Why I Voted for Obama-Biden

I went to the office of La Poste on Rue d'Alésia and mailed my ballot on Monday.  Even though I am solidly in the center of the political spectrum, this decision was not even a close one.  Thinking about my decision, I realize that it was based on three separate but related fundamental notions.

Trite and tired and cliched, maybe, but a big part of my decision was grounded in the belief that the country needs a change after many years of conservative ascendance.  Aside from the centrist Clinton Presidency, for more than 25 years, dating from Reagan's election in 1980, conservatism has more or less dominated American politics and government.  All things get stale after a while, and once you add in the devastatingly horrible Bush Presidency (which did more to kill real conservatism in the U.S. than all rowdies on the left could have ever done), it's necessary to do a switch (even though, as noted below, I'm not convinced that a unified Democratic government won't blow it).

The second element is Obama himself.  As has been noted many times by others, not only is Obama a gifted orator and politician, but he seems to be genuine leader.  His demeanor throughout the campaign has been one of calmness and decorum.  He never seems to get overly perturbed, but rather seems to have the ability to take himself out of a crisis situation and view it with a little bit of distance ... an excellent trait, it seems to me, in a President.  Note the repeated use of the word "seem," because it's not a sure thing; I'm taking a bit of a flyer on Obama, to be sure.

The third element is the performance of McCain during the campaign, which made taking a flyer on Obama an easy thing to do.  I had genuine respect for McCain before the campaign.  But his bizarre and questionable decisions during the campaign lead me to doubt that he would be the best head of state.  Combining the unbelievably stupid choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, his strange "I'm suspending my campaign" response to the financial crisis (and then not), and his angry, all-too-easy resort to classic right-wing slimes, despite having been the victim of them himself in 2000, and I ended up at a definite "no thanks."  My views on McCain were perfectly expressed in this post from George Packer of The New Yorker, quoting from an e-mail from Ken Adelman, an active neoconservative:

Why [am I voting for Obama], since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?

Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.

When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.

Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.

That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.

This absolutely nails the problem with McCain.  Instead of cowtowing to his right-wing political advisors, he could have held his ground in the center, and had a chance of defeating Obama.  But once he selected Sarah Palin, it was hard for me to take him seriously anymore.

As noted above, I have some trepidation about a federal government with both the executive and the legislature in the hands of the left.  I'm convinced that the the "center" of the Democratic Party (which has tacked further and further left in the past 20 years) is fundamentally out of touch with the majority of Americans, even those of us in the center.  Using a November victory to take retribution for having to spend the last 25 years in the wilderness will be an enormous mistake.  (In another post, I'll give some examples.)  I very much hope that Obama, if elected, will see himself, not as the President of the left, but as the President of the entire country.  The political fabric in the U.S. needs some repair; it does not need more tug-of-wars over the same old, same old issues.