Appreciating John McCain

While a number of folks are casting about, assigning blame for the election of Barack Obama, I think that we should step back for a moment and give our thanks to John McCain.  No candidate for the Presidency campaigned harder, few have done so well in such a difficult political environment, and very few can point to a similar record of public service. 

 

John McCain began this Presidential campaign with no money, mired in single-digit poll numbers.  He rallied to win the Republican nomination against a former Time Man of the Year (Rudy Giuliani), a moderate Governor with a limitless war chest (Mitt Romney), and a charismatic and likable former Southern governor (Mike Huckabee).  The Republican Party faced the general election carrying the weight of an unpopular administration, a corrupt and disgraced Congressional delegation, an unpopular war that a Republican administration had mishandled, a poorly-administered response to a natural disaster that had destroyed a major American city, the passage of a gigantic and overwhelmingly unpopular corporate rescue package in a time of economic crisis, and an economic environment that serious economists are comparing to the Great Depression.  Somehow, McCain managed to retain 46% of American voters, and lost the election by only 6% of the vote. 

 

To put this in perspective, in spite of all of these woes, fairly or unfairly credited to the Republican account, John McCain somehow managed to hold losses from the Republican coalition to a mere 3% of the proportion of votes won by President Bush in 2000. 

 

For rock bottom, this is a decent place for us to build from.  And we owe it to John McCain. 

 

In addition, the legacy of McCain’s campaign may be a positive one for the Republican Party.  While the conventional wisdom holds that the significance of the Palin pick was to energize social conservatives (which did in fact happen, I might add), I would argue that the broader impact will be to lay the groundwork for a new coalition of Republican voters.  Palin swept onto the scene not because of a long record of public-policy initiatives of social conservative causes (in fact, her record is overwhelmingly tolerant and secular on social issues), but because she represents a set of governing principles that balances the interests of business and voters in government.  As Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argue in Grand New Party, the future of the Party is with the working class and the upwardly mobile.  Palin marked the first step in the direction of a Party focused on “Wall-Mart Republicans.”  Whether the eventual breakthrough is won by Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, or Eric Cantor, we can credit John McCain with starting the party in this new direction. 

 

           And that will represent the last, and greatest, service of this American hero to our people.    

Intellectuals and Intelligence

The rise of Sarah Palin as a political force in American politics (a rise that this blog heartily endorses) has illustrated an interesting class cleavage in American society.  Intellectuals in general, and Republican intellectuals in particular, have illustrated a disturbing tendency to discount the Alaska governor as an intellectual lightweight that represents some type of existential threat to American political society.  While the devolution of the party of Jackson from the champions of popular democracy and the idea that government not only of but by average citizens chosen as exceptional by their peers is no surprise in the context of the rise of the elitist and vanguardist New Left.  More surprising is the penetration of this fundamentalist elitism into the intellectual class of the Republican party, a party that hither to had been ideologically committed to the idea that all citizens of ambition and ability could aspire to any heights in society.  While Palin’s popularity among the popular mass of the Republican party indicates that this idea still retains some power, it is striking how extensive the decline in popular democracy is among the political class as a whole. 

 

Indeed, if we were to follow the logic of a Chris Buckley, a David Brooks, or any number of semi-intellectuals of the left who have criticized governor Palin, who among our Presidents, or who among our people is indeed fit to govern?  Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Reagan, who among these were not denounced in the same manner as Governor Palin? None.  These men were not intellectuals, but they were leaders.  They were not intellectuals, but they were intelligent.  They were not intellectuals, but they earned the trust of their fellow citizens.  They were not highly educated, but they had wisdom, the type of wisdom that comes only through striving against intellectuals who told them that there were not worthy of respect. 

 

You see, intellectuals are not necessarily intelligent.  Some of them are, but the dirty secret of the academic world (from someone on the inside) is that most intellectuals are really not unusually smart.  Sure, they tend to display dazzling knowledge of a certain discipline.  And, if they have been outside of the workaday world for long enough, they can also develop a superior breadth of knowledge to most people (you can do lots of leisure reading when working 20 hours or less per week).  That being said, being an intellectual and being intelligent are two different things. 

