A Cynic's Endorsement of Obama

I don’t mean to upstage Colin Powell or Warren Buffett or Matt Damon, but Barack Obama has now earned perhaps the most important endorsement of his political career. After a long and agonizing debate with myself, in which I’ve employed every dirty trick in the book to win me over, I’ve decided to end my campaign for the presidency. I’m releasing all my delegates as soon as I can find the key to their leg irons. In addition, I’ve decided to stop urging my readers to vote for a third-party candidate or, for those who can spell, to write in their own names. I hope that, like me, they’ll lend their support to Barack Obama.

I’m not completely happy about this decision. Obama strikes me as a spineless Machiavellian liar, not unlike almost every other person in Congress, particularly the current breed of Democrats who, for political expediency, chose not to try to impeach a pair of known dangerous criminals. As I’ve written here often, many of Obama’s ideas and policies make me gag. I’m disgusted by his intertwining of religion and politics, and I’m dead-set against faith-based initiatives, which he gleefully supports in flagrant disregard of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. I’m still pissed off about his vote giving telecoms immunity against prosecutions for the spying they did on American citizens, acts which flout the Fourth Amendment. I’m frightened by his saber-rattling against Pakistan, an alleged “friend” of the United States, and his knee-jerk support, without any substantive explanation, of Georgia against Russia. I’m uncomfortable with his wishy-washy stands on abortion, gun control, and the death penalty. And I hate that he was one of the loudest voices in favor of the sucker-punch known as the “bailout.”

But, in the total picture, I think that Obama is at a moral level so far above John McCain as to make it imperative that he win. For one thing, a world increasingly at odds with – and afraid of – America will breathe a sigh of relief if the “Country First” candidates fail. The McCain/Palin campaign, with its constant thuggish chant of “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.,” has been exploiting the worst crypto-fascist instincts in the jingoistic portion of our citizenry. And, while Obama’s overwhelming support among blacks is an indication of a kind of racism, it’s definitely not the same kind to which the Republicans have been playing. With its demonization of Obama, right-wing speechifying often sounds, to my ears anyway, like a veiled encouragement of lynch-mob mentality: He’s not one of us. They can throw hundreds of cute winks, adorable smiles, and thumbs-up gestures into that rhetoric; they can intone, over and over again, the falsely amiable my friends and the phonily homespun doggonit, youbetcha all they want; they still convey one message: He’s not one of us. The implication? Run him out of the neighborhood.

After eight years of monkey government, we clearly need a leader now. One of the best yardsticks we have for measuring a candidate’s ability to lead is the kind of campaign that he or she runs. McCain’s campaign seems as if it’s being conducted by people who have ADD; it lacks focus, and constantly shifts its tactics in reaction to the polls. Obama’s campaign, on the other hand, has stayed on-target since the first: It’s my time, now. That was the strategy when he announced his candidacy, and it hasn’t wavered. His people have been throwing around that extremely effective bullshit for almost two years, and it has resulted in unheard-of contributions – both from the usual favor-shoppers and the so-called “little guys.” A seeming nobody has successfully taken on the power brokers in both parties; can anyone doubt that he knows how to lead?

Normally, that kind of leadership, built on empty promises, would be chilling. Under usual circumstances, I’d look at it as potentially dangerous, the bedrock of a tyranny. But Obama’s calculatedly anti-divisive speeches have taken off some of the edge. With the exception of the Democrats’ usual bugbear, big business – and, of course, the obviously crooked and incompetent Bush administration – he singles out no group for scorn, blames no one for our two wars (three if you count the bogus “war on terror”), our economic fiasco, our catastrophic energy policies, and our infrastructure disasters. In America, big business can always take care of itself; it needs no help from presidents, or the congress, or my wallet. I don’t have to protect it through my vote. And the Bushies, as far as I’m concerned, should be brought to justice for their crimes against the state and humanity.

My final reason for throwing my admittedly trivial support behind Obama is the specter of a Sarah Palin presidency. John McCain’s age, in and of itself, doesn’t put me off. But, clearly, he has health issues; anyone who has watched his performances during the entire campaigning process can’t fail to be aware that he’s not as well as he should be. He dodders, hems and haws, spouts words that he has to weasel out of sometimes only hours later, exhibits an impatience that may well be generated by the slowly failing workings of his body. If he’s elected, and if he dies or becomes unable to perform the duties of his office (two possibilities that seem unnervingly likely to me), a proudly ignorant, unworldly, religious fundamentalist hockey mom will take over in the White House. She’ll bring her “go team” sports mindset with her. Everything she does will be filtered through her glib us-against-them vision. When issues arise that can’t be divided simplistically into two sides, she’ll do so anyway, and take one of them quicker than you can say “Joe Sixpack.” She wouldn’t be a president to inspire national trust at a time when we so badly need to feel that; she’d be a hometeam fanatic, rooting unreasonably for Americans who are “one of us.” I’m not – and neither are you. By definition, no freethinker is.

Do I agree with everything Obama says? Nope, not by a long shot. Do I believe that he’s honest? Hardly. Do I think that he’ll solve all our problems – or even most of them – in four years? Give me some credit for not being a moron.

But the alternative is so horrific, so unthinkable to me, that I will vote for him. I hope you will, too.