Our political quote of the day comes from conservative Wick Allison, former publisher of the National Review, who has come out for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for President. In this piece he explains why he feels he must as a conservative. Here’s a key section:
Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.
But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.
Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.
This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.
He makes it clear Obama is not who he would pick for President but that he believes Obama is the best pick:
Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.
Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.
The biggest surprise of this campaign season has been the evolution of McCain’s once solid image.
In 2000, a Washington-based former mentor whom I respect got mad at me when I said I was registering as Republican to vote for McCain in the California primary. He talked about what he had heard on the Hill about McCain’s impulsiveness and temper. I didn’t believe it — this person was for Bush and political preference these days usually sparks demonization — even at the start of the primary season.
But McCain’s tenor during the debates, his tone, his willingness to discard the kind of respectful campaign he had pledged to run, his abrupt shifts in message, his decision to suspend his campaign – -these have begun to raise real concerns…concerns that were not as great at the start of this campaign season. For conservatives such as Allison, the issues are true conservatism and perhaps temperament. For some moderates and independents, there’s a larger issue of how to get the U.S. past the polarization politics of the 60s nurtured by Richard Nixon and back to a more unifying form of national politics and discussion that seeks to build consensus and defuse drama and divisive rage.
Allison’s piece continues to underscore the difference between conservatives who are the ideological descendants of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and Bush-wing conservatives who seem mostly descended from Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.