 

Let’s taka an example.  One man is a mechanic.  Has been his whole life.  High school education.  He knows very little about history.  However, he can rebuild an engine of any pre-fuel injection vehicle without a manual, and can usually make improvements that increase fuel efficiency and horsepower on the fly.  He can rewire his house to operate partially on solar power.  He can calculate load bearing requirements for small buildings using paper and pencil. 

 

Let’s take another man.  High school diploma, B.A, M.S., M.A., PhD candidate.  Works for the government.  College professor.  Has been a supervisor, has run a small business.  Graduated with honors at every point in his academic career.  Fewer than 100 people know his area of specialty as well as he does. 

 

Which man is more intelligent?  The first guy is.  He’s my stepfather.  I’m the other guy.  My stepfather can do things with his brain that I can only dream about.  I can think about things and figure them out.  My stepfather just knows things.  His brain operates so quickly that he can barely describe his thoughts.  Experience is not the difference.  When I was a kid, he would show me how to do everything that he would work on.  I still don’t understand half of it.  Is that because I’m not smart?  My academic background would indicate that this is probably not the truth.  I’m more intellectual.  But my stepfather is more intelligent. 

 

There are two problems with the anti-intellectual criticism leveled at Sarah Palin.  The first is that it is based on the fallacy that there is a wide intellectual discrepancy between the elite and the mass.  This is a lie.  I’ve met scholars, journalists, elected officials, and Presidential candidates.  They are not geniuses.  They are not demigods.  They are average people, just like you and me. 

 

The second fallacy is that common people are stupid.  This is also untrue.  In my life, I have met two people who are significantly smarter than me. One is a PhD, and one is a mechanic.  I have also met two people who are significantly dumber than me.  One is a professor, and one is a farmer. 

 

There is a good reason that people on the left, and elite Republicans, want you to believe the lie that intellectualism is the same as intelligence.  It gives them a reason for being, a reason to be important, a reason to be special, and better, than the herd.  In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, elites relied on heredity, race, breeding, and class to serve this purpose.  Intellectualism provides the last acceptable means for elites to maintain their cultural dominance in the 21^st century.  Sarah Palin, representing as she does the idea that any person can achieve whatever they dream in our society, unapologetically challenges this dominance.  The idea that any intelligent, skilled person can learn to be President represents the final line of defense in the struggle for hereditary elitism.  Is it any wonder, then that the response has been so shrill?  The triumph of the Sarah Palins of the world represents the end of their utility, and promises the fulfillment of the promise of the American revolution, that all men are equal, and all of mankind is as fit to govern as to be governed. 

In Barack Obama’s case, the gap between intellectualism and intelligence seems jarring.  While writers like David Brooks and Chris Buckley are dazzled by Obama’s knowledge of the theology (not philosophy) of Reinhold Niebuhr, Niebuhr’s though is neither as complex nor as interesting as it has been portreyed.  Basically, Niebuhr tried to reconcile United Front Marxism and Protestantism.  While the results were interesting, including just war theory and possibly the serenity prayer, the theological framework is as defined by ambiguity and contradiction as much as the “subtlety” that Brooks and Buckley are enamored of. 

Of course Barack Obama likes Niebuhr: this is his worldview.  Of course Obama can speak eloquently about Niebuhr,  he is talking about his favorite subject: himself.  The problem, of course, is that holding fast to an abstract worldview does not a good president make.  Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush are examples of Presidents who, like Obama, had clearly defined abstract principles that they clung fast to. 

Rather, the true measure of intelligence is not the ability to understand and adopt abstractions, but the ability to process facts and adjust worldview accordingly.  Is there any doubt that Sarah Palin has done this in her political career?  For Barack Obama, however, facts are stubborn things, and not soemthing to get in the way of a good theory.  Thus the Berlin blockade was ended by “unity,” America failed to do something about the Holocaust, and America’s problems in the world are caused by wrong principles, not structural conflicts of interest.  Obama and Palin illustrate the classic dchotomy of wit and wisdom.  While Barack Obama is blessed with the gift of wit, it is wisdom that provides strong leadership.

Campaign 2008 in a Nutshell

The great thing about this presidential election is that the choices before us are very clear.  Ask yourself a few simple questions, and you will know which way you should vote:

 

 

Is the problem with Washington that it is not partisan enough? 

