This Righteous Wind Blows

Presidential candidate – and we must remember he is still just the candidate and not actually the president – Barak Obama has taken to mentioning his campaign has a “righteous wind” at its back, a biblical reference to being ordained by God to do His work. Yikes. Obama did admit to having a “healthy ego,” although believing you are anointed by God to become president doesn’t fit only in the healthy ego category. Perhaps it crosses into delusional.

And this is where I have the greatest problem with moving Obama into the White House. There are far too many people who believe his election will amount to such radical change and the people of the world will all be standing hand in hand, bringing universal peace and understanding to the planet. He’s a skilled orator and very good at keeping his messages short and simple for the masses to understand, but I am still not convinced he is anything more than a typical Chicago-style political hucksters selling us what we think we want to hear.

The other day I was talking to an old dog republican consultant who goes back to the Nixon campaigns. He told me he had been in many winning and losing campaigns and, regardless of the way the election went, he still woke up the next morning with the knowledge that not much had really changed. However, he worries that the expectations on Obama are so large that there is no way he can live up to the self-inflicted hype. He worries more that if McCain were to win, people would be leaping from buildings believing the world will soon end.

But getting down to just the factual basics of this election, I have the following reasons why I would support John McCain over Barak Obama in tomorrow’s election.

1. Foreign Policy. Believe it or not, I think both candidates are just plain awful in this category and I if it was possible to find two candidates and running mates with such weird foreign policy views. McCain has been famously misquoted as saying we will stay in Iraq for 100 years and labeled a war monger for suggesting Iran was next on the target list. Obama hasn’t mentioned Iran as a potential target, however he did say he wouldn’t rule out attacking nuclear-armed Pakistan with a population of 175 million people if they didn’t behave better. Both of these statements are irresponsible and show a complete lack of common sense.

I have further problem with McCain because of his devotion to the U.S. version of democracy at all costs. McCain has routinely supported outright dictators who have won rigged elections because they were simply an enemy of our enemy and therefore a friend. He’s an active meddler in the affairs of other countries and there is no place for that kind of behavior if we want to see America’s standing in the world restored. Nixon engaged China, Clinton sold out to China and Bush sold the country to China. It would be nice to move back to just engagement.

My concern about Obama’s foreign policy is that he doesn’t have any experience and is dangerously naïve. We all know what he meant when he said he would meet various despots without “preconditions” and no parsing of the phrase now will convince me it meant something different. It’s what Kennedy believed before meeting in Vienna with Khrushchev and it resulted in absolute disaster, bringing us the Berlin Wall and communist Cuba. Kennedy’s move told the world he was weak and that America no longer had a backbone, which left the door open for bad people to do bad things. There are still bad people willing to do bad things in the world and I am deathly afraid that they will believe Obama lacks the stones to stand up to them. He may be able to keep the Barbarians at the gate by boring them with lengthy speeches about the audacity of hope, but, in the end, he will be tested and tested frequently. How will he respond? He could blunder us into a war by attempting to look tough, or he could just go back to his standard way of ducking issues he doesn’t want to deal with by voting “present.”

Sure Obama will make the Europeans happy and give rise to American popularity as we vacation in Paris, but in the end, I worry about his judgment in key foreign policy areas and his unknown reaction to challenges much more than I worry about McCain handling the nuclear football.

2. Economy. Presidents get far too much credit for economic good times and far too much criticism to economic downturns. In other words, presidents do very little to disrupt or create economic prosperity. In most cases, it is just wise for presidents to stay out of the way of the economy and not try to micromanage something so large and diverse. The most recent downturn and the monumentally stupid reaction to our economy will saddle the next president with huge liabilities and a message that will tell business leaders and consumers that no matter how stupid they are, they can always count on the taxpayer to bail them out. Not really a good message, actually.

From what I have seen of McCain for the past 20 years, he is a fiscal moderate who sees the best role for government is to meddle in the economy the least. He believes higher taxes on businesses and producers during a recession will make the recession worse and he would like to see an end to earmarks and other pork-barrel spending. I doubt he will get it, but it’s admirable to have as a goal.

