Threads from Henry's Web

Category: 2008 U. S. Presidential Election

  • I Like Sarah Palin

    . . . well, pretty much, to a certain extent, as politicians go. But I’m not going to vote for her.

    Come to think of it, I like John McCain pretty well also, but again, I’m not going to vote for him.

    I think it is unfortunate that so many Americans seem to feel the need not only to vote against a candidate, but to really despise that person and to think that they should not be regarded as even worthy of consideration.

    I am not unaware that Sarah Palin has said some questionable things about her own record, nor am I pleased that Republicans try to pretend she has more or better experience than Barack Obama. In fact, to Republicans who complain about what Democrats are doing to Palin, I would simply point out their own behavior. To Democrats who have been complaining, I would point again to their response now.

    It seems to me that many of the people who claim that they want cleaner and nicer politics are first to make snide remarks and insinuations about the candidates. They are quick to forgive similar behavior on their own side, and quick to condemn it on an opponent’s side.

    Not that politicians don’t give us plenty of opportunities, which is something we should also consider.

    Take, for example, the “bridge to nowhere” and Palin’s involvement in it. If a local politician doesn’t make every effort to get federal money for his or her city, county, district, or state, it’s likely he or she will not be re-elected. When one moves onto the national scene, one has to be against such pork-barrel projects.

    Why? Because we, the citizens don’t think it’s pork when it happens where we live. Here it’s “infrastructure development” and “investment in our future.” Over there it’s pork. As a politician on the national scale, of course, what was done locally is now pork, because it wasn’t where most of us live. In fact, it wasn’t in a place most of us have visited.

    This doesn’t excuse the spin. It just says that we won’t have politicians on the national scene who haven’t lived through the pork-gathering phase locally because we won’t elect them locally unless they bring us pork.

    Frankly, I like all four folks on the major presidential tickets, though I think Biden is the least inspired. Nonetheless, as politicians go, he’s not a bad guy either. I don’t think we’re electing pure scoundrels in either case. I am substantially in favor of Obama, and that’s how I plan to vote, but that’s a finely balanced decision based on policy, not on despising the other team.

    There are so many important issues before us, that if we spent our time simply going through the plans and potential policies of each team, we could profitably spend the time between now and election day. I don’t really expect that to happen.

    But even though I won’t get what I want, I’m tuning out all of this stuff. I’m bound to hear it, since I watch politics, but I’m just not interested. What little gets said about policy, I’m tuned in for. As for the rest of it, when I see a blog post title or a news headline that looks like it’s some more character nitpicking, I’m going elsewhere for my reading.

  • On the Troubles of Candidates’ Children

    I wasn’t going to say anything about this, because I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with spreading the story any further, but now that it has been discussed in the mainstream media, such as MSNBC.com, I want to make a short comment.

    I married late, in my early 40s, and picked up a ready-made family. My children are wonderful, and so are my grandchildren. Before I married, I understood that raising children was more complex than my experience would let me understand. Since getting involved personally, I realize that it is more complex than anything I imagined that I hadn’t been able to imagine!

    In my opinion, the stories circulated about Sarah Palin (to which she has responded by revealing that her oldest daughter is pregnant) should not have been repeated without absolute proof, and even were they absolutely proven, there would considerations of privacy. There seems to be a desire to find a major smear to put on her, and this one apparently looked good to some folks.

    I personally don’t share many of Sarah Palin’s convictions. Because I don’t, I’m not inclined to vote for her. But I think that her children should be given privacy, and any problems they have should not be a topic for public discussion. But more importantly, I disapprove in the strongest terms possible of the desire to see people of convictions fail, even to the extent of bringing their children into it.

    I would hope that this story would go away. In my view, responsible journalism should make every effort to kill it, and the rest of us should not repeat the story.

    Update: Some notes on Obama’s response here. I think he has done well.

  • What Decides My Vote (or Silly Experience Arguments)

    McCain has just stirred the pot by making an unorthodox choice for his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Contrary to much of the response on the left, I don’t see this as cynical, though obviously there’s political calculation involved. It’s bold and risky.

