Obama can’t take helm of the nation soon enough
Toolbox
By Barrie Dunsmore - Published: October 26, 2008
When I first heard John McCain describing Barack Obama’s taxation plans as “a lot like socialism,” I made a bet with myself that in less than 48 hours some notable Republican would be describing Obama’s ideas as “communism.”
I won the bet with a day to spare. Florida Sen. Mel Martinez gets the booby prize. “Where I was raised, they tried wealth distribution,” the Cuban born Martinez declared at a Florida rally for big name McCain supporters. “We don’t need that here. That’s called socialism, communism, not Americanism.”
Time was that the Republicans could win an election by merely denouncing their opponent as a “liberal.” That was the epithet they used against Michael Dukakis with remarkable success. But being double digits down in the polls has evidently forced the McCain campaign into a major escalation of their taunts against Obama – from liberal, to socialist to anti-American to communist.
If it weren’t serious, it would be laughable. John McCain knows full well that the country has always had a progressive tax code: i.e. spreading the wealth around. (For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” according to the New Testament’s Book of St. Luke.)
In that spirit, McCain at one time opposed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans,” he said in 2001.
Now he wants to make those tax cuts permanent – and even expand them. But even more ironic, McCain calls Obama a socialist a week after Republican President George W. Bush has taken perhaps as much as $1 trillion in American taxpayer money and partially nationalized most major American banks. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin calls Obama a socialist while being governor of a state that expropriates huge chunks of private oil company profits and then regularly doles out generous sums to every citizen of Alaska. “My friends” (to steal a phrase) that’s a lot like socialism.
I happen to support Bush in his efforts to save the global economy because it is being done in the interest of the greater good. But I love the total contradictions and muddled logic of those who denounce “socialism” for the working/middle classes but embrace it when it comes to huge government bailouts for really rich people and companies. Contrary to Ronald Reagan’s mantra that government was the problem not the solution, we have discovered in this time of high anxiety over the global economic system’s imminent collapse, that only the government could save capitalism from the greed, incompetence (and in some cases corruption) of the capitalists.
Still, I worry about the potential consequences of this incendiary rhetoric and how much worse it may become in the waning days of this extraordinary presidential election campaign. The Cold War has been over for nearly 20 years, so calling someone a communist doesn’t have the same impact as it had during the days of the “red menace” of the 1920s and communist witch hunts of the late 1940s and early 1950s. I don’t believe citizens are about to be put in jail for their political beliefs or have to take loyalty oaths to keep their jobs as in those bad old days. But ugly charges that “liberals are anti-American” (presumably because their political views are different from doctrinaire Republican policies) ought not to have a place in the political debate.
We especially do not need to hear the words of Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachman that she is “very concerned that (Obama) may have anti-American views.” She also suggested the Congress should be investigated to determine who is “pro-American” or “anti- American.”
And it seems to me there is no place for Sarah Palin’s notion that only certain parts of the country are the “real America” the “hard working, very patriotic, very pro-American areas of this nation.” I wonder what those working class women who support Palin because they see her as one of their own thought, when they heard about the story last week in the online newspaper Politico.
“The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150 thousand to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick in late August,” Politico’s Jeanne Cummings reported. “According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74. The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.” A woman of the people indeed!
More toxic talk in the final days of the presidential campaign will only further divide Americans. And it will make it that much more difficult for any new president to bring Americans together to address the huge problems this country now faces, both at home and abroad. With that in mind, I’d like to use the rest of my last column before the election to discuss the very different choices the voters have before them when it comes to U.S. foreign policy and America’s position in the world – subjects that have occupied most of my time for the past 40 years.
To some extent world events will, as they always do, shape future American foreign policy. Something could even happen in the last days before the election that might directly bear on its outcome. But the question for the voter remains: What are the qualities you want in the next man to sit in the Oval Office?
On the face of it, John McCain has more experience in international affairs. He has a notable family military pedigree. And he lived through the horror of five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam’s notorious Hanoi Hilton. He has many years of service as a senator where he has traveled extensively and gotten to know world leaders. By contrast, when it comes to hands-on experience in foreign affairs Obama has a slim portfolio.
But to me the issue is not the miles you’ve traveled or the countries you’ve been to, but what have you actually learned from this experience and how are you likely to respond in a crisis? From most of what I have seen of McCain he is still, in effect, fighting the Cold War. He wants to kick the Russians out of international institutions such as the Group of Eight industrialized nations. He wants to form a new organization of like-minded democracies that would exclude countries such as Russia and China (and presumably do an end run around the U.N. Security Council.) He wants to stick a finger in Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s eye, by pushing for early membership in NATO for Georgia and Ukraine, which would mean going to war with Russia if it were to attack either of its two neighboring states which are tied to Russia by centuries of history. (In my view the proper strategy is to get Georgia and Ukraine into the European Union which would help them politically and economically and would be much less threatening to Russia.)
McCain steadfastly refuses to consider any kind of a time line for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan but as long as there are 135,000 Americans fighting in Iraq there are few to send. He shows nothing but disdain for Iran and North Korea so it’s hard to imagine him maintaining anything like a lengthy, serious diplomatic dialogue to resolve the nuclear issues that make each of those two countries a threat to their neighbors. He has a fighter-pilot/gun-fighter mentality that you shoot first and ask questions later. In this trait McCain strikes me as scarily similar to the present occupant of the White House — and look where that got us.
Obama on the other hand is clearly a post-Cold War thinker. He will extricate American combat troops from Iraq over about a year and a half and put them into Afghanistan. He doesn’t want to exclude dealing with countries or regions of the world because they don’t share a fealty to Jeffersonian democracy. He recognizes the reality that America cannot shun countries such as Russia and China and needs to have non-threatening relationships with both. He wants to rebuild relations with America’s traditional allies but also believes that talking to your enemies is not a sign of weakness. As such, serious diplomacy will be the first weapon of choice in dealing with Iran and North Korea. As he demonstrated in the economic crisis of recent weeks, he is intelligent, thoughtful and careful.
He seeks out the advice of those who know more than he does or may not agree with him. He will choose as secretaries of state and defense people who have broad knowledge of international affairs and it would not surprise me if at least one of them is a prominent Republican. Certainly as a transformational leader, Obama is reminiscent of John Kennedy.
Will Obama be tested by adversaries early on in his presidency? You betcha! But so would a president McCain. Such is the evolving nature of America’s position in the world today. But as John Kennedy demonstrated during the Cuban Missile Crisis, America’s survival depends on much more than knee-jerk military reactions.
As we have discovered with the world economic crisis – and will too soon be learning as global warming becomes a tangible threat (if it hasn’t already) – all of us on this planet are in this together. It is my conviction that Barack Obama is the right man at the right time to lead America into the 21st century – not back to the 20th.
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