Our Country Needs a Steady Hand, Not a Maverick

We have a faltering economy, two ongoing wars, tenuous relations with several heavily armed countries, massive public educational missteps, rapidly increasing fuel prices, skyrocketing debt, and an environmental problem that requires our best mind and I all I hear from our media heads is that our country wants someone with whom we can have a beer with. If I hear this intellectually infantile declaration one more time, I may lose it.

I want someone who, by direct comparison, makes me look like I have a mental handicap. I want our next president to speak twelve languages, do quantum physics in their head, and knows my needs better than I do. Moreover, I want someone who doesn’t have time to sit down and have a beer with me while I empty my picayune mind.

Barring that, I’ll settle for someone who is a careful and deliberate intellectual - someone who is not erratic in his decisions, doesn’t make decisions on the fly, and has the ability to say that he is wrong when he has obviously messed up. Our country wants a leader that represents the best of who and what we are. We deserve an intellectual who doesn’t run the country like he’s constantly seeking a perpetually one-party rule. And we need the best of us to lead us once again.

Can a Republican Vote for Obama?

With all the current political happenings, we now have daily examples of people switching from the Republican candidate to the Democratic candidate because “Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all” (Bacevich, The American Conservative). Over the last several days Christopher Buckley, writer and son of the famed National Review conservative William F. Buckley, announced that, “for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November” (thedailybeast.com). While the heavy-hitting conservative Wick Allison, editor-in-chief of D Magazine, said, "My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country” adding “Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan” (dmagazine.com).

So yes, you can be a Republican and vote for a Democrat. This is especially true when one side is represented by “a Great Communicator in the mold of Reagan, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, a leader who can inspire Americans to work together on the problems of the 21st Century” (Jeffrey Hart, former Nixon and Reagan speech writer, rebublicansforobama.com) and the other is, according Bill Kristol, founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and regular commentator on the Fox News Channel, running "a pathetic campaign" (youtube.com). Or, to paraphrase Douglas W. Kmiec, Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University, who served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, sometimes you just have to switch parties to vote for the better candidate (slate.com).

But why? Why would a red-blooded conservative living in the US of A want to vote for Obama? Well, don’t do it because David Brooks, conservative columnist and pundit, formerly of National Review, called Sarah Palin a "fatal cancer” (nationalreview.com) or that Joshua Trevino, co-founder of RedState, said, "Do I believe in John McCain? Not as much as I used to. Do I believe in Sarah Palin? Despite my early enthusiasm for her, now not at all. Do I believe in the national Republican Party? Not in the slightest -- even though I see no meaningful alternative to it” (joshuatrevino.com), and don’t vote for Obama because people like David Friedman, the son of late conservative icon and Nobel economist Milton Friedman, have endorsed him (davidfriedman.blogspot.com), or even because Christopher Hitchens says to vote for Obama because “McCain lacks the character and temperament to be president. And Palin is simply a disgrace” (slate.com).

Don’t even vote for Obama because Andrew Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul, says that Obama “could transcend” (theatlantic.com) our problems, or because Frances Fukuyama, one of the key founders of the Reagan Doctrine, agree that "Obama is the only one of the candidates who can escape the polarization" (smh.com.au) and find real solutions. And don’t vote for Obama because Larry Hunter, supply-side economist who helped is credited with writing the Republicans' 1994 Contract With America, said "I am enthusiastically supporting Barack Obama for president" (thedailynews.com).

Instead, vote for Obama because in your heart, you know he’s right.



http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama

Bacevich, A. (2008) The Right Choice?: The conservative case for Barack Obama. The American Conservative. March 24, 2008.

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/05/thoughts-on-obama.html

http://www.dmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?nm=Core+Pages&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&tier=3&gid=B33A5C6E2CF04C9596A3EF81822D9F8E

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDgxNDJjYWQyN2MwNmIyYTc4ZmEyMzM0MmU1MmNiNGM=

http://www.republicansforobama.org/?q=node/565

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/03/23/endorsing-obama.aspx

http://www.slate.com/id/2202163/

www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-end-of-history--and-back-again/2008/05/26/1211653939213.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama/

www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/07/16/2008-07-16_im_a_lifelong_conservative_activist_and_.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMegXF5UJW8

Democratic Digression

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. - Sir Winston Churchill

Our system, our Democracy, stays in place because of one simple reason: it works satisfactorily.

But I think that it is occasionally important to go over the actual process. History is littered with attempts at governments installed in the hope that they would look after the masses. For a good bit of this time there was a belief in the “divine right of kings” to rule over us. This absolute monarchy style was destined to fail due to a lack of available good kings.

We as a species have tried thousands of different ways of governing ourselves in the hope that we will find a moralistic government that is both stable and benevolent. The problem with all of these previously tried systems is that they relied heavily on continued maintenance by those who would pursue the founding principle of compassion. In short, those who put a leader in charge willingly wish to see that leader treat them well. The problem then arises when that leader is either unchecked in power, or is able to slowly rot the system through the slow creep of authoritarianism or through their failure to live up the job.

Our Declaration of Independence may list our inalienable rights as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, but it is built upon a system that must immediately limit those rights in order to maintain them. Still, few rebel even though everyone complains. Living standards, crime, and personal freedom are, historically, at an all time high. And it’s not because our voters are any smarter. Our last two elections proved that. So why does our system work better than all others tried so far?

It is because our original system was built upon the backs of generations that put the welfare of their countrymen over themselves. It is the only practical difference and the reason we have the system that we do. We are a nation created for each other. Thus, there must be a constant renewal of the connection between responsibility and authority. Or, as Thomas Jefferson told James Madison in a letter (Jan. 30, 1787), “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical”.

To vote is to wield authority and continued success is not a matter of chance. To allow unchecked authority in either the electorate or the elected officials removes the responsibility and is the sign of the end of a government. So we must encourage the occasional social responsibility to remind us why it is that we allow ourselves to be governed by and for others. We as citizens must understand that our responsibility is to the state first in order to maintain the freedom of others. But before you accuse me of communism, remember that we cannot install moral virtue at the end of a gun; we cannot force social responsibility at the end of a speech. It must be given in lives, blood, loss, and pain. There is no other historical proof that a governed population can find within themselves the ability to govern each other without individual sacrifice. So it does not matter what political system is in question.

So what are morals? At their most primitive, morals are what come out of our instinct to survive. They are the ability of an individual to see beyond themselves. Think of morals as the willingness of a mother who would die protecting someone else’s children. They are earned, maintained, and spread through channels all connected to the state and the freedoms that it may or may not allow.

True democratic governance can and never will exist. Defined, it is simply representative government with equality placed at the forefront above all else. It is a system that theoretically exists to give everyone equal say. And it can never be a reality because the average voter, representative, or appointed individual can never grasp the potential of their own power or understand the lasting ramifications of their actions. It is at best a system that allows for some individuals to have a direct influence on the daily lives of others, but only in limited scope and with varying success. At the worst, it is a system that allows the electorate to believe that they are indeed free when in actuality they consist in nothing more than a quasi-democratic organization built to support its own continuance. We are a nation held together by the belief that we are one.