    It is, in fact, the first thing that’s happened since the end of the primaries that has made me think better of a candidate than I did at that time. It isn’t enough to make me vote for John McCain this time around, but that’s not because I think Palin is stupid, excessively inexperienced, or someone who would make a bad vice-president. The bottom line remains that I disagree with her on a number of matters of policy, insofar as I know what she stands for. We’re certain to find out much more over the next few days.

    I think my belief that “experience” is an argument you use in favor of someone you already like for other reasons, and against someone you already dislike, also for other reasons, is confirmed by the Democratic response. Republicans who are trying to argue that Palin has a better resume than Obama need a reality check. Democrats who think that they can successfully make her look so much worse on the basis of her resume need to rethink. If there is one thing that has been used cynically throughout this campaign, it is the experience argument, and it’s at a crescendo (at least I hope!) at the moment.

    The most positive thing about this choice, from my point of view is that it shows McCain can still think outside the box. Romney and Pawlenty were candidates that the political commentators would like. Lieberman was to some extent as well, though he had extraordinary negatives as well, being a very recent ex-Democrat, now independent, who had been a VP nominee of the other party, and also one with a substantially liberal voting record would hardly endear him to the Republican party’s right wing.

    McCain stepped out of the standard reasoning and picked someone almost out of the blue. Not that she had never been mentioned, but the vast majority of commentators didn’t take that seriously. She’s conservative, she’s vigorous and forceful, she seems intelligent, and she has also shown integrity in an incredibly difficult decision–her decision to carry her current child to term. Skin-deep pro-lifers might have waffled at that point. She’s living up to her convictions and showing that those are not simply things she believes are true, but things that are part of her being.

    Obama’s choice, on the other hand, was someone the political commentators were sure to like. It was largely media-safe, but rather boring. I’m not saying that Joe Biden would be a bad vice-president. Rather, he’ll be much the same as other vice-presidents.

    Does that change my vote? No, it doesn’t. As I said much earlier in the campaign, all of these other points do impact my vote, but they aren’t at the core. If I was looking at two essentially equal candidates, experience might sway me. If I found one candidate who was consistently honest, that would probably sway me. I count the historic possibility of Obama becoming the first African-American president of the United States as a plus. But if I couldn’t stomach who he is and what he proposes to do, that wouldn’t get me to vote for him. I look with favor on the possibility of having the first woman as Vice-President, but that doesn’t overcome policy disagreements.

    Since the primaries, I have been disappointed. Barack Obama has sounded less like an agent of change, and more like he’s under control of Washington insiders. The decision not to engage in town-hall meetings with McCain, while understandable from the political point of view, took away a great opportunity to change the way campaigns are conducted and perceived. Having the two candidates one-on-one in numerous settings would, I think, go a long way to blunting the effect of misleading negative advertising. It was an opportunity for change, but it didn’t happen.

    Obama waffled on FISA. He was wrong to vote for that bill. I’m extremely disappointed.

    He waffled on campaign finance. Here I agree with the decision, but as best as I can tell, he really approves of public financing, but thinks it is disadvantageous this time around. Now if he would have said that he has proven how the little people can gather the money to overwhelm big money operations in this internet age and thus the value of campaign finance reform has diminished, that would be different. He could then recommend taking the axe to part of the federal bureaucracy.

    McCain, of course, has done his waffling as well, on issue after issue, but he did most of it before and during the primary season. I liked him in 2000. I don’t like him now. There’s apparently a little bit of the maverick McCain spark left, but not enough.

    Now you could take this as a terribly negative view of the election as a whole, but I really feel pretty good about this election, when seen in comparison to others. Choosing a candidate to support is always an exercise in compromise. I disagree with each candidate on some issues. I am disappointed with each candidate, but largely because they are behaving as politicians generally behave. While I would like to see that change, I know how to relate their behavior to the background noise.

