - stonewalled the effort to reform that element). At worst, I’m gambling at even odds - there may or may not be an ecomic advantage to the Obama candidacy… The odds are certainly no less that he will do the right things for the economy. So, I have to stack my chips on other squares.

For me, it was partly one of the concerns I share with my friend: the appropriate use of the military, the appropriate care being taken in times of conflict, and a sense of cooperation and urgency about repairing an expensive and broken health-care system that does not serve the people. But another part is me being a values voter. I want to live in a nation that scorns barbarism; that will fight aggression but will not aggress; that will punish torture, not encourage it. That is shamed by man’s inhumanity to man. I think Obama is the person who will do us better in that regard. Finally, the last part is respect for our system of government, the law and the Constitution. I have been very troubled seeing our nation’s foundation of law undermined in the relentless pursuit of more executive power. Whether that applies to illegal detention of “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo, a spike in extraordinary rendition to nations that practice torture, or illegal wiretapping of American citizens, I am sick of it. Most Washington politicians - of either stripe - are guilty of trying to arrogate power to themselves at the expense of the law, but none has been so guilty as the Bush administration and the Republican party of the last 8 years. Not even Nixon and his set. McCain shows little interest in reversing the power grabs of the last 8 years. Perhaps Obama will succumb to the temptation of unbridled power, too. But, the fact is that he has the mind and heart of a Constitutional scholar, and gives every indication that he is capable of recognizing the need to restore principles to this nation, legally and socially.