« Things Ain’t Lookin’ Good for McCain/Palin | Main | Liveblogging the 2008 Election »
My Presidential Endorsement
By Brian | November 4, 2008 | Share on Facebook
Well, it’s that time again. Time to throw my support behind one of the candidates for President of the United States. I’m sure many of you are of the opinion that the many celebrity endorsements of late are totally ineffectual. I’m here to show you that something can be even less convincing than celebrity endorsements. I expect to convince no one with this – only to perhaps start a (small?) discussion about my selection process.
Let’s take the candidates one at a time:
Barack Obama is an intellect and an inspirational speaker. He has a talent for problem solving that I recognize in the people I seek to hire in my (systems development) job. He doesn’t need to be an expert in everything, but has the good sense to surround himself with experts that he can trust, break a seemingly impossible problem down into solvable, component parts, and then address each part in a logical, effective way. When he’s done, he has an unusually strong talent for communicating not only his decision, but his thought process. This not only helps me understand his position, but increases my confidence in it and in him as a leader.
I agree with some of his policies and disagree with several others. I’ve seen him modify his ideas toward more common sense themes as the climate around him has changed, so I feel confident that when those ideas face the shining light of the media and the congress, they will get pared down into more effective and, in some cases, less damaging laws. For example, I think his tax plan is a knee-jerk reaction to the Bush tax cuts, and will work to the desired effect – narrowing the gap between the rich and the middle-class. Except I think this will happen by making the middle-class a little bit richer and the rich a lot less rich. I think this will be accompanied by an increase in unemployment, a decrease in innovation and a decrease in GDP and worker productivity (unless another growth curve sweeps up the entire economy like the dotcom boom did in the late 90s). I think his health care plan is filled with fairly obvious “gotchas” (like the fact that the congressional health care plan will become much more expensive when the insured population goes from the relatively small and homogeneous federal employee pool to hundreds of thousands of the poorest Americans). And I think his foreign policy statements show a bit of naivete that will lead to Carter-like successes that turn out to be long-run failures, despite the smiling faces and White House Lawn handshakes.
Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, strikes me as a guy who goes along to get along. He’s been in the Senate a long time, and is not afraid to speak his mind – often breaking through the thick smog of talking points to say something so clear and common-sense that it’s striking to hear it. I don’t know much about his personal politics, but I get the sense that he knows a moderate amount about a lot of things, and a great deal about how to get things done in Washington, DC. If Obama is elected, I think he will be a strong asset to Obama because he can help mitigate that naivete with a dose of pragmatic realism.
John McCain is a patriot, a war hero, and perhaps the most technically qualified man to run for President in my memory. He, like Biden, will often break through the noise with a common-sense approach to problem solving that goes against the political punditry, but gets high marks from the public anyway because of its honesty and integrity. Unfortunately, McCain has an unbelievably low level of self-confidence when it comes to campaigning. Someone (perhaps himself?) has managed to convince him that speaking your mind and offering your reasoned opinion to the questions/issues of the day is not how you win an election. That, he seems to believe, is done with a carefully crafted and well-tested set of talking points that must be repeated often enough to break through the filters of the casual observer, while driving the politically interested insane with the monotony.
Never was the gap between his campaigning prowess and his leadership prowess clearer than during the Republican convention, when McCain turned a (mostly) political stunt – cancelling the first night of the convention because of Hurricane Gustav – into a clear demonstration of leadership in crisis – flying delegates back to their home states in planes large enough to get their families out if need be, touring emergency preparedness centers without the media and then offering a balanced, sometimes critical assessment of how preparations were going, and allowing the governors of the gulf coast states to work with his wife and Laura Bush to proactively raise money for those affected by the storm. McCain has proven himself able to deal with military crisis and national crisis, but seems to fold up like a paper bag when faced with political crisis. It is the same problem, in my opinion, that befell Al Gore and John Kerry in the past two elections.
As with Obama, I agree with some of his policies and disagree with others. I think cutting the corporate tax rate and making the Bush tax cuts permanent is a good idea. I think taxing employer health care contributions in favor of a voucher system for employees is unworkable, because it leaves too much room for manipulation and corruption. I think he understands foreign policy like few others do, but would inherit George W. Bush’s credibility problems (fairly or unfairly), putting us at a disadvantage from Day 1.
His running mate, Sarah Palin, has certainly generated a great deal of ink and pixels. I think McCain wasted an opportunity to review the vast array of people he’s worked with in the Senate over the years and select a true lieutenant; someone he knows he works well with and can trust to help him form his strategies and then see them through. Instead, he chose to make a political calculation, playing to key constituencies to win the presidency.
Topics: Political Rantings | 8 Comments »
Given the “blame first, act later” nature of the Pelosi/Reid crowd, I fully expect Obama to follow the Clinton model – two years of getting in his own way, followed by a big Republican victory in 2010, followed by two years of far greater success….
Here’s why you’re wrong on your two-year prediction: the Congressional Dems who have not been able to find their asses with both hands will now have a president telling them, “Here’s your ass, now grab it.” The Congressional GOP who have served as Bush sycophants for 7.75 years (until the bailout) will now have to rely on a shrinking echo chamber for guidance. Meanwhile, Obama transition team is studying historical texts on the New Deal.
My prediction: the success or failure of several Big Item Obama Initiatives will determine the momentum, and that will be based on whether Obama maintains the frickin’ army I saw last night as a grassroots force. Republicans will be too busy eating their young to do much more than token resistance, and 2010 will be sabotaged by the group who thinks the problem is that they don’t have enough Palins.
On inauguration day, everyone agreed on the need for a stimulus package. They “worked” on it for a month and wound up raising the cost of cigarettes. Remember these jokers trying to agree on a war timetable to send Bush? And that was when they knew he was going to veto. Imagine how long they’ll bicker when they know the law will be passed. Scoring an approval rating that’s even lower than G.W.Bush’s is quite an accomplishment…
The grassroots army will dissipate in two weeks (or until Paris Hilton or Brittney Spears does something interesting again, whichever comes first). Politics is interesting to the masses up to election night, then it becomes boring real fast…
Not at all. It takes a very different set of political skills to manage an ascendant party than it does to be loyal opposition. I think both the Democrats and the Republicans have forgotten them — which is why I’ll be expecting a regular stream of Vince Foster-style attacks starting up pretty much immediately. (I also think that Obama has managed the trick have those attacks make the attackers look bad, and I hope he maintains it.)
I think you
FamilyGreenberg.Com is proudly powered by WordPress.
The template is from RFDN and has been modified extensively by yours truly
Here is the RSS feed for the Entries and here is the RSS feed for the Comments