John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee for president, likes to say that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan Revolution. So was I, working out of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. But, unlike McCain, a good man and a true American hero, I don’t intend to vote Republican this November. I am voting for Barack Obama.
Meritocracy is at the core of American conservative beliefs. So let’s face it: George W Bush has been the worst US president in memory. His administration has been inept, corrupt, and without accomplishment. After this performance, why give the Republicans another turn at the helm?
Let’s give the other party a chance, even if its policies are not exactly what conservatives may like. In America, we call it “throwing the bums out.”
When meritocracy is downgraded, as it has been during the Bush years, bad things happen. Worst of all, racism has flourished, because productivity and social utility have become less effective in protecting targets of discrimination.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in America’s current debate over illegal immigration. It is not so much the illegality of their entrance into the US that riles many conservative Republicans; it’s the migrants themselves, especially Hispanics who can’t speak English. Never mind that Hispanic migrants are among the hardest-working people in the US.
It is a bitter irony that John McCain, the war hero, is considered a traitor by the conservative wing of his party because he has a compassionate attitude towards undocumented immigrants.
Sadly, the Republican Party has been hijacked during the Bush years by sloganeers using code phrases like “illegal immigration” and “protecting the middle class” to mask their racism, and “economic incentive effects” to justify tax policies that are blatantly tilted to the rich.
Responding to this politics of hate, Obama likes to call himself a “hope monger,” not a “hate monger.” It’s a great line and it applies.
Hope always sells well in America. Reagan understood that, and it is one of the reasons he was a great and beloved president, even if some of his policies were flawed. As Hillary Clinton, Obama’s rapidly fading rival for the Democratic nomination is finding out to her dismay, policies can be an overrated commodity in presidential elections that really matter.
The hope that Obama is holding out for Americans is one of reconciliation — racial, political, between the wealthy and the poor, and between America and its allies. This is powerful stuff, and dwarfs the narrow technocratic instincts of Mrs. Clinton, whose schoolgirl approach to the campaign has justly earned her defeat after defeat in the primaries.
Just as Reagan had his “Reagan Democrats” who were attracted by his message of hope after the malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, Obama will have his “Obama Republicans,” attracted by the hope of national reconciliation and healing.
Non-Americans must understand that there is yet another revolution brewing in the US, and that Senators Clinton and McCain are both likely to be swept away by it. When conservative Republicans support liberal Democrats (Obama has been rated the most liberal member of the US Senate), “the times they are a-changin’,” as Bob Dylan wrote 45 years ago.
Moreover, a crucial difference today is that the generational conflict that so characterised the 1960’s — “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,” as Dylan put it — is absent. The young may be taking the lead — what Obama calls “a revolution from the bottom up” — but there is little opposition from today’s parents.
Indeed, I personally know a successful US hedge fund manager who is quite conservative and consistently votes Republican, but who is thinking of supporting Obama. His daughter dates an African-American, and, to his credit, he believes in racial reconciliation. True, an Obama victory would certainly increase his own taxes, but some things — for example, the promise of a multi-cultural America — are simply more important.
There appear to be many Republicans and independents who feel the same way. Obama can lose these people, however, if he forgets that he is a reconciler, not a class warrior, and goes from tilting towards the poor to soaking the rich.
In any case, America’s allies should feel relieved by how the presidential election is shaping up. America needs Obama, but McCain is a reasonable alternative. He is no Bush, and conservative Republicans’ hatred of him is his badge of honour. He would stand up to the haters at home (including those in his own party) and to the terrorists abroad. That’s a lot better than what we have today. —DT-PS
Melvyn Krauss is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University