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Obama or Clinton?
Posted by Kevin

So it is Super Tuesday and for the first time that I can remember, my vote in a primary will matter. The only problem is that since Edwards dropped out, there is no one I am particularly excited about. The two candidates are running on themes that do absolutely nothing for me. I don’t care about hope. I don’t believe in it, not really. Hope is nice if you have it, I suppose, but hope is nothing by itself. It needs the ability to get things done, to make the hoped for change take place. Experience is also meaningless to me. Bob Dole was experienced. Ronald reagan was experienced. Ron Paul is experienced. I would not vote for any of them because their experience doesn’t matter if it is experience in getting things I disapprove of done. All that is left then is policy.

That last sentence may seem a little weird as policy is indubitable important. But policy itself is generally not enough. The job of the Presidency is going to come with a myriad of surprises that are going to have to be dealt with. A candidates instincts, personality, and past performance all matter then because a surprise is something that existing policy frameworks do not readily address. Who a president is and what he or she believes in matters then, because that is what will drive the response to a surprise. Anyone who paid any attention to is frat boy peevishness and history of failed businesses and poor treatment of others would have known that Bush would likely screw up the response to a 9/11 style event. He was exactly the wrong kind of person with exactly the wrong kind of weaknesses and temperament to be in that position and we have all paid for it. Unfortunately, the candidates aren’t that differentiable on this score, either.

I have a great deal of respect for Hillary Clinton. She weathered a extraordinary amount of vitriol and mindless hatred and a very public humiliation at the hands of her husband. As a Senator she is reputed to be a master of policy detail and an intellect to be respected. But she has a tendency to back things like a law banning flag burning and she is advised by people like union-buster Mark Penn and has the most hawkish foreign policy team.

Obama is also impressive. There is no doubt that he has the potential to be a truly game-changing President, igniting a realignment like Reagan’s. He also has a history of getting things done in the Illinois legislature and he was an organizer in Chicago; the man knows hows to brawl, even if he does it with a smile on his face. But he also has a tendency to talk in right wing frames and a seeming reluctance to embrace opportunities to advance a progressive agenda. He has not lead, for example, or the FISA fight or on the war in Iraq. At some point, it is not unreasonable to suspect that his instincts are overly cautious or centrist.

If it sounds as if I am unhappy with the choice I have, that is not my intent. Either person would make a very good president and Obama shows some signs of potentially being a great president. But at the end of the day they are just politicians. They are forced to navigate an electorate with diverse and conflicting views and that means compromise and occasionally the failure of policies I hold dear. If I seem overly critical, it is only because what matters now is not their similarities and successes but rather their differences and failures.

So, policy. As far as I can tell, there are only two major differences and one minor difference in policy between Obama and Clinton. Their environmental policies look similar (and are very good, actually) and I think their economic policies are close enough, if neither goes where I would want them to. Obama and Clinton have similar technology positions, but Obama seems to place a higher importance on those policies and, probably as a result, has better and more comprehensive policies. He just seems tog et issues like net neutrality and open access better than Clinton does. That leaves health care and Iraq.

Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, while not what I would have approved of, is probably the better one. I don’t see how we can control costs or make a plan universal if it does not have mandates and enforcement procedures. Without those, we have no way to prevent the freeloading problem and we will end up with more expensive insurance pools since the healthy will hold themselves out until they absolutely need care. It will be a situation similar to the one we are already in, with the exception of a public insurance option in competition with the private insurers.

Obama has the better foreign policy. While he has been reluctant to lead on Iraq, his foreign policy seems sounder than Clinton. He was correct about the war in Iraq and he has directly challenged the framing of the security issues. He has attacked the politics of fear and the militarization of our foreign policy. His advisors are much less hawkish than Clinton’s, and his rhetoric has been much less “bomb first, ask questions later”. I believe that Clinton is sincere in her hawkishness. I think she and her people actually believe that American military might is an excellent tool for advancing liberal democracy and American interests. Obama is wiser than that.

The decision would seem clear: which of those policies is more important? Unfortunately for me, I don’t think there is much difference in their importance. The American economy and the American people desperately need our broken health care system to be fixed. It is the most important domestic policy consideration with the exception of dealing with climate change. But America desperately needs to understand that empire is no longer a viable foreign policy. Until that happens, America will continually spend more than it should to protect itself and will continue to needlessly create rivals and enemies.

There is one difference between the two issues, however. The progressive infrastructure and, to a certain extent, the country at large are to the left of Obama on this issue. The SEIU is going to spend 75 million dollars to advocate for universal health care. The Congress is likely to be Democratic, and perhaps even very democratic. It is possible, even likely, that the bills that come out of Congress will push Obama to the left on health care. Indeed, the primary criticism has lead him to start talking about punishing the free riders when they do come in for care. Not the best option, but it’s a start. In foreign policy, however, Clinton is solidly in the establishment consensus Unfortunately for us, it is a bi-partisan consensus, so a Democratic Congress is not likely to push Clinton away from America as Empire. A popular President who advocates the opposite, and who fills the Defense Department and State Department with advocates for his position, is perhaps the best way of changing the terms of the foreign policy debate in this country.

So it’s Obama because where he is wrong there is the good possibility that the electorate and party can make him more right and where he is right he offers a unique opportunity to change the terms of the debate in this country in a very good way for a very long time.

February 5th, 2008 General | 13 comments