    So here are my major issues:

    • Iraq War – I think the Republicans in general have a terrible strategy at all for the war on terror, and McCain is simply following the same. The reality is that our strategy involves invading countries that support terror and retaliating for strikes. I’m amazed that conservatives who recognize the futility of “talking nice” to terrorists because of who they are don’t recognize the fact that retaliatory strikes don’t actually accomplish anything. McCain’s military experience argument is blunted for me by one fact–he apparently doesn’t recognize that we don’t have the resources to fight terror according to the current strategy. Somebody needs to work on a scalpel approach to replace our current sledgehammer.
    • 4th Amendment – I’m still hoping that Obama remembers who he was and will be better than McCain on this point, including warrantless wiretapping, rendition, torture, and all related elements I’m loosely grouping under 4th amendment. McCain has failed to show integrity here, in my view.
    • Supreme Court nominees – Obama is likely to appoint people I don’t like all that much, but they will replace other people and maintain the balance. The idea of a court that is consistently lined up with Scalia and company is horrifying.

    Those are not my whole list by any chance, but I rank those highest. Even though the economy has become more important than the Iraq war to most people, it remains my highest concern. I cannot make the fruitless killing less than #1 in my thinking.

    I would add that there are third party candidates that are options for those who cannot support either of the two major candidates. I don’t regard voting third party as throwing away your vote. I’m not going to do it this time. Those who say that Nader is siphoning off Obama’s votes or Barr is siphoning off McCain’s seem to have the odd idea that someone “owns” or is “due” particular votes. You earn the vote when you convince the voter. It’s only your vote when that voter pulls the lever.

    In summary, I think voting is a matter of priorities and compromise, and I think we do have a field of candidates to work with. I would love to find a year when there was someone out there who thought just like I did. Unfortunately, I’m convinced that candidate would lose, so maybe not so much!

  • John Hobbins on TUCC

    When I wrote much earlier about Jeremiah Wright, I tried just a little bit to put it in context of the African American church as I’ve experienced it. That effort was weakened by the fact that I’ve never attended TUCC, and thus anyone could say I was reflecting a very different experience based on those black churches I have attended. I spent my teen years in Guyana, South America, and was the only white person in my youth group, but was TUCC similar?

    Well, John Hobbins of the Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog has attended there, and he manages to say many of the things I felt, but for which I never found the right words.

    I strongly commend his posts Unity Day at Barack Obama’s Church of Origin: What the MSM will never tell you and Unity Day at Trinity UCC in Chicago.

    (Update: John has now added another post.)

    I have a high regard for Dr. John Hobbins based on reading his blog regularly, and I strongly commend both of these articles to you to read and consider.

  • Edwards: Is Marital Fidelity Strictly Personal?

    I have posted before on the sex scandals involving Larry Craig and David Vitter. Now with the admission of infidelity by John Edwards, we have yet another sex scandal.

    One response, as is often the case with marital infidelity, is to claim that this is strictly a personal issue, one between him and his wife. And the spouse is certainly the primary person who is wronged. If John Edwards (or David Vitter or Larry Craig before him) were private individuals, their deeds would be a private matter to be settled privately. (One must note that unlike Edwards, so far as I know, both Craig and Vitter violated laws, while Edwards violated only his marriage vows.)

    But Edwards is a public person, who has sought public office multiple times. He does not claim that marriage vows are temporary or optional. In public he portrays a family man. I don’t think infidelity in that case is strictly personal. Whether or not one fulfills one’s vows is of paramount importance in judging integrity.

    I have certain standards for sexual morality. I claim to be moderate, am regularly called liberal, but my personal standards are rather old fashioned. I believe in marital faithfulness. I don’t believe in pre-marital sex. If I violate those standards it should (and doubtless would) have an impact on the way people regard me as a Christian teacher and leader in my church.

    But both in and outside of the church we seem to have accepted a curiously bipolar attitude toward sexual sins. On the one hand we are scandalized and yell and scream about them a great deal. On the other, we excuse them in practice. I can find few people in churches, for example, who will say they believe that premarital or extramarital sex is OK, but when it is practiced, the consequences are quite limited unless the person is a very public figure.

