Opinion: Why I’m Voting for Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden
This presidential election comes at a time when our country is facing very serious challenges from every direction.
The tasks ahead will be very difficult and impossible for anyone to succeed in fully. That said, I think that Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden are clearly the better choice for the following reasons.
- Intellectual and Personal Tools. Assembling and leading an administration that works successfully in a dizzying range of complex issues requires a powerful team and powerful intellectual capacity. We cannot afford to elect a president or vice president without demonstrated intellectual firepower and consistent values that include determination to preserve our Constitution and work with all sides to solve our problems.
Sen. Obama has a bachelor’s degree with distinction from Colombia University and a Doctor of Law degree with distinction from Harvard. At Harvard he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, a prestigious honor reflecting the great respect he was held in by his classmates and the faculty. He also taught Constitutional law for several years at the University of Chicago Law School, one of the most respected schools in the country.
We do not really know what issues and problems will arise in the next four years on top of the difficult problems we already face. But we do know that the job of the president requires someone who can deal with unending, 24/7 pressures from domestic and foreign problems, crises and catastrophes without crumpling, without losing one’s temper and without losing perspective. Carrying that load year after year requires someone in the peak of emotional, intellectual and physical health.
Sen. Obama has shown an unflappable personality that doesn’t bounce between highs and lows, that doesn’t jump between erratic actions, and he doesn’t lose his temper in the face of provocation. Some have even faulted him recently for not getting angrier in the face of outrageous attacks on him in the campaign.
Sen. McCain has only a bachelor’s degree and that was barely achieved at the bottom of his class at Annapolis. He has a 50-year, well-documented record of personal volatility predating his military career and lasting to the present time in addition to well-known physical issues.
For a more detailed view of how the two men’s personalities might impact the presidency differently, see the piece by Ambassador Richard Holbrook at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-richard-c-holbrooke/calm-methodical-obama-vs_b_130343.html.
- Ability to Judge People and Assemble and Manage a Large Administration Team. A presidency succeeds or fails on the basis of the quality of choices he makes in scores of positions from vice president to cabinet secretaries to Supreme Court Justices to chiefs of staff and ambassadors.
We know little about whom Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain would choose for his administration’s top spots. We do know that Sen. Obama chose a vice presidential running mate that is legally trained and who has real depth of knowledge and experience in the whole range of issues and problems facing the country as a whole. We also know that Sen. Obama staffed his presidential campaign with a team that has stayed cohesive, effective and organized from beginning to end and brought him from being a little known name to that of presidential nominee with no scandal, no turbulence and no back-biting that characterized most of the other campaigns in both parties.
Sen. McCain chose to populate his campaign’s top tiers largely with professional lobbyists that have served large businesses and even foreign countries and with former members of the Bush administration that has been a failure in nearly every policy area. In addition, Sen. McCain chose a vice presidential running mate he hardly knew and who is in no way prepared to be president of the United States.
- Ability to Bring About Change in American Law and Politics. Obama would come to office with a majority in the House and possibly one in the Senate. McCain would come to office without a majority in the House and possibly without one in the Senate as well. Even among Republicans, McCain appears to have less than enthusiastic approval as was shown last week when the majority of House Republicans voted against the fiscal bailout plan that Bush and McCain argued for.
So, to the extent any real change would be possible in the next several years in terms of legislation, Obama would have a chance and McCain would have little chance. (Of course, with the bleak financial picture facing us, it is doubtful whether either president will have the resources to fund any significant legislative programs such as healthcare change, tax reduction or military buildup.)
- Ability to End the War in Iraq and Successfully Defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Obama promises to reduce U.S. military activity in Iraq where all agree that a political solution among the Iraqis is the only path to peace or stability. Even the Bush administration is now discussing U.S. withdrawal with Iraqi leaders as Obama has prodded them to do.
McCain’s demand that we not leave before achieving “victory” is the same simple, black or white military solution that the administration has pursued with checkered results for 5 ½ years while not giving success in Afghanistan nearly high enough priority. Our military has done a magnificent job in a very complicated situation in Iraq while working under incompetent civilian leaders. But that does not mean that keeping them there indefinitely while pursuing some undefined “victory” is a sensible policy to pursue.
- Ability to Manage the Economy in Very Difficult Times. Neither candidate has been willing to tell the American people about the difficult times ahead and the fiscal discipline it will take to rebuild our economy. Neither has faced the incredible burden of national debt that has been allowed to grow, especially in the last eight years, not to mention the added debt that is likely in a looming bailout. Too bad!
Obama, however, comes from a middle-class background, has actually worked among people of lesser means, and does not have a career-long record of opposing government regulation of unfettered greed and risk by leaders of business and financial institutions. McCain, however, has never worked in the private sector and has a long record of opposing regulation of financial institutions…until last week! He himself says that “economic issues” are not his strong suit, and his primary fiscal advisor, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, takes the opposite tack on financial regulation and has dismissed American anger at the current fiscal chaos as mere ‘whining!”
Conclusion: The next four years are likely to be turbulent, dangerous and unpredictable. I choose a candidate with demonstrated intelligence, calm in the face of difficulty, and the judgment to select members of an administration who are not compromised with loyalties to other countries and self-interested industries. I choose someone who wants to face the hard decisions needed to bring the Iraq war to a close and complete the task with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. I do not choose someone whose whole career has shown erratic behavior, lack of regard for selection of highly qualified subordinates, and a willingness to change tunes for political advantage. Chuck Bingaman
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