Why Obama might be the best pick

Andrew Sullivan captures well why Obama appeals to me as well.

"[T]he most persuasive case for Obama has less to do with him than with the moment he is meeting. The moment has been a long time coming, and it is the result of a confluence of events, from one traumatizing war in Southeast Asia to another in the most fractious country in the Middle East. The legacy is a cultural climate that stultifies our politics and corrupts our discourse.

Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce...

None of this, of course, means that Obama will be the president some are dreaming of. His record in high office is sparse; his performances on the campaign trail have been patchy; his chief rival for the nomination, Senator Clinton, has bested him often with her relentless pursuit of the middle ground, her dogged attention to her own failings, and her much-improved speaking skills. At times, she has even managed to appear more inherently likable than the skinny, crabby, and sometimes morose newcomer from Chicago. Clinton’s most surprising asset has been the sense of security she instills. Her husband—and the good feelings that nostalgics retain for his presidency—have buttressed her case. In dangerous times, popular majorities often seek the conservative option, broadly understood.

The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do. And a Clinton-Giuliani race could be as invigorating as it is utterly predictable.

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama."

The war Andrew describes of polarized ideological opponents is a self-righteous war fought by hyperaggressive combatants who, like Hamas and Al Queda, seem to care more about propping up their own artificial sense of monopoly on wisdom in human and polical affairs. Obama, unlike Hillary or any of his Democratic opponents, for all of my disagreements with him - and my disagreement with him on the war is a pretty important one, to me and to him - seems to understand better the need to end this dysfunctional and senseless war of propaganda and bring some genuine thought and discussion about the most important policy issues to Washington.

That, among many reasons, is why I am so unenamoured by Ms. Clinton. Because she doesn't seem to understand or have ideas for resolving this and many other much deeper problems of politics and policy-making in Washington, right now. She is symptomatic of all of its larger problems. She thinks positioning as a winner in this self-righteous battle will effectively work at resolving this schism. And she reflects the cynicism of self-righteous liberal baby-boomers and elders, alike, yearning for the days of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal when progressives could just argue that they were right about every policy issue and conservatives were wrong and there was no use having the discussion or engaging more serious thought about resolving our most serious policy schisms, anyway, because those who disagreed with her were never going to fully comprehend her infinite wisdom and "experience" anyway. It's arrogance grabbing for power. And it is the reason that Hillary Clinton needs serious humbling, right now. And why Obama is a better alternative.

That is why Obama offers more real hope. Because he is genuinely committed to finding a way past all this ugliness. And what many party loyalists like in Hillary is validation of their own cynical inclination that others could never fully comprehend why they are right on every issue, anyway, no matter how much historical and empirical evidence indicates any number of serious cracks in the progressive project. And that kind of arrogance does not need validation. It needs humbling.

A country or ideology must know that its ideas are bankrupt when it relies on force rather than ideas to articulate their vision for the world. That intellectual bankruptcy cannot possibly lead anywhere, which is why real progress will only come with that more genuine and engaged discussion and debate. Because everything else will leave us stuck in the same dysfunctional, hyperaggressive, unsuccessful, stubborn mess Washington and the various party and ideological warriors have us in, today.

Obama offers some hope out of that mess, as imperfect as his and every candidate's brand of hope may be.

Whether the country chooses that kind of hope or the cynicism that is the oxygen for the arrogance and corruption that power tempts will depend on whether Americans are committed to a genuinely confident, strong, thoughtful future or whether they will pretend that the way things are going is just a-ok, if only a Democrat and a winner were in office. The latter will not lead to our ruin. But neither will it lead us forward.

And that is the uselessly sad fate that awaits an America that will not face up to the consequences of its cynicism around matters of liberal democratic policy and politics.

And like every other generation of ascendant and final authority, people will move forward even as governments fight their quite predictable loss of influence and power and as those governments who aspire for the most power suffer the biggest losses. America may not be in decline. But the power of her government is. And that is the positive development that will come out of this historical period, no matter who gets elected.

Now the key is electing leadership who can make use of the limited power that government should be afforded to use it more effectively, equitably, respectfully, and with more thought and engagement and less hubris and dominance.

Barack Obama would be the best pick among Democrats for that kind of future, I think. Hillary Clinton would only stall that future. Ron Paul represents the need for limits on that power without an appreciation for the positive uses for that power. Rudy Giuliani understands those positive uses with some but still not enough appreciation for the limits that power needs.

Perhaps someone like Barack Obama might best lead a discussion about how to lead with all of America's and the world's best qualities and ideas getting a voice in the discussion.