I am just now realizing how much the last several years of reading The Economist has shaped my thinking. On a fundamental level I'm most shaped by Stanley Hauerwas, Cornel West, and Wendell Berry but in terms of pragmatics-how specific policies and choices effect the world we live in today-I am profoundly shaped by the free market views of The Economist. They often times choose the hard unpopular answer because it is true in the aggregate i.e. globalization specifically U.S. outsourcing helps more than it hurts.
I for one do not believe we are a truly polarized country. We are not 50-50 but rather 10-80-10. The 80 is where most of us live. There is a range of beliefs within that, but at the end of the day most Americans want to know what is going to help me and and the people I care about the most. In my cynical moments, I call these people the adults. These are most of the people we know and both parties are full of them from top to the bottom. The Republicans have many: Dole, Gingrich, Brooks, (the late) Buckley, H.W. Bush to name a very few. And so do the Democrats. Unfortunately both parties most public face is the 10% on either end which constitute the children, those who are true believers in their ideologies and that the other party is just evil most obvious examples Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly. But these people are not the ones who get things done.
Nothing brings out the child like a single party government. This is the single most important reason why I have not been a passionate supporter of Barak Obama. I do not trust congressional Democrats. I am particularly worried about the "Lou Dobbs Democrats" those who honestly think that globalization and immigration hurt the economy. This is a tenuous time for the world economy and our leaders need to learn how to ride out a necessary contraction and introduce necessary regulation without resorting in fear to protectionism. Remember the stock market crash didn't cause the Depression as much as the fed and the Smoot-Hawley Tarif did.
If McCain had run as an adult I would be voting him for these reasons: Obama is wrong about ethanol and McCain is right (corn ethanol is bad, sugar ethanol is a viable alternative the US needs to end its import duty on Brazilian sugar ethanol), McCain knows that while imperfect free trade has been the single most effective anti-poverty program in history, and I will admire to the end of my life his lead on normalization of US relations with Vietnam. I can not imagine the courage that took both personally and professionally, but largely thanks to this, Vietnam is well on its way to being a middle class country. But he didn't run this way. He made decisions hastily and was angry at the press for not giving him a free ride.
Yes, McCain was wrong about the war. But, Obama is wrong about most foreign policy as well, and his Zionism worries me. I am angry about the fact that Obama is not using his massive lead in the polls to come out against Proposition 8 in California. Secular recognition of gay marriage is the single most important Civil Rights issue of our time. If Obama really wants to be a transformational leader, there is no better place for someone who wants to be a moderate pragmatic leader to shape policy. He should not let the children on either the left or the right control the debate.
I say on Tuesday vote Obama. Then bring back the real McCain as leader of the opposition. We need real conservatives back in government.
But don't take my word for it check out the paper of record.
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12516666
P.S. So this started as a post just meant to link to the Economist and then I started writing. My biggest concern with trying to express my views in writing is tone. Please, don't interpret anything I say as being shrill or petty. I honestly don't mean it to be. If you have any questions or thoughts, please put them in comments. We are all better when there is open debate. My hope is that the Republicans will be forced to reassess and come back somewhat similar to the British Tories. Pro environment, pro-market, skeptical of too much government and pro-family. Jindal in 2012 baby!
