Obama for President

I’ve been think­ing about writ­ing this post for a long time. The pow­er is out at work today, so I’m unex­pect­ed­ly home with some time on my hands.

My fam­i­ly, for the most part, and most vocal­ly my uncles, are staunch Catholic Repub­li­cans, and have been for as long as I can remem­ber. I was dig­ging through my but­ton col­lec­tion the oth­er day and I came across a cou­ple of Bush I but­tons from back in the 80s [and an “I sup­port Desert Storm” one, too]. Despite all of this, I grew up rel­a­tive­ly obliv­i­ous to par­ti­san pol­i­tics. Sure, I absorbed, and still believe in much of what old-school small‑c con­ser­v­a­tive folks believe in, but I’ve nev­er iden­ti­fied with either par­ty machine. I usu­al­ly tell peo­ple, if pressed, that I’m a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive and a social lib­er­al.

Once I hit 18 and got my fran­chise, I start­ed pay­ing atten­tion. The first thing I noticed was that when­ev­er pol­i­tics came up at fam­i­ly gath­er­ings, the lib­er­al side was always the one under attack. This con­fused me, because as far as I could tell, lib­er­al pol­i­tics are the most in line with the teach­ings of Jesus. I could­n’t under­stand how my won­der­ful, Catholic fam­i­ly could deride pol­i­tics that seem to mesh to eas­i­ly with most of Catholi­cisms teach­ings.

I’ve nev­er been one to blind­ly fol­low a crowd; I spent 4 years at one of the most rabid­ly con­formist and tra­di­tion-lov­ing uni­ver­si­ties in the nation. I’d ini­tial­ly bought in to the Notre Dame dream, but the real­i­ty I found there was at odds with their mar­ket­ing. That’s the same thing I noticed with my fam­i­ly, they seemed to have bought what Repub­li­cans are mar­ket­ing, with­out pay­ing atten­tion to the prod­uct they actu­al­ly got.

In the 2000 elec­tion, my grand­moth­er said she could­n’t vote for Gore/Lieberman, because she could­n’t bring her­self to vote for a Jew. I’m sure if she were still alive that she’d say that she could­n’t vote for Oba­ma because of a sim­i­lar rea­son. She would always vehe­ment­ly deny this racism when called on it, and I’m sure she was­n’t con­scious­ly racist, just a prod­uct of her time.

As the 2004 elec­tion rolled around, one of my uncles said that he no longer bought Grey Goose vod­ka, because France did­n’t sup­port us in the war in Iraq, and that he did­n’t buy Coors beer because they sup­port­ed gay mar­riage. This sound­ed very irra­tional to me.

Now that the 2008 elec­tion is here, I have one uncle whose reli­gious beliefs keep him from vot­ing, yet who nev­er­the­less has noth­ing good to say about Demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­cy, most specif­i­cal­ly health­care, and anoth­er who thinks Sarah Palin is a great VP pick because she’s con­ser­v­a­tive, young and a woman. The only cri­te­ri­on that he said was miss­ing was that she be black. When pressed about why the VP pick need­ed to have those qual­i­fi­ca­tions he said so that the GOP could beat the Democ­rats. Moments lat­er he derid­ed career politi­cians for their will­ing­ness to do any­thing to get elect­ed.

This con­tin­u­ing pat­tern of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance amazes me. I would kill for my fam­i­ly, they are the great­est peo­ple in my life, but when­ev­er pol­i­tics comes up, it is like I enter bizarro-world. I hold out hope for my mom. She said, with a note of “Is it okay to feel this way?” in her voice, that watch­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­ven­tion inspired her. Still, instead of bas­ing her choice on the issues, she turns off the sound and votes for whomev­er’s body lan­guage seems the most gen­uine.

I real­ly don’t care who any­body votes for. What I care about is the man­ner in which peo­ple make their choice. Blind­ly fol­low­ing a par­ty-line or mak­ing a choice based on some intan­gi­ble is quite fright­en­ing to me because it shows a fun­da­men­tal dis­re­spect for the priv­i­lege of hav­ing a vote. Slight­ly bet­ter, but still fair­ly irre­spon­si­ble is bas­ing a vote on what a can­di­date will promise, but not exam­in­ing their abil­i­ty to accom­plish those promis­es, or, after elect­ed if they ever actu­al­ly deliv­er on them.

So now we get to why I’m choos­ing to vote for whom. As a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive, I want the gov­ern­ment to be good stew­ards of my tax dol­lars. I want to trust them to spend this mon­ey in a rea­son­able and respon­si­ble way. I expect them to not spend more mon­ey than they have and to use tax dol­lars to improve the qual­i­ty of life for Amer­i­cans by fund­ing edu­ca­tion, health and human ser­vices, job train­ing, etc. The Repub­li­cans have been con­sis­tent­ly fail­ing at this for as long as I’ve been alive. Rea­gan, Bush I and Bush II all cre­at­ed huge debts pour­ing mon­ey into the Depart­ment of Defense and stu­pid wars in the Mid­dle East. That is not good stew­ard­ship of my tax dol­lars, despite the fact that the GOP claims to be fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive.

As a social lib­er­al, I believe that the gov­ern­ment should keep its nose out of my pri­vate life. More lib­er­tar­i­an than lib­er­al, pos­si­bly. I believe the gov­ern­ment has no place ban­ning same-sex mar­riage or restrict­ing access to health care options [abor­tion, con­tra­cep­tives, sex edu­ca­tion, stem-cell research, etc.]. I am per­son­al­ly opposed to abor­tions of con­ve­nience because I feel that if you’re out there hav­ing sex, you should take respon­si­bil­i­ty for play­ing that lot­tery and know­ing what the out­comes could be, but I also know that my opin­ion on the mat­ter is irrel­e­vant, since I can’t have an abor­tion. That’s a choice the preg­nant woman has to make; a choice that I will sup­port even if I dis­agree with it. The GOP has its nose in all of those things.

So that’s why I’m not vot­ing for the GOP. Why am I vot­ing for Barack Oba­ma? I am vot­ing for Barack Oba­ma because he advo­cates for and encour­ages cit­i­zens take respon­si­bil­i­ty for their gov­er­nance. His stances on var­i­ous issues are mea­sured, nuanced posi­tions that indi­cate a sin­cere exam­i­na­tion of what he thinks will be best for the coun­try. He refus­es to play the mar­ket­ing three-card monte game, and instead is play­ing pol­i­tics the way it should always be played, with respect, can­dor and sin­cer­i­ty to all par­ties involved. This in turn shows that he respects the sta­tus of the Office for which he is run­ning. I’ve yet to see any of that from John McCain.

Now if only I could get a yard sign.