    It seems as thought we know it’s wrong, but we also know that we are weak, and think “there but for the grace of God go I.” This is similar to early problems in dealing with drunk driving. Police, judges, and juries so often knew that they were guilty of the same thing from time to time, and were aware that they might just as well have been the defendant, so they went easy on what was regarded as a human weakness. Mothers Against Drunk Driving waged quite a campaign to make driving under the influence a truly shameful deed before it was treated as seriously as it deserved. (You’ll still find some cases where good old boys let one another off on this one.)

    Marital infidelity, of course, doesn’t kill as many people as does driving under the influence. But when one gets married, one does make a commitment, and normally that commitment is for life. If you can make a commitment “until death do us part” and then casually violate it, it says something about your integrity. When you cover it up, it not only says something about your integrity, I believe it is morally corrosive. You become practiced at lying.

    I believe that a willingness to ignore one covenant, that of marriage, is a significant factor in deciding whether the person in question will be faithful to another covenant, for example, the oath of office. Will the person who swore to be faithful to his wife, and then strayed while covering it up regard the oath to “uphold and defend the constitution of the United States” any more seriously?

    In an atmosphere where lies and half-truths are so common, it may seem very odd to make a big deal out of this one particular issue. But I would suggest that if we drop out of the search for integrity simply because so many people have failed to provide it, we will continue to enable our politicians to become less and less honest with us.

    I do not believe marital fidelity is strictly personal when it is committed by a person seeking the trust of others. Violation of a lifetime vow is a very bad indicator of personal integrity.

    PS: I commend the mainstream media for waiting for confirmation on this one. I rarely find them commendable, but they did much better than average here.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • Barack Obama’s Income Redistribution Plan

    In a recent ad we hear the following:

    “A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand-dollar rebate,” an announcer in the ad says.

    (Source: MSNBC.com.)

    The entire energy debate seems to have become a pandering game, with each candidate dulling any responsible suggestions he might make with various bribes to the public. McCain, who used to oppose off-shore drilling now supports it, and though he admits it’s more long term, he still brings it up in connection with current high gas prices. (I actually regard it as a short-term non-fix, because I believe “long term” should mean at least a century when we’re talking energy policy.)

    Obama seemed to resist this particular idea, though he will now allow it as part of a compromise. Which leads me to a digression. In reality, any candidate is going to have to compromise on the actual laws he will propose. Little of what is promised by either candidate in the campaign will actually happen. Why are we so shocked when a candidate suggests he would accept something he opposes generally as part of a compromise package? What should annoy us is that the candidates pretend they will be able to somehow govern without significant policy compromises.

    The problem here is that the debate is being framed in terms of managing gas prices. The capitalists among us should object to this, no matter how it is done. The way to reduce the price is to either increase supply or reduce demand, and the best means to accomplish that is the natural market forces. There are those who will object that foreign cartels change this equation. But in actuality capitalism does not call for people to be required to sell. That is simply one aspect of supply.

    We can artificially push down the price of gas temporarily, but that will not solve our problems, because all of the factors that push gas prices up will still be present. The oil-drilling idea has the advantage that it will eventually increase supply. It will be useless (except psychologically) in the very short term, provide some value in the longer term, but will not provide a truly long term solution in my opinion. Nonetheless I would support limited drilling provided reasonable environmental concerns are dealt with.

    High gas prices are the best possible thing for the long term because they will push us to change the way in which we consume and produce energy. There are many technologies becoming available, and as gas prices increase, they will become more and more economical. This is a good thing. If we artificially hold the prices down now, such an adjustment will have to be made sometime, and the longer we wait, the more painful it will be. It’s time now to do more than talk about breaking our addiction to oil.

    But back to Obama’s redistribution plan. This is classic redistribution of wealth. Take the money away from the oil companies that are making profits, and give it to people who are having to buy the high-priced gas. This has many of the hazards of price controls, only it actually won’t work. The oil companies will find a way to get the money back, and a couple of years from now we’ll realize that the rebates did nothing more than attempt to buy our votes. (Buying my vote was unnecessary for Obama. Despite my strong opposition for his gas tax/rebate plan, McCain still annoys me even more.)

    The whole notion of “windfall profits” is fairly ridiculous in any case. Just what is the windfall? The price of energy has gone up. I remember this discussion in a public policy toward business class when I was in college relating to excess profits. (Looking at the current situation, I suspect “excess profits” would be the better economic description for the situation. I fail to see the windfall, but perhaps I’m just not looking at it right.)

    Excess profits appear to be fairly well defined (see Wikipedia for a decent, if rather abbreviated discussion). The problem is that while the definition is clear, calculating what would be an excess profit is much less clear, and in practice the term “excess profit” becomes synonymous with “windfall profit” and simply refers to any profit the person speaking doesn’t think the one making the profit should have.

    Note in addition that very few people talk about the oil company profits in terms of percentages (see this report to congress for some numbers, though I haven’t checked them), because those would sound much less overwhelming. It’s easy to make any large company’s profits sound obscene, even when the return is not really all that far out of line with other industries. This is not to say the oil companies are not profiting. It’s just that I don’t think it’s bad for them to do so.

    In the case of oil we have a choice similar to what we have in other industries–don’t buy their product. In this case I have to add “as much”, and in addition note that reducing our consumption will take time. And lest anyone think I’m suggesting something that I will not do myself, let me note that fuel costs have cut into my business severely. I have had to change the way I plan my days to avoid certain driving in order to handle the higher gas prices.

    I believe we need to feel this pain now in order to change the way we produce and consume energy. I am disappointed with congress and with both our presidential candidates, though I’m not surprised at their action. We, the voters, are demanding that they behave irresponsibly, and they’re just doing what we ask. No, not what we say we want. What our actions show we want.

    Unfortunately, what many of us want is lower gas prices tomorrow. What we’ll get is an even worse problem a few years in the future.

  • Chuck Colson says Scripture Commands Limited Government

    Chuck Colson writes a guest column at the Christian Post, in which he argues in favor of limited government from the Bible.

    In it, he tells the story of a friend of his who bought some property to create a children’s camp for inner city children, surely a most desirable goal. Over the next two years, his friend was harassed by various regulators and bureaucrats with overlapping and incomprehensible regulations. The delay, he says, cost millions of dollars and considerable delay.

    Now assuming all the facts of this story are correct, I’m certainly in sympathy here. One of the major problems of modern government is the complexity of regulations as we solve problems with one set of standards by creating another, and create new federal jurisdiction, for example, where we see failure at the local government level.

    I would like to see the government forced to simplify things and to move out of numerous areas of regulation. In other words, I like limited government.

    But Colson finds a way to make his view the Christian view by claiming to take it from scripture. I wanted to say that he is prooftexting, because that is the best I can do imagining just how he might derive such a thing from scripture. In actuality, he doesn’t even prooftext–he just asserts conclusions about what is scriptural. While I can imagine where he might get these conclusions, I cannot be certain of the texts.

    He says:

    There is a profound Christian question at stake here. Scripture says government has just two objectives: to preserve order and do justice. How did we get from that simple function to a government that requires 18 different permits before you can build a new bathroom—or expand a campground for needy kids?

    I can imagine a hermeneutic that would derive part of that from Romans 13:1-4, but it wouldn’t do too well. There are numerous passages about justice in the prophets, but I don’t see the part about limiting the function of government.

    In fact, in Israel, where the prophets worked, there were regulations about what to eat (Leviticus 11), how to worship, even how to handle the blood of an animal you kill while hunting (Leviticus 17:13-14). Israel was, in addition, a monarchy, with only relatively informal constraints on the power of the king from prophets and sometimes people (the details are debatable). People’s sex lives were also intensely regulated (Leviticus 18), something that surely goes beyond the bounds of limited government. Oh, but I forgot. Modern conservatives think it’s a disaster if the government interferes with our economic freedom, but it’s open season on personal moral issues like sexuality.