 

 

Do we progress as a nation by giving the most radical element of one of the parties more power and influence?

 

 

Do we defend ourselves against terrorists by fighting them where we live? 

 

 

Can we mitigate the root causes of terrorism without fighting against tyranny in the Arab world?

 

 

Do we achieve respect and popularity in the world by abandoning our allies and embracing our enemies?

 

 

Is the problem with the economy that the government does not remove enough money from it through taxes? 

 

 

Is the solution to the energy crisis to require, by shortage or regulation, to produce and use less energy?

 

 

Is it time to reject the idea that people are the best stewards of their destiny, and replace this with allegiance to the superior judgment of a great leader?

 

 

If your answer to most of these questions is yes, then you should vote for Barack Obama.  If your answer is no, then John McCain is your only choice in 2008.

McCain Republicans + Clinton Democrats = Change You Can Depend On

Thank God for Barack Obama and Howard Dean.

 

If not or their slash-and-burn style of campaigning and their ruthless dedication to securing the Democratic nomination for Barack Obama at any price, it is likely that voters would be faced for no prospect of a meaningful change in American politics this year.  If they had not used every method at their to silence dissent, and pulled every trick in the Chicago machine political playbook to count out enough Democratic voters to give Barack the nomination, we likely would have been guaranteed another four years of bitter partisanship and division.

 

Luckily for us, Dean and Obama prefer to play it dirty, and working class voters are furious.  By executing a political hit on Hillary Clinton, they have alientated the most reasonable and patriotic voters in their party.  Because of this, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join forces with Clinton Democrats to transform the politics of this country.   Together, we can transform the way our government works.  

 

If you ask the average voter what the biggest problem in Washington is, they won’t tell you that it is an issue, or a cause, that there are not enough Democrats, or that there are not enough Republicans. The problem is that the parties can’t work together.  Partisanship means nothing gets done.  Americans aren’t liberal, and they aren’t conservative.  They are both, and they expect our leaders to work together to utilize the best of both approaches. 

 

This year, the candidates offer a stark contrast in their apporach to partisanship.  John McCain was not the most conservative of the Republican candidates.  But he was a candidate whose history of putting country before self and working with different factions and parties represents a way out of partisan gridlock.  Republican voters saw this, and embraced the opportunity to move America back toward consensus. 

 

Barack Obama was the most liberal candidate among the Democrats.  He promises the Democratic Party that he can assert ideological hegemony over the country, and provide the potential for establishing a realigning majority resulting in single party dominance of government.  Just like George W. Bush told Republicans in 2000. 

 

Which path do we want to choose?  Do we want an end to hyperpartisanship, or would we rather deepen it?  The alliance of John McCain Republicans and Hillary Clinton Democrats is an unstoppable force, and a McCain victory with support from working class Democrats will inevitably result in a decline in partisan tension.  McCain will have to work with a Democratic Congress, something he has proven that he can do.  Through cooperation, we get the best of both parties.

 

Barack Obama promises us four more years of politics-as-jihad.  The same tactics he has used against the supporters of Hillary will be deployed against all of his foes, Democrat and Republican alike.  Partisanship will inevitably become more rancorous.  Instead of the best of both parties, we will get the worst, the most hateful, the most radical of one.  

 

Because the Obama and his leftist allies are fighting a scorched-earth war of annihilation against Hillary and her supporters, we have an opportunity to join with them to effect a real change in Washington.  Together, we can build stitch back together the Red and Blue, bridge the deepening divisions in our country, and approach our nation’s challenges with a cooperative and harmonious attitude.  For Americans who love their fellow citizens, who respect their political opponents, and give precedence to their country over their fanaticism, four years of radical leftist holy war represents no change at all.  The one way we can have change, real change, meaningful change, is to come together as one people. John McCain offers our only real opportunity for dramatic and consequential change.

