Editorial from the Wall Street Journal that appeared on 3 November 2008. It expresses my mixed feelings about Obama's election pretty well.
We have elected a man who will create "change" but few of us really understand what change he has in mind. I suspect a lot of people will be unpleasantly surprised to discover that Obama's ideas are far to the left of most Americans.
Leap of Hope
Sometimes the gambles pay off, sometimes they don't.
Every vote for a nonincumbent Presidential candidate is in some
sense a risk, given the power and complications of the job. But in both
his lack of experience and the contradictions between his rhetoric and
his agenda, Barack Obama presents a particular leap of hope. It is a
sign of how fed up Americans are with Republicans that millions are
ready to take that leap even in dangerous times.
To his supporters, such as Colin Powell, the first-term Senator has
the chance to be "transformational," the kind of gauzy concept that
testifies to Mr. Obama's unusual appeal. His candidacy is certainly
historic, and that isn't simply a reference to his Kenyan father and
American mother. One secret to Mr. Obama's success is how little his
campaign has been marked by race, at least not by the traditional
politics of racial grievance. He has run instead on a rhetorical theme
of national unity, a shrewd appeal to voters weary of the polarizing
debate over Iraq and the Bush Presidency.
![[Review & Outlook]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AI481_1obama_DV_20081102194820.jpg)
Getty ImagesMr. Obama has
also understood the political moment better than his opponents in
either party. In the primaries, he used his inexperience to advantage
by offering himself as a liberal alternative to what seemed like an
inevitable, and dispiriting, Clinton replay. He then turned around in
the general election to project sober reassurance amid the financial
crisis, which was the moment when his poll numbers began to climb above
the margin of error against John McCain. His coolness reflects what
seems to be a first-class temperament. And while community organizing
may not be much of a credential for the Presidency, Mr. Obama's ability
to organize a campaign speaks well of his potential to manage a
government.
None of this changes the fact that voters still know remarkably
little about a man who is less than four years out of the Illinois
state Senate. While he has already written two autobiographies, there
are significant gaps in Mr. Obama's political resume. The nature of his
relationship with onetime friend and political contributor Tony Rezko,
a convicted felon, or with radicals Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, not
to mention Acorn, remains ambiguous or contradictory.
They were all early supporters or mentors, yet during this campaign
Mr. Obama has eventually disavowed each one. This is perhaps testimony
to a ruthless pragmatism, or maybe opportunism, but what do those
relationships say about what he really believes? He is fortunate the
media have been so incurious about them -- as opposed, say, to Sarah
Palin's Wasilla church or Joe Wurzelbacher's plumbing business.
More importantly, it remains unclear how Mr. Obama intends to
govern. As a political candidate, he has presented himself as a
consensus-oriented bridge-builder. But for all his talk about reaching
across the aisle, we can think of no major issue where he has disagreed
with his party's dominant interest groups or broken with liberal
orthodoxy. Not one. The main example he cites -- "ethics reform" -- is
the kind of trivial Beltway compromise that changes nothing about the
way Washington works.
Unlike Newark Democratic Mayor Cory Booker, Mr. Obama opposes school
vouchers and would water down the accountability provisions of the No
Child Left Behind Act. Unlike Bill Clinton, Mr. Obama is ambivalent at
best about free trade. His promise to abrogate the North American Free
Trade Agreement, if Canada and Mexico refuse to bargain, is a more
breathtaking case of U.S. "unilateralism" than anything Mr. Bush has
done. Nafta is a 15-year old pact enacted by a Democratic Congress and
President. The Kyoto Protocol had never even been submitted to the
Senate when Mr. Bush refused to support it.
If he is elected, Mr. Obama would immediately face the same kind of
large, liberal Democratic majority on Capitol Hill that did so much to
ruin Jimmy Carter and the first two years of the Clinton Presidency. Is
there anything its liberal barons want that he'd oppose? He hasn't said
so. On the contrary, Mr. Obama's voting record and agenda suggest that
the "transformation" he may have in mind is a return to the pre-Reagan
era of government expansion and liberal ascendancy.
Amid a recession, with the mortgage market already nationalized and
the banking industry partly so, the next President needs to draw some
lines against further politicization of our economy. Perhaps Mr. Obama
will surprise by appointing Paul Volcker as his Treasury Secretary, or
postponing his tax increases with the economy in distress. But those
are further leaps of hope with little evidence of pragmatism to back
them up.
On national security, Mr. Obama is an even greater man of mystery.
Perhaps once in office he will take the course of prudent realism. He
can certainly sound hawkish when he wants to, advocating unilateral
military strikes inside Pakistan and promising the kind of open-ended
commitment to the Afghan conflict that he claims we can't afford or
sustain in Iraq. Yet he ran irresponsibly against the surge in Iraq and
now has his lucky stars to thank that Mr. McCain prevailed in that
debate, so Mr. Obama would inherit a far more stable Middle East. His
belief that diplomacy can stop Tehran's nuclear ambitions is also
naive, and we suspect would be shown to be so early in his
Administration with an Iranian nuclear declaration, if not a test.
As Joe Biden recently said, an Obama Presidency would invite
challenges from enemies who would tread more cautiously against a
President McCain. Perhaps Mr. Obama will evolve into a Truman, or
perhaps he'll prove merely to be another Jimmy Carter. Unlike Mr.
McCain, he'll be making it up as he goes.
Perhaps this is the kind of leadership the American people want
after the Presidential certitudes of the Bush years. Americans
certainly are eager for fresh start, and it is typical of periods of
economic panic that they may even be willing to reach for the kind of
alluring but untested appeal that so marks Mr. Obama. Sometimes these
gambles pay off, and sometimes they don't.
Recent Comments