I’ve been feeling a real sense of foreboding lately. Part of it (though only part) is political, as anyone who reads this blog can tell, and so there’s definitely a component to this which is merely partisan: I’m convinced our next president is going to be a (very) liberal Democrat, and I don’t believe the policies which liberal Democrats support are best for America, which is why I typically vote Republican. That’s a matter of differences of opinion, nothing more; part of the deal in a democracy is that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, and in the long run by the grace of God you hope it all balances itself out. So far in the history of this nation, in the long run by the grace of God it mostly has.
I don’t believe a liberal Democratic administration will be good for our economy, but that doesn’t really bother me; I’m probably too spoiled anyway, and even if the times wax comparatively bad, my family and I will still have things infinitely better than some of our friends elsewhere in the world. The children who will never be born due to liberal Democratic policies on abortion weigh far more heavily on me (and don’t try to argue the canard that GOP policies have raised the abortion rate—that one’s been thoroughly debunked), as do other likely changes on the social side. But even so, that’s politics; that’s how the system works.
What isn’t just politics is that I see heavy weather ahead. The “end of history” celebrated by Francis Fukuyama turned out to be nothing more than a Weimar holiday followed by the rebirth of aggressive fascism—this time in Islamic garb—as a major force on the world stage, the rise of China, the reassertion of Russian power, and the ongoing spread of WMD technologies. There are some nasty cancers growing in the global body politic, and they aren’t responding to herbal therapies. This isn’t helped by the current deflation of the global economy, which creates its own set of problems which must be addressed. From a political perspective, one may say that this candidate would be better than that candidate, but there is no conceivable candidate we could put up with the confidence that they would “fix the problems,” because the problems are simply too big. The situation of our world, as usual, is not amenable to a political solution, though it helps when politics at least manages to produce leaders who can move us in the right direction.
This is why what really bothers me about the upcoming election is not that we’re going to electa liberal Democrat, but that we’re electing one who I’m increasingly convinced is manifestly unprepared and unqualified for the job. I didn’t feel this concern four years ago, even though I had far less respect for either John Kerry or John Edwards than I do for either Barack Obama or Joe Biden, and even though I consider McCain/Palin a far superior ticket to Bush/Cheney, and even though I think the issues were just as serious four years ago as now. For that matter, if it were Hillary Clinton running with, say, Harold Ford, I would be far less concerned. Yes, several years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I’d say that, but between her Senate tenure and her campaign, she did a lot to change my opinion of her; and love her or hate her (there seems to be little middle ground), Sen. Clinton is someone who gets things done.
To be sure, I would have disagreed with many of the things she did over the next four years—as, I should note, I’ve disagreed with many of the things our incumbent president has done over the last eight, despite the (R) after his name—and I think her campaign has shown significant weaknesses in her administrative ability, and as such, I personally would not have considered her a good president; but I believe she would have been at least a moderately effective president, and possibly quite a bit more, and one whom Democrats would have judged successful. The key here is that I think Sen. Clinton is capable of saying with Orrin Knox (the fictional senior senator from Illinois in Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent), “I don’t give a **** about being liked, but I intend to be respected,” and as such I believe she can stand up to people and face them down when the situation calls for it. This is a crucially important ability in a president, and never more than in their dealings with the leaders of other nations who bear America ill will.
I do not believe that any of these things can be said of Barack Obama (except that his campaign, too, has shown significant weaknesses in his administrative ability). He simply has no record of serious accomplishment—he’s never been an objective success in the world outside academia, except at campaigning and winning votes. My brother-in-law, an Obama supporter, assured me recently that he’s gotten a good education; my response was that I don’t question that (though I do wonder why he’s so determined to keep his time at Columbia hidden), but I don’t see that he’s done anything with it. He’s a writer, a thinker, a policy wonk; he’s the guy on the staff who makes a great advisor because he’s full of ideas, but has no instinct for turning any of them into reality. He talks about change, but he doesn’t create it; he talks about compromise and bipartisanship, but isn’t willing to give up anything to make it happen.
As well, and most crucially, he has no history of standing up to his own party, to his own supporters, to his own mentors, unless he’s driven to—and when it comes to conflict between them, as it did recently in Illinois between Gov. Rod Blagojevich and State Senate President Emil Jones (Sen. Obama’s personal kingmaker), he prefers to just avoid the scene altogether. To be effective as a leader requires the willingness to be disliked, to bear the full force of the anger and disappointment of others, and Sen. Obama shows no sign of that as far as I can see.
The thing is, before, it hasn’t mattered. He’s been one of a legislative body, and if he doesn’t bother to vote half the time, the votes will still be held and the business of the session will still go on; and if he doesn’t bother to convene his subcommittee, well, the legislature can work around that to get done what needs doing. And besides, there’s always a higher office to aspire to, and another campaign to run. What happens when he reaches the point when there’s only one of him, and the buck stops at his desk, and there’s nowhere else to go—but down? I don’t see anything to give me confidence in the answer to that question.
And so, my deep presentiment that it will not be well when this nation elects Sen. Obama to its highest office is not just about his conviction that offering ourselves to our enemies as their partner in addressing the problems of this world is a bad way to solve those problems (but a good way to get hurt). It’s not even, really, about my broader sense that his instincts in responding to people and situations point in all the wrong directions. These, again, are concerns at the level of political disagreement, and my unease runs deeper. Let me set them aside for the moment; let me go so far as to stipulate that Joe Biden is right, that when the crisis comes, we just have to trust Barack Obama because “he gets it.” My fear is that even if his instincts are in fact right and he does know the right thing to do, he won’t be able to convert that knowledge to action and actually do it in a successful way. That’s going to be an extremely difficult thing to do in the event of, for instance, my personal worst-case scenario: al’Qaeda setting off a suitcase nuke in or near the US Capitol. It would be difficult for anyone, because let’s be honest: the gap from knowledge to effective, timely action is one of the hardest for us to bridge in this life; one of the reasons why we need true leaders is their ability to do so consistently when it matters most. If Sen. Obama has shown anything like that consistency, I haven’t seen it—and I don’t believe it’s going to just show up when he needs it most.
Don’t think this means I dislike the man. I don’t; I’ve never understood anyway how you can dislike someone you’ve never met, but I see little in him to dislike. I see much that is admirable, and much that I believe would make him a joy to know. He’s clearly a very gifted man; if we were discussing him as, say, a potential SCOTUS nominee for another Democratic administration, I think he’d be hard to argue against. What I just don’t see is the kind of inner strength, resolve, and fortitude that it takes to navigate the storms of the presidency to a successful conclusion—and that worries me deeply. I hope I’m wrong; I’ll be praying hard that I’m wrong. But right now, I just don’t see it.