Why Obama is losing swing voters

Senator McCain could not have been farther outside of his comfort zone. Staring out into a sea of bearded faces at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, he admitted that his speech before bikers was something new. “This is my first time here,” he admitted. But as the crowd roared the engines of their machines in approval and appreciation, McCain proved that he had been listening. “I recognize that sound,” McCain declared, “it’s the sound of freedom.”Barack Obama, on the other hand, was being

serenaded by singer Harry Connick Jr. at a $28,500 per seat dinner. The reports on the evening news and in the major newspapers paid scant attention to the McCain event, portraying it as something of a farce. Yet this event encapsulated how John McCain has fought his way back into this race, and how he stands a chance to overturn the once-invincible Obama campaign. Those of you who know bikers understand that the motorcycle represents for them a celebration of their embodiment of what America is all about: freedom. McCain grasped this simple fact. He did this because he reached outside his comfort zone, listened to these folks, he learned, and he found common ground. Those bikers will never forget that.The contrast with Senator Obama is telling. Following his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Obama offered no new insights and no new policies, claiming that the trip had only confirmed what he already believed. Ask yourself: have you ever taken any trip, or attended any meeting, having learned nothing new? While holding fast to your position may excite the Democratic base, to independent voters it makes Obama seem inattentive at best, fanatical at worst. As his tour continued, Obama continued to prove himself better at talking than listening, and better at highlighting his differences from working Americans than he was at engaging them. “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city,” Obama reminded voters back home from Berlin, and compounded his distance from his countrymen by asking Europe for forgiveness of his people’s sins. While Obama unveiled his new order to European heads of state and skipped an appointment with wounded soldiers, McCain appeared in grocery stores and restaurants, traveling to where swing voters live and listening to what they think. While Obama reminds voters that he is not like the Presidents on dollar bills, Presidents that Americans saw fit to elect, McCain’s appearances in small venues show voters that he connects to them. Obama claims the mantle of distinction, McCain of commonality.

The reason that the race has tightened is simple: Obama talks, McCain listens. McCain thinks, Obama believes. Obama tells voters that he is different from and better than them. McCain tells voters that he hears and learns from them. McCain builds bridges, Obama builds walls. Obama seeks to transform the people, McCain seeks to represent them.

Is it any wonder, then, that voters are now edging nervously away from Obama? While most Americans believe that their country is in crisis, they don’t generally believe that they themselves are the source of the problem. Rather, all they really want is a government that will listen to them. Is there any wonder, then, that they are realizing that McCain is the better option for them?

 

Counting Michigan’s Votes

It seems that Senator Obama has finally decided that voters in Michigan and Florida are no longer 2/4 of a human being.  Presumably, by accepting the votes of Michigan and Florida, he also tacitly concedes that he decisively lost the popular vote during the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination to Senator Clinton.  Hail to the thief indeed. 

 

Senator Obama claims that the reason for his reversal is to foster party unity.  He also hopes to gain the trust of moderate Democratic voters who, according to the polls, are rejecting him in droves.  This effort on his part is flawed by the same problem that has bedeviled him throughout the campaign.  Unity is fostered by deeds, not by words.  Obama had his chance to foster unity in a tight campaign by counting Michigan and Florida.  Instead, he chose to steal 59 delegates in the state of Michigan, even though his name had not been on the ballot in that state.  This is nothing new for Senator Obama.  After all, this is the same man who, in 1996, used technicalities to disqualify primary opponents during his race for the Illinois Senate rather than subject himself to the will of the voters.  At the time of the Rules Committee’s ruling, Obama could have made a gesture of party unity by sacrificing his own interests to ensure that the voters would be heard.  Instead, he ordered the Rules Committee to assign him delegates representing voters who had not voted for him.  This action spoke louder than any speech, any image, or any slogan could have in revealing the man’s character. 

 

Rather than being motivated by respect for the people of Michigan and Florida, or a love for democracy in general, it seems reasonable to infer that Obama’s newfound revelation that Floridians and Michiganders are in fact American citizens might be somehow connected to his plunging poll numbers and the struggles of his campaign in both states.    

 

Obama’s attitude toward voters, and his seeming lack of ethical boundaries in the pursuit of power is very troubling.  How can a leader govern in a manner that reflects the will of the people, when he has demonstrated a willingness to subvert their will for his own benefit?  Senator Obama likely conceives of the popular will as guiding his political activities in principle.  Still, evidence is continuing to accumulate that Senator Obama views popular sovereignty as being secondary to his core political value: his will to power.