As for Obama, he is selling the same snake oil that has been sold in a different bottle for the past century. Herbert Hoover promised a “chicken in every pot” to voters desperate for the hand of government to help them in the toughest of economic times. Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson gave us the Great Society. All were promises to have government fix whatever ailed the country. Looking back, none succeeded because, if they did, why are we still required to help the “needy” in this country? Weren’t all the other programs, with trillions spent and nearly a century to get right, able to crack the code to help the needy? Apparently Obama feels we still need something to level the playing field to help the needy at the expense of the wealthy.

It is classic class warfare spun a different way in order to sound populous. The only candidate who really admitted he was going to take from the rich and give to the poor was McGovern in 1972, but since he was the victim of one of the largest landslides in presidential history, those who came after him have repackaged the message. Unless you count Obama’s “spread the wealth” statement he made when he didn’t think the cameras were on, he has always talked of his tax plan as 95% or Americans getting a tax cut, which probably sounds fair to 95% of the voters. If this is what he really means and his 95% figures are accurate, then 47 million Americans who pay no taxes at all will be getting a refund. Let that sink in a bit: People who currently pay no taxes will get a $500 refund ($1,000 for married couples) according to his own tax plan calculator. Where will this money come from? From me and the dwindling number of people who will be paying an increasingly larger portion of our income in taxes. In other words, it is an unstainable tax program as we will all eventually be taxed out of existence. The OECE, an organization loosely governed by the U.N., recently release a report saying that the U.S. had the most progressive tax system of Western democracies. This means our country has the dubious distinction of having the largest tax burden fall on the wealthiest taxpayers. And Obama wants to increase this burden.

My political consigliore Paul Gann once told me there was a sad change in the expectation of government between his generation and the current generation. Paul, who was born in a small town in Arkansas, told me that when Brother John’s barn burned down, the community got together and rebuilt the barn. They didn’t do this because the government told them they had to, but because they knew it was the right thing to do to lend a helping hand and because they knew Brother John would do the same for them. The trend now seems to be that most people wait for the government to take care of them, now in such a way that many people in New Orleans blame the government for not forcing them to leave the city when a Category 5 hurricane was bearing down on them. I find Obama’s message that government can be all things to all people at best pandering for their vote and at worse continuing to destroy our true sense of community where people help each other and not because of coercion from the government.

It has always been puzzling to me why so many wealthy politicians support higher taxes for the “wealthy” since most of them are wealthy. But there is nothing in the tax code that precludes these wealthy individuals to pay more to the federal government if they really believe they are better stewards of their money and better able to take care of the needy and poor. Hell, Obama can start with his own family and get his relatives living in poverty in Boston a check.

3. Healthcare. Obama wants to see every American covered by health insurance, be it a government or employer-backed program. As I understand it, he wants to either get the government in the health care business or give employers the option to cover their employees or pay, essentially, a fine so the government can provide the coverage. McCain has been on record of wanting to get the government out of the health care business and getting the employer out of the business of supplying healthcare to workers. He believes that too many people get screwed over when they rely on their employer to provide their health care coverage both in the options available and the fact they lose their insurance if they lose their jobs. McCain wants to see the market work with individuals being able to better tailor their health care insurance plans to their own needs and to have it regardless of employment status. Sounds a lot better to me than the DMV running our health care system and having rationed care.

Lord knows there are dozens of other reasons why we support the candidates we do, not the least of which are all the side shows. I am not at all happy with McCain’s choice for VP and neither am I pleased with Obama’s choice of one of the least intelligent members of the Senate, especially when there were far better choices available to both of them. I am also very aware this post will persuade no voters and the election is a foregone conclusion.

Some days I get ideas about writing different books before it goes down my sinkhole of procrastination. One of the ideas I had recently was to take an academic look at where we would be today had Gore been elected in 2000. I even had a good idea for a name; 538 Votes. I did a bit of research on it and I basically figured things wouldn’t be too different. I know that may sound odd to some of you, but based on who would have made up a Gore Administration, I think a lot of the key decisions made by Bush would have been made by Gore. Basically, it’s the way I feel about Obama. I think he could cause huge problems but, in the end, I hope he will do no greater or less harm than McCain would do if he would have been elected. Maybe that’s where this idea of “hope” comes in, for me at least.

UPDATE: Now remember, republicans vote on Tuesday and democrats and independents vote on Wednesday. I wasn't sure if my readers were aware of the change in voting laws. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to forward this information on.