The Unemotional Case For Obama

A meme is developing is that support for Obama is all emotion, fantasy, hysteria, etc. There’s no question that the emotions behind Obama are powerful. And any fool can see why. His oratory does what oratory should. He is the greatest public speaker in American life since Reagan. And the shame and demoralization of the Bush-Cheney years – when we launched a war with reckless indifference to planning it, when we tortured prisoners and called it "enhanced interrogation", when we saw a government rendered so utterly useless that a hurricane made the US look like the third world, when conservatives added $32 trillion to the debt of the next generation, when a president made sophomoric jokes about not finding weapons of mass destruction he leveraged American global credibility on … if you don’t feel emotions in wanting to put this disgrace of an administration behind us, then you are not being rational.

But the strongest case for Obama is not emotional; it is as coolly rational as he is. I tried to express it in my "Goodbye To All That" essay. On the most critical issues we face – Iraq, the war against Jihadism, healthcare, and the economy – he makes more sense as a president than Clinton. And when you watch the knee-jerk opposition to him, I think it is actually more emotional and less rational than the support for him. Fear is more emotional than hope.

And defending Clinton on the grounds of "experience" and "substance" is a fairy tale on both counts, if you pardon the expression. Her legislative experience is one term longer than Obama’s (and that’s if you don’t count Obama’s state legislative record), is notable mainly for its uninspired diligence in constituency work, and on the most important issue of the day, Iraq, simply wrong. Her main executive branch experience was destroying a historic opportunity for healthcare reform through arrogance, secrecy and over-reach. Her "substance" claim is just as phony. There is no detail in her policy apparatus that isn’t matched by Obama’s. But you’ve heard a lot from me on this. Here’s a video that shows a conservative cynic being slowly and rationally disarmed by the logic of young, shrewd voter.

A vote for Obama is a vote for reason over sentiment. Check it out:

Bill Says He Gets It

He finally realizes that he was once president of the United States. He calls it "a very valuable lesson." I think the lesson he really learned is that his sleazy tactics didn’t actually work. When dealing with sociopaths like Bill Clinton, it’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking they are capable of moral self-evaluation. But they are capable of rational self-interest. If it becomes the Clintons’ self-interest to smear other Democrats in future, they will not hesitate for a second to do so.

Healthcare Mandates

Tyler Cowen is impressed with the arguments against them made by David Cutler, Obama’s chief healthcare adviser. I’d point out something else about this rare Clinton-Obama policy difference. Obama is the more pragmatic and centrist of the two on this matter. The notion that he is the more liberal of the two is not a very enlightening analysis. In general, they represent different strands of liberalism, and it’s reflected in their campaign rhetoric. Obama tends to emphasize people’s ability to help themselves and their capacity to do so independently of government. Clinton tends to emphasize the neediness of people for government support and help, and she’s much more comfortable with coercive government action.

It’s "Yes, We Can," vs "I’ll Take Care Of You."

And that’s why a simplistic Obama-is-a-leftist critique won’t work as well as some seem to think. He’s a liberal, but a reconstructed one. He’s the kind of liberal who sees dependency as a problem not a solution. And he’s not a statist in the way previous liberal generations have been. He actually listened to and absorbed some of the conservative critique of liberalism these past two decades. And he has changed not just to protect his right flank.

McCain-Romney?

Victor Davis Hanson proposes a ticket. A couple of thoughts: McCain despises Romney; the country finds Romney almost as distasteful. Campaigns do help you figure out whether a candidate has that hard-to-define factor of popular appeal. K-Lo doesn’t understand this, because she’s in a cocoon. But Romney doesn’t work. No one’s buying it.

The Republican party today reminds me of the British Labour party in the early 1980s – rewarding its most unhinged activists, punishing its most appealing leaders, and circling the electoral drain, without even fully realizing it. If you want an image and a sound to illustrate this – listen to the boos for McCain at CPAC: