« Australia: Kangaroo On Dinner Table
Troopergate: Small Woman, Small Beer »



Of Tempers and Temperament

October 11th, 2008
By DENNIS SANDERS

Print Print

With John McCain tanking, I have sometimes wondered why on earth am I still supporting him.

Giving it some thought, I come up with one answer: I know what I’m getting with the Arizona Senator. I don’t know what I’m getting with Barack Obama.

I know that I am getting a man that supports the environment and that tends to be more gay-friendly than past GOP nominees. I know that I am getting a man that has worked with Democrats and shunned his own party’s narrow interests to work for the national interest. I know that I am getting a grumpy and testy old man that deep down is a good and decent man.

I don’t know what I am getting in Obama. That’s not to say that he is a bad person, I just don’t know. He doesn’t have a long record. He has not done as much of the bipartisan work that McCain has done. In many ways, he feels like a blank slate.

If we were looking at résumés, then McCain probably has the stronger of the two. But we also tend to look at a lot of other things besides experience. The presidency is a mythic office. Unlike our British cousins who have a queen that represents all-that-is-the-UK and a Prime Minister that does the day-to-day grunt work, we Americans wrap both offices into one job. Obama has that mythic quality that befits the office. McCain doesn’t.

But myth alone doesn’t make one president, nor should it be what makes one choose who to vote for. There needs to be some “there” there to make that man or woman President, or else the myth then becomes a fantasy.

Christopher Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley has chosen to endorse Barack Obama. What is so odd is not his endorsement, but how he got there. This is how he describes John McCain.

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column…”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

Then he explains that John McCain has changed:

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Well, I agree with him on the Palin nomination, but aside from this, his reasoning seems rather odd. He spends a lot of time talking about the fine qualities of McCain over the last 26 years and then bases his decision on how John McCain has conducted his campaign over the last few months.

Yes, John McCain has thrown some elbows during this campaign (so has Obama), but is that what you should make a decision on: the topsy-turvy world of a campaign? What has happened in the last 6-8 months should not weigh as heavily as the last 30 years, but yet, Buckley does just that.

What’s even odder is why he is supporting Obama:

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

Buckley says nothing about Obama’s positions or his record. It would be one thing if those were the reasons he was supporting the Illinois Senator, but it is a whole other thing to vote for a man because he has a fine temperament.

What does that have to do with our current economic crisis or Iraq, or global warming?

But it gets better:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

So, Buckley believes that because Obama is smart and has a good temperament, he won’t use the same-old lefty politics. On what basis does he make this judgment? There is very little evidence to back this up. It seems as if Buckley just has faith that Obama will run government in a bipartisan fashion.

Buckley sees a mythic character in Obama and fashions his hopes on this man. What Buckley doesn’t see is the man, and frankly, I don’t know what sort of man is he. Please note, I am not saying Obama is a good or bad man, I just don’t know who he is, because there is so little of a record about who this man truly is.

For me, I have to vote on what I know and not on vain hope. I know that McCain has worked in a bipartisan fashion and will continue to do so. It’s hard to support someone only on the hope that they won’t govern as a traditional liberal when their past proves that’s what they will probably do.

Some day a few years from now, I think Buckley and other Obamacons will find that Obama is not the man of their dreams. Hope is a good thing to have, but it should not be the only factor in choosing who gets to live in the White House.



This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 1:39 am and is filed under William F. Buckley, Newsweek Blogitics, John McCain, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 26 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I think it depends a lot on whether you think the campaign McCain is McCain under pressure, and the Presidency is 4 straight years of pressure, or the campaign McCain is some aberrant version of him that will disappear once he wins the Election. I have no argument either way, just a gut guess.

    FYI, while McCain does indeed have a better record on the environment than many other Republicans, his energy plan is somewhat mixed. For instance, all his campaign ads show pictures of wind and solar power, but his actual platform says nothing other than that he will "rationalize" the tax plans for such energies. No one seems to know what that means and the McCain campaign has never spelled it out. My guess is that a McCain presidency might see some movement towards a carbon cap and some expanded nuclear and "clean" coal.
    • ^
    • v
    I guess the issues is the man I backed in 2000 has seemingly disappeared. And its not just during the campaign either, although that is part fo it.

    His record over the last few years is an abrupt change from his past and indeed has dovetailed with W's in quite a few areas. Most notably on torture, domestic spying, the Iraq war and to a lesser degree the obviously dangerous spend and don't tax policies.

    Then you have the campaign. It is very clear McCain is a gambler, from Palin to his bail out bungle. Basically we have a case of all all flash and no substance here. At least not for the big issues. Sure, I like his no earmarks. I like his plan for moving away from cost plus government contracts, and so on. But beyond that, when it comes to the big pictures issues of diplomacy and over all economy? Well he comes up looking dated, befuddled or absent without a well thought out plan behind some nice sounding words.

    Frankly we have had 8 years of a president who basically thought with his gut, rolled the dice, and did not plan. Is our country in the position where we can afford that for 4 more years? I think not.

    Compare that to Obama. Whom I admit is more of an unknown. But really, he out organized and out fought the Clinton machine. No small task. He also has kept control of his campaign, something I am not sure McCain is really up 100% on given the whole 'mob' issue / back down issue. And, he has shown the ability to reason though things, like his change in emphasis on ethanol (currently a bit of a boondoggle) to biodiesel (economically viable).

    It seems clear to me if we want a steady and thoughtful hand on the tiller, that Obama is much more "it" than McCain.
    • ^
    • v
    As usual, Dennis, you give some balance and sanity here.

