Confessions in Search of Conviction: Redux

Four days ago, I invited readers to challenge and question me as I explained why I was leaning toward an Obama vote in the general election.

To say that they took me up on the offer would be a remarkable understatement — especially in the context of my now-withdrawn post on McCain. In that post, I argued that McCain’s apparent lurch to the right — including his vote last week on the CIA torture bill, plus his seeming obstinance on Iraq — had persuaded me he was no longer the candidate I could support.

Commenter “CStanley” was my prime challenger regarding the torture-bill vote, referring back to McCain’s explanation for his vote:

… he reiterates all his reasons for supporting MCA and why he still feels it was correct for Congress to exclude the CIA from that act. He’s saying that his position then was the same as now: the CIA’s techniques should be broader than those used by the military in the field, and the CIA should have some leeway to use techniques that aren’t broadcast in advance. At the same time though, he delineates where the lines should be drawn for the CIA as well: no torture, and waterboarding is torture so it’s disallowed.

The more I thought about CStanley’s points — and the more I studied McCain’s explanation for his vote — the more I realized I had over-reacted. My dispute was ultimately not with McCain’s vote, or even with his explanation for that vote, but with his failure to offer an alternative to the bill in question.

Let me explain …

I agree we should not publish the CIA’s list of interrogation techniques, but I also believe those techniques should be subject to some broader review and approval than the executive branch alone: perhaps a bi-partisan, inter-branch commission of sorts.

McCain’s omission of that or any other such recommendation — of some way to fix the legislation rather than simply reject it and rely on the status quo — that was my gripe. McCain knows more than any of us that the Bush Administration cannot be trusted to do the right thing on interrogation, and frankly, we don’t have any assurance future Administrations will be trust-able on this matter either. Thus, a little, old-fashioned American check-and-balance treatment would be in order.

But that alone is no reason for me to reject McCain’s bid for the Presidency. Rather, it’s a reason — as Dennis Sanders suggested — for me to organize letters and/or calls of protest to hopefully affect related policy decisions on which McCain might vote.

My other primary gripe with McCain — as articulated in that now-withdrawn post — hinged on the Senator’s recent remarks about the irrelevance of how long we stay in Iraq, plus his belligerent dismissal of anyone who dared to ask about withdrawal timing. A combination of voices — from Kevin Sullivan to my wife’s brother — prompted me to re-think this complaint.

Sullivan contends that McCain’s “maybe one hundred years” remark has been taken out of context; that the “substance” of the remark is actually quite “salient and sound,” i.e. “the U.S. military should be mission focused” not “time line focused.” He goes on to write:

We do have troops all around the world, and if you start making infantile arguments based on the presence of American troops around the world, you’ll begin to give fodder to McCain’s campaign.

Enter my wife’s brother, just last night, who made a similar point about U.S. troops stationed around the world. He noted that we still have troops in Germany and Japan, sixty-plus years after the end of World War II. Furthermore, he said our troops are in those countries at their governments’ request: a request they help subsidize. Now, I have not been able to verify the latter claim — honestly, if Germany and Japan subsidize our troops on their soil, it’s news to me — but the larger point stands. We probably will not maintain an occupation-level force in Iraq for 60 to 100 years, but we likely will continue to have some troops there for the next several generations. What’s more, I suspect those troops will remain in Iraq at the Iraqi government’s request, and once oil production and export in that country returns to full strength, Iraq could be in position to subsidize those future troops.

In that respect, I think Kevin Sullivan is right: McCain’s remarks should be viewed in the context of past and present global realities.

Net: I am once again willing to consider McCain for President, although that does not mean I’m suddenly anti-Obama. To the contrary: Where I am now is where I started several months ago, torn between these two candidates; resisting leftist portrayals of McCain just as I resist rightist portrayals of Obama (as does Jason Steck).

Furthermore, consider: On foreign policy, Obama has been very clear he will support a reasonable time-frame and strategy for the draw-down of troops in Iraq, designed in close consultation with military commanders. Beyond Iraq, I recommended that readers consider Michael Crowley’s TNR essay, or at least, Andrew Sullivan’s conclusion after reading that essay:

Crowley shows that Obama was clearly opposed to the war before it began, but cannot be described as a candidate immune to changing exigencies, trade-offs and practicalities. He is no anti-war ideologue. Absolutists on Iraq may think less of the man after reading the piece. It made me more comfortable with trusting him with national security. We need a president able to adjust to changing circumstances, able to conduct nimble diplomacy and unafraid of military action. Obama is no Jimmy Carter.

Similar defenses could be mounted for Obama’s domestic policies. After six years of grotesque spending and expansion of the government under Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress, it’s fair to ask, “How much more harm could Obama do?” Furthermore, reports of Obama’s pragmatism are encouraging — such as this one, penned by James Pethokoukis for U.S. News. An excerpt:

Obama, though, is a plausible pragmatist. His domestic policy advisers are hardly a radical bunch. One economic adviser, Jeffrey Liebman of Harvard, has coauthored an interesting compromise plan on Social Security that would raise taxes a bit, extend the retirement age a bit, and put a bit of money into personal retirement accounts.

Or look at Obama’s tax plan. In addition to new middle-class tax credits, it has a technocratic reform proposal that would make filing many tax returns easier by letting the Internal Revenue Service fill them out in advance. And the economist who devised the plan, the University of Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee, is no class warrior on taxes or China basher on trade. Don’t forget, too, that in his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama himself found a few kind words for President Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts, which slashed the top marginal rate to 50 percent from 70 percent, saying that the old sky-high rate did “distort investment decisions.” Sounds pretty pragmatic.

Besides, if Obama went too far on government spending, who’s to say there wouldn’t be a another Gingrich-like Republican revolution in 2010, to check Obama like it checked Bill Clinton, ushering in an era of record slow growth in government spending? On a similar note, if McCain thinks he will be overly militant in dealing with global policy, remember that — should he win the White House — he will not only have a Democratic-controlled Congress, but one with presumably stronger (perhaps veto- and filibuster-proof) margins than those enjoyed by the current Congress.

Bottomline, I’m not convinced the country could go terribly wrong with either candidate.

So where does that leave me on the first Tuesday in November? If the vote were held this Tuesday, I’d probably be in McCain’s camp, largely because I am committed to supporting moderate GOP candidates. Then again, if the “footsies” McCain is playing right now with the Rush Limbaugh crowd turn into something more serious — and if Obama actually does manage to take the Democratic nomination — I could easily be convinced to vote for the Senator from Illinois.

As noted in “The Letter” to GOP candidates — drafted and distributed last year — the signatories, including me, pledged to support (with “votes, voices, volunteers, and dollars”) GOP candidates who adhere to the moderate positions outlined in that letter; positions that are aligned with the party’s root principles of individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, and enlightened foreign policy. There was no pledge to support candidates who reject moderate positions.

In other words, if McCain falters between now and November — or more accurately, if he commits additional, repeated errors in judgment like his failure to offer alternative ways of limiting the CIA’s interrogation program — then the battle for GOP reform will simply have to wait; it will have to be fought another day, through other means and other candidates, because the battle for my conscience will not permit a similar hiatus.

Apparently, I’m not the only Republican who feels that way.