WORLD VIEW
Fareed Zakaria
The Case for Barack Obama
Obama is pushing to change the parameters of the country's comfort zone. That's
leadership.
Published Oct 18, 2008
>From the magazine issue dated Oct 27, 2008
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It has become fashionable to lament the state of presidential politics and
decry the tenor of campaigns. But in fact, this election has been a pleasant
surprise. In the last debate, as the candidates discussed their respective
health-care plans in some detail, the danger was that the American people would
be turned off not by negativity but by boredom.
Compare this election to the one in 1988—when the Pledge of Allegiance, Willie
Horton, flag factories and Belgian endives dominated the campaign. Or contrast
the relatively brief appearance of William Ayers with the barrage of Swift-Boat
attacks on John Kerry. Some of this is because the American people have clearly
tired of slash-and-burn campaigns. But much of it is because the two candidates
are men of decency and honor.
John McCain is brave, and this courage has manifested itself not simply in the
prisons of Vietnam. Over the past two decades he has broken with his party and
president on global warming, campaign finance, government spending and the use
of torture. He has chosen, for the most part, to forgo the racial coding that
the Republican Party had used for decades in its campaigns. But despite these
tremendous strengths, as a candidate for president in 2008, he is the wrong man
for the wrong job at the wrong time.
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To watch McCain address the current economic crisis is to see a man out of step
with his time. His responses have been a recitation of old slogans—cut taxes,
limit the government, cut spending—that are largely irrelevant to today's
problems. Does anyone really believe that tackling earmarks will get credit
markets functioning? In some ways, McCain's intellectual fatigue reflects the
exhaustion of the ideological revolution begun by Reagan and Thatcher. The
country needs fresh thinking that is ready to accept new facts and new ideas.
It's a new world out there.
On foreign policy, John McCain is a fighter. In fact, his bellicosity has
increased over the past few years as he has discovered his inner
neoconservative. He wants to keep the battle going in Iraq, speaks casually of
bombing Iran and is skeptical of the Bush administration's diplomacy with North
Korea. He wants to kick Russia out of the G8 and humiliate China by excluding
it from that body as well. He sees a "league of democracies" locked in conflict
with an alliance of autocracies. This is cold-war nostalgia, not a strategy for
the 21st century.
McCain's problem is not only one of substance but perhaps more crucially of
temperament. Throughout the campaign, he has been volatile and impulsive. He
moves suddenly and unpredictably—one day suspending his campaign, the next
urging that the chairman of the SEC be fired, the third blaming Democrats for
the economic crisis. He apparently wanted to name as his vice presidential
candidate Joe Lieberman, a pro-choice semi-Democrat with decades of experience,
but then instead picked someone close to the opposite—Sarah Palin, a
rabble-rousing ultraconservative with limited experience and knowledge of the
issues.
By contrast, Barack Obama has been steady and reasoned throughout his campaign.
After careful deliberation, he endorsed the administration's decision to
intervene in the financial industry but with caveats—not to score campaign
points but to make the program work better. These modifications were adopted by
the administration and employed last week by Secretary Paulson.
Obama's broader economic agenda—health-care reform, infrastructure investments
and a major push for alternative energy—are large solutions to the growing
problems of our times. They are not radical, but neither are they overly
constrained by the fear of seeming liberal. Bill and Hillary Clinton were
always careful not to stray too far from the country's comfort zone. Obama is
pushing to change the parameters of that zone. That's leadership.
On foreign policy, Obama is cool to McCain's hot, discriminating about the
fights he wants to pick. He argues for greater international cooperation and
the aggressive use of diplomacy. He sees a world in which America doesn't have
to get adversarial with everyone and tries instead to work with other
countries—of whatever hue—to solve the common problems we face.
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Let's be honest: neither candidate has past experience that is relevant to
being president, except that they have now both run large, multiyear,
multimillion-dollar, 50-state campaigns. By common consent, McCain's has been
chaotic and ineffective, while Obama has run a superb operation, and done so
with little of the drama and discord that usually plague political machines.
This is the case for Obama on substance, which is the most important criterion.
But symbolism is also a powerful force in human affairs. Imagine what people
around the world would think if they saw America once again inventing the
future. And imagine how Americans would feel if they saw their country once
again fulfilling its founding creed of equal opportunity, if they saw that
there really were no barriers in their country, not even to the highest office
in the land, not even for a man with a brown face and a strange name.
I admit to a personal interest. I have a 9-year-old son named Omar. I firmly
believe that he will be able to do absolutely anything he wants in this country
when he grows up. But I admit that I will feel more confident about his future
if a man named Barack Obama became president of the United States.
© 2008
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