    What's amazing is that everyone who thinks that McCain has fundamentally changed or abandoned the principles that they once admired, or who thinks he's 'erratic' is generally doing everything they say they despise themselves.

    Taking a gamble- because when I question moderates about why they believe Obama will govern from a moderate or centrist platform, there's no real answer except a leap of faith that his rhetoric represents his true beliefs more accurately than his past record does.

    Criticism of McCain's associations is hollow because of Obama's long history of close association with unsavory characters.

    Criticism of McCain for lack of vision is hollow because NEITHER candidate has expressed any real understanding of the current economic crisis or how to lead us out of it.

    Criticism of McCain for 'changing the subject' is hollow because regardless of whether or not this is McCain campaign's motivation, Obama's campaign leaps on the opportunity to continue discussion McCain's attacks rather than talking about substantive issues. Every one of Obama's advisors, and many of the bloggers here and elsewhere who support Obama, have spent the last week complaining about McCain and attempting to paint his negativity as a deflection from issues- but every time they do this I want to scream at the TV interviewer or at the blogger: OK...so what is it that Obama REALLY wants to say that he's being prevented from saying?? If McCain is distracting attention, OK, then ignore him and give us this profound wisdom about the serious issues that face us...what is stopping you? Of course the answer is nothing is stopping them...it's just politically more advantageous to keep the focus on McCain themselves because there really is no great message that they are trying to promulgate.

    Can anyone here tell me what it is that Obama proposes to do about the economy?

    Will he hold people in his own party accountable for the ways they've contributed to the problem?

    Sorry, but I am deeply concerned about the fog of judgment that appears to have fallen over people who normally would know better. I can only conclude that the emotional desire to 'punish' the GOP is overtaking any rational thought. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face- people are more concerned with punishing one party (however deserving that party may be), while ignoring the culpability of the other party and allowing them to begin an unfettered reign. Don't we ever learn?
    • ^
    • v
    Dennis, the hope vs experience issue is making its way through the minds of a lot of middle-roaders.

    I might be copacetic to the likely ride on the hope train myself if I didn't have the nagging thought that the train will actually have its engineer and conductor in the personas of pelosi-reid.
    • ^
    • v
    CS, for argument's sake let's say you're right about all your points. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe the country as a whole is just rejecting "conservatism" (which in its present form has about as much to do with the philosophy as much as Stalinism did with Marxism)?

    We are by far the most "conservative" industrialized country when it comes to policies. In basically all of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc. their mainstream conservative parties have policies that sound very much like an Obama or Clinton. When it comes to social programs or civil rights or health care, they are all very much on our "left." I've talked to a lot of Europeans that hate welfare and then when I describe what ours is they are like "oh ok that makes sense, over there it's the equivalent of about $25k-$30k a year, or as much or more than I was making (these people are all in science.)"

    Just like I believe people that liberalism had gotten severely out of hand right before Reagan -- although I have to admit the more I read about that time period the less it seems that Carter was super liberal and more that he was indecisive, but more importantly tried to tell people that they had to change their lifestyle -- i think that the American Conservatism Movement has right now.

    Is McCain going to do anything about that? You ask if Obama will hold his party accountable for the ways they've contributed and he should and it's up to honest people to try their hardest to make sure.....but the bulk of the problems right now are either systemic (in a way that even neutral experts have the wrong ideas) or a hallmark of crony conservatism. A lot of McCain's policy proscriptions are just awful, like private social security accounts or R&D tax deductions all at once instead of annualized or his mortgage plan that is the worst idea I've heard from a main candidate besides Hillary's freeze on foreclosures.

    Many of his ideas either don't address the problem even on a superficial level, or are based on faith in an ideological stance where even a cursory understanding of how things work shows that the promises are wrong (I'm going to lose it if people keep claiming private social security accounts will boost returns in the long run.....of course our entire retirement system with 401Ks, IRAs, etc. that are bought into by both parties now rely on that lie).

    In any case, from my perspective your primary complaint shouldn't be about punishing one party or the other -- especially since it's obvious that Republicans have failed -- it's that there is no party that actually represents pragmatic systemic change. First of all because it's hard to get people interested in that and secondly because it's about laying the groundwork over decades and it's hard to run on that.
    • ^
    • v
    This "who is Obama" meme lost its legs when Palin became the GOP pick. And punishing a party? That trivializes the situation. Getting rid of people who have consistently rewarded donors at the electorate's expense is much more than punishing a party.

    I don't see Obama as a new savior, and I don't turn a blind eye to Democrats who have sold the public out either. And I imagine that as a result of the sweep that is coming in November we'll have to rebalance the power in another eight years or so. And I too would like Obama to be more specific.

    But please, don't reiterate the GOP "who is Obama" meme. It's laughable since the Palin nomination. And don't accuse me of voting from vindictiveness. I know what we'd be getting with more GOP governance. I hope the Dems can and will clean up the mess without overly pandering in either direction.
    • ^
    • v
    I think it's also kind of weird that for the most part people seem to be OK with Obama but their primary concern is that Congress will be run by Democrats, which admittedly a lot of them propose really stupid things and have some of the same qualities as the worst Republicans.

    Well I think that the downfall of Congress is the biggest concern as its inability to function has helped drive polarization in the country, led to some of Bush's worst excesses and made the budget FUBAR. I don't see how we can have good governance from either party until Congress is fixed.
    • ^
    • v
    Mikkel: I absolutely agree with your points but they certainly don't give me any comfort!

    If people really are rejecting conservatism in favor of liberalism, shouldn't the people actually understand those principles first?? There's been such vast misunder