Voting With My Heart and My Head

I have just returned from voting. For the record, I voted for Barack Obama.

It felt very satisfying. It felt like crossing a major river in our still short journey as a nation. From our beginnings as a republic of slave owners and disenfranchised slaves and former slaves to the probable election of an African American man as our President. Have we confronted our national original sin, acknowledged it and now put it behind us? I hope so. In any event, it is a moment well worthy of celebration.

This year I got the election I asked for. Of all the potential candidates who presented themselves over the last seemingly endless two years Obama and McCain were the finest people available. McCain is one of the most honorable men to have survived a political career with the better part of his integrity in tact. His personal history of bravery is unimpeachable.

Obama is perhaps the best spoken and, apparently, the most intelligent man to run for the office in my lifetime. His calmness and analytical coherence are impressive and much needed. His campaign, the only substantive clue we have of his leadership skills, has been the best in generations. Be honest, who among us believed two years ago that he could get past the vaunted Clinton machine to the Democratic nomination, much less be on the cusp of history tonight. This did not happen by accident.

Early in the primary season, Obama made noises that were calculated to endear him to the "progressive" wing of the Democratic electorate and blogosphere. But over time the careful listener could detect a clear tack to center. Troops would be withdrawn from Iraq in 16 months, but only responsibly and with the advise of the military on the ground. Health care, which was initially presented as a thrust for universality and justice, was later amended to more closely resemble those changes that will actually be achievable and affordable.

The bottom line for me is that I have placed my hopes in this man. My gut about him is that he will be calm and sound and thoughtful and inspiring and strong as President. Soon we will begin to see the early signs of his Presidential style. Who makes up his transition team, how they operate and who his early appointments are will tell us a good deal. Will he choose a rabid partisan like Rahm Emanuel for his Chief of Staff, or a more balanced person to manage the White House? Perhaps a person like Emanuel is better taken off the stage afforded him in Congress and better put to work focusing on making Obama's program happen and taking steps behind the scenes to assure his reelection. Only Obama can judge if he can be loyal to his President or can only exercise his hatred of Republicans to the detriment of a unifying presidency.

Notice I absolutely assume an Obama victory. All the numbers and my gut instincts point in that direction. I also am assuming an Obama presidency that will try to bring Americans together on the many things we agree about rather than continue to tear us apart in some bizzaro Rovian counterpoint.

Those, I confess, are my hopes. More than that, it is what I demand of the next President. I have not imbibed the koolaid. Obama is a human being. For the next four years I will be watchful as well as hopeful.

Finally, voting against John McCain was not easy. He is one of the people I admire most in public life. Sadly, his campaign was not very competent. It lurched in fits and starts from one attempt to pull a rabbit out of a hat to another. Sara Palin, suspension of the campaign to deal with the economic crisis, "Billy" Ayers (as he was called in a Weather Underground manifesto from the 60's), and others. But more than any other event, it was his apparent inability to lead in the Senate or Congress as a whole in the development of the economic "rescue" plan and his sloppy assertion that the fundamentals of the economy were sound. The old maverick McCain would have sounded an alarm. He would have looked at that legislation and its endless list of added pork for what it was and voted against it. McCain the candidate for President lacked the courage to do so or to stand for any but the commonly held wisdom on the subject. For that matter, what was to be the guiding ethos of a McCain presidency? I have no idea. Vetoing pork and taxing existing health benefits do not an overarching philosophy make. Sad but true.

Yet he does deserve our great admiration for choosing not to use the Rev. Wright against Obama. He could have done so very easily. It is reasonable to question Obama's twenty years of membership and close relationship to his minister. But what festering sores of our racial history would such a campaign tactic have picked at. Would it have taught us anything about Sen. Obama except that he worked the political base he needed to have credibility with in order to get elected in Chicago. John McCain's finest act of service to America may well have been his decision to not take that road. We owe him a great debt for this.

The Iowa Caucuses - The Most Un-Democratic Process

Tonight the talking heads and fingers of cable news and the blogosphere would have us believe that an event of great significance, the Iowa Caucuses, will display to the world the greatness of the American Democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Tonight a few of the citizens of the 30th most populous state in the nation, with just under 3 million residents, will come together in groups, abandon the central notion of the free ballot and openly declare their preference for a Presidential candidate in their respective political parties.

Ann Althouse would have us believe that there is nothing sacred about the secret ballot. Perhaps she is blinded by her own need to expound her opinions. Like all of us in the blogging biz, Ann is almost compulsive about stating who and what we stand for. And we don't care who knows. What we bloggers have in common is a position in life that insulates us from any of the possible consequences of our bloviating. No one can reach out an sanction us for what we think. "Sticks and stones...etc." Those of us who are concerned about such sanctions take the precaution of hiding behind what we hope is true anonymity.

Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, bemoans (correctly in my opinion) the Tammany-like nature of the Iowa process.

Think about the process of the caucus. Although slightly different in each Party, the process at its essence is that each attending citizen must declare, in front of his neighbors and the world, who he or she prefers as their party's nominee for President of the United States. No sacred adherence to the privacy of the secret ballot for these hearty Iowans. No, each person must acknowledge in front of his friends, neighbors, employers, relatives, local government officials, law enforcement officers, clergyman, potential business associates and ex-girl friends, who they prefer.

How much passion for one's candidate it must require to risk offending someone on whom you depend, but who doesn't share your passion for Candidate A. Conversely, what a delicious way to stick it to a politically passionate adversary. In all probability, the truth is that the low turnout at these events is due in large measure to the complexities of risk and reward that factor in to a public pledge of allegiance. It is more than disinterest and cold, snowy weather that keep most Iowa voters home.

Thus those who vote in Iowa's Caucuses are different from most of their fellow Iowans. They are immune or inured to the effect that their political views will have on their lives. So in a state that is as non-typical of the bulk of the American population as you can get, we anoint a unique, and somewhat bizarre subset of that population, to speak for America. The victors in this process win as the result of a twisted mix of people's assessment of them and their positions and the byzantine calculus of the interpersonal interplay in the caucus rooms.

If you have been paying attention to the internet, the print media and the TV newscasts, you would begin to think that this process is somehow sacred and beautifully and uniquely American. It is unique, but it is hardly beautiful, anymore than the perversion of big city political machines or elections held under the sway of near-dictators seeking the cover of an electoral victory. It is, in fact an ugly thing. Its celebration by the media, and the constant flow of political operatives, is a function of politeness, for the best of them, and the blindness by the fans of political gamesmanship for others. For the worst of them it is simply an excuse to pad their expense accounts, have a few weeks away from the dull run of family life and continue to be able to pay their bills.

And what are we delivered as a result? We in the lowly states that must follow the charade in Iowa and the more proper primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina are left only with the survivors of that process. Regardless of who you like among the starting batch of candidates, the one thing you can count on is that you will not get to cast a meaningful vote for the likes of Tancredo, Dodd, Hunter, Kucinich, Paul, Biden and others. All of these will have been washed out of the process by residents of some of our most rural states. Who will have pulled out of the race by February 5th, when the big states get to vote? Suppose for a moment that Clinton or Obama, or McCain or Giuliani are forced out of the race by then? How will the millions of voters in NY, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other large states feel? Will they not have truly been deprived of the exercise of the fullness of their right to vote by the historic vagaries and injustices of the process itself? I think that they will.

I for one will find nothing to celebrate in tonight's process, regardless of the outcomes.