An Obama endorsement

I'm caucusing, tomorrow, in the Democratic primary.

I've been a lifelong Democrat, now independent, who voted in his first election for Republicans like George H.W. Bush for President and, sadly, Eric Yost for Kansas Attorney General. Bill Clinton was a better president than either George Bush, I think. But I don't think he would make a better President another time around, and I definitely don't think his wife, with fewer intellectual or people-person gifts of her husband, would be a better President.

I'm not an Obama fanatic. As an independent, I think I'm pretty realistic about the limitations of an Obama Presidency. I don't like his more conventional liberal turn to government to solve more problems than I really think it can. But I do have to say that the reasons for an Obama candidacy expressed in this Washington Post editorial are ones that resonate with me, especially relative to the cynicism of the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton's leadership in most situations I have seen her in, up to this point.

Obama vs. the Phobocracy

It is true that the elements of the Democratic party that turn me off, most, are the fear-mongering, attack-dog, cynical leftist circles that Clinton grew up in, affirms with far too much self-righteous attachment, and which seem to fuel too much of her outlook on the world. It is these circles, on both the left and the right, that are the heart of what is wrong with American democracy, these days. People with far too much bitterness and certainty of their cause with far too little real engagement or skepticism of their own ideas or listening or appreciation of what those who disagree with them think. That is an especially pernicious habit when you are wrong on issues or where the jury is still out, nevertheless when you are right.

It is this kind of arrogance and obsession with power at the expense of reasonable and broad engagement that I think lies at the heart of everything that is corroded and dysfunctional and unwilling, though not unable, to let more reasonable and thoughtful discussion, debate, ideas, engagement, and serious attention to empirical consequence from policy - everything that Enlightenment thinkers wrote and spoke about and often made enormous sacrafices for those of us in liberal democracies to enjoy, today - lead our policy decisions rather than the bitterness, sanctimony, and all-too-certain cynicism that animates too much of politics and far too much of the Clinton campaign, and, I think, another Clinton Presidency.

I think we can expect better. I have my disagreements with Barack Obama and John McCain. Very serious disagreements, often. But I think they come at the discussion more honestly than Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or other candidates running, right now (though I do hope that the spirit of Ron Paul informs our discussions, even as I am unconvinced that Ron would be a terribly effective leader).

I want politics to get more honest. And I just don't think that Hillary Clinton will take us in that direction, right now. I think Barack Obama will. So I'll be caususing for him tomorrow.