    So in the context of such a government, just how much could the prophets be calling for “limited” government? It simply isn’t there. There are certainly discussions that condemn rulers for immoral acts, but still there is no limitation that says, for example, that the king can’t take in taxes and assign them to whatever he wants within the limits of moral behavior.

    But what about the New Testament? In Romans 13, for example, which I cited (and I confess I don’t know which scriptures in particular Colson is bending to his will on this matter), Paul is urging subjection to the Roman government, which was certainly not terribly limited as to its activities in the provinces, and only slightly so in Rome proper. Paul is calling for Christians to be subject to a government that was quite susceptible to not just overstepping it’s bounds a bit, but to rampant evil and destruction.

    So while I’d like to support the idea of limited government, and indeed might do so even more consistently than does Colson by including limitations on the government invasion of private sexual activity, I don’t see that the Bible explicitly espouses it, and in the only government directly commissioned by God the government was not terribly limited.

    Let me give one more example for those who doubt this. Compare the need to get permission to deal with wetlands, however small. That’s an issue that comes up regularly here in the Florida panhandle, and I think regulators are sometimes over the top and lack common sense on the issue. Landowners, however, also frequently lack good sense. But compare that to the sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee, when one would be ordered not to plant and harvest for an entire year. How does that relate to absolute control of one’s property?

    I absolutely do not want to argue that the Bible supports me rather than Chuck Colson. In fact, I don’t think the Bible provides us with any blueprint for a secular or religiously diverse state at all. To the extent that one can support limited government and civil liberties from scripture, it would be via the route of supporting the dignity of each person and their importance before God, and not by means of explicitly stating how government should function.

    I truly object to one major thing in this entire article, and that is contained in this next paragraph:

    When we go to the polls in November, we should beware of any candidate promising that government will solve all our problems. We need to work to keep government doing its right roles and no more, because if we do not, it will eventually cease to function at all.

    This paragraph follows immediately the paragraph stating that the Bible states the limited function of government which I quoted previously. Now we have it. If we vote for “that other guy,” you know, the one who wants to use government programs to solve problems, we are not behaving properly as Christians.

    Which is, bluntly, hogwash. As Christians we know how we should be motivated. I can argue with Chuck Colson or any other conservative about the means by which they would accomplish Christian goals, but unless I want to become a judge in the sense intended in Matthew 7:1, I should stick with criticizing the means and not try to pretend that my particular views on means or my particular candidate is the right one for all Christians to support, nor should I question the motives they claim.

  • In Defense of Elitism

    I was going to write a lengthy post with a great deal of substance, but then I spent the day working mostly on the Moderate Christian Blogroll and Blog Aggregator. I’ve already posted links to the new feeds I created, and will post the code for this tomorrow on my computer services blog, if all goes well.

    But I really wouldn’t want having nothing much to say keep me from writing something, so I nurtured my negative reaction to this article in the Washington Post, which talks about some folks in Findlay, Ohio, also known as Flag City.

    Now let me get several things out of the way. I appreciate these people’s patriotism. I’m glad they’re living the life they want to live. I also don’t think that one must be a racist in order to oppose Barack Obama. There are plenty of policy grounds on which to do so. In fact, were my priorities a little reordered, I could easily switch to McCain myself. There are many policy issues on which I disagree with Obama, they just aren’t the most important ones on which I’m basing my vote this year.

    Obama took a big hit for making a few snide remarks about some people. He did so in too general a way, though many suspected, with some validity in my view, that he let the truth slip out by accident. I imagine he is frustrated by just the people he mentioned, and he doesn’t think that much of their views. He probably said it with more acid than he intended, but such are the risks of politics.

