Another Conservative Thinker Endorses Obama

Yesterday was shaping up to be another one of those Republicans-deserting-McCain days. For most thoughtful conservatives the cynical choice of a patently unqualified Sarah Palin was the straw that broke the camel's back. But for others it has been McCain's erratic and dishonorable behavior; it is now clear he would do anything to get into the White House, regardless of what damage he causes to America. Others just looked at his insane mortgage proposal or his catastrophic healthcare plan... and fled in horror.

Joining National Review colleague Chris Buckley, that right-wing publication's former editor and publisher, Wick Allison, wrote a scathing piece on the danger of electing McCain and why he's voting for Obama. Allison is now editor-in-chief of D Magazine. At the age of 16 he organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater and that's been his world ever since. "Today," he confesses, "it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work."

The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war-- led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.