    But some people are just plain stupid. I’m not running for office, so I can say that. If someone is opposed to Barack Obama because he’s going to raise their taxes, that’s a political difference. If someone is opposed because they think he’ll pull out of Iraq recklessly, that’s a political difference. But if someone is opposed because they can’t pronounce his name, or they think he’s an Arab, or they believe he just must be a closet Muslim, that’s just plain stupid.

    I recall Tolkien’s description of Hobbits as folks who liked books filled with lots of things they already knew set down plainly without contradiction. He said it with some affection, I think. There’s a great value in people who are ordinary, who don’t want to spend their time in college or some academic environment, yet who are actually quite intelligent and have a good sense of ethics. There are others whose stupidity and willful ignorance are dangerous.

    There’s another version of elitism, or perhaps it should better be called anti-elitism, which attributes everything that an educated person does to his education. I get this over my more liberal views on Biblical studies. “The seminary ruined you,” I was told. Never mind that the seminary was much more conservative than I am and refused to publish some of my work. They say I was brainwashed into accepting the theory of evolution, never mind that the schools I attended were one and all young earth creationist strongholds.

    These folks will look down on someone like Obama because of his Harvard education. That, again, is just plain stupid. If you don’t like his policies, argue against them. If you don’t like his attitude argue against that. But education is a good thing, whether or not you like the opinions of those who graduate. Give them the credit of actually having their own views. Oddly enough, the reason more educated people seem to tend to be more liberal may not be because of brainwashing. (And no, I’m not using “more intelligent.” “More educated” is intentional. I know too many genius level conservatives to say conservatives are less intelligent as a group.)

    So I’m in favor of elitism. I like intelligent people. I like educated people. I like people who are willing to apply all that learning and think for themselves. There will be bunches of those on both sides of this election. There will also, unfortunately, be quite a number of stupid, willfully ignorant people.

    I call the first group elite; the second group deserves no respect.

  • Flip-Flopping with Integrity

    I an earlier post, Public Financing, Integrity, and Mixed Emotions I discussed my mixed emotions on Barack Obama’s flip-flop on public financing. I dislike public financing of campaigns, and it’s nice to see the system receive a body blow, but at the same time, I have a serious problem with Obama’s action.

    Before someone thinks I’m looking for nasty things to say about Obama, I should mention that I’m over 90% likely to vote for him come November. The 10% is giving me room to change in changing circumstances. I like him, despite certain policy positions, but I believe this action, as carried out and explained, was wrong.

    I don’t believe politicians should be afraid to change their minds. If one is convinced by the evidence, then not changing one’s mind is more dishonest. But to change one’s mind honestly, and then to express that honestly is done in a different way.

    What would I like to see a politician in such a case?

    1. Acknowledge the error. Say “I was wrong.”
    2. Present the evidence and reasoning for changing one’s mind.
    3. Avoid spin, and don’t blame everyone else.

    I was watching a commentator the other day on I forget which network who commented that if Barack Obama didn’t reject public financing under the circumstances, he would have been committing political malpractice. The commentator went on to list the great benefits that would accrue to the Obama campaign and the Democratic party under these circumstances. It sounded to me as though one was advising someone to lie. They refuse. You point out just how much money one can earn from the lie. Would that make it right?

    My problem with Obama’s decision is that he still believes in public financing, yet he’s not living according to that belief. Nothing changed except for the fact that he found out just how effective he was as a fundraiser. The only difference between now and when he made the promise is that he found out just how much benefit he could derive from staying out of the system. The 527s were a factor before and they are now.

    If he had examined the system, and then announced that, while he used to support public financing of campaigns, he had learned the value of freedom, in the form of lots of ordinary people pooling their money to do great things, and thus he had come to realize that public financing was not the benefit he had once thought, I would have had no problem. It would be a simple changing of his mind based on the evidence.

    As it is, even though his current stance is closer to my own, I am deeply disappointed with the way in which it took place.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • More on Campaign Finance

    While deploring the hypocrisy of Obama’s switch on the issue (though still preferring him to McCain), I will be very happy if his action is the death-knell of public campaign financing as suggested in this NYT article (via MSNBC).