By Dayton Daily News | Sunday, October 12, 2008 In this unhappy passage, the nation faces a happy choice: a brilliant young man offering a new generation of leadership — and a remarkable turning point in the nation's history — opposes an accomplished veteran who has punched all the right tickets in his rise toward the presidency.
Both are thoughtful, modern people alert to the real problems of the world and the nation. Neither should be chosen because the other is frightening.
Sen. John McCain has earned the now-overworked term "maverick." He has bucked his party far more often than most. And yet the record is more complex.
He was most dramatically independent after his run for the presidency in 2000 when he lost to George W. Bush in a bitter fight. He simply went to war with President Bush, opposing his signature tax reduction, disagreeing on environmental issues, opposing his energy initiative and more.
Sen. McCain seemed to be in the process of leaving the Republican Party. Democrats saw him as a possible member of their ticket.
But he changed after 2004. He joined the Republican team on taxes. He gradually moved to the right on immigration. He told the conservative wing of the party what it wanted to hear on Supreme Court appointments, even though the appointment of hard-line conservatives is likely to doom the campaign-finance reform law that epitomized his work in his maverick days.
(The McCain-Feingold law created spending limits on national parties and imposed rules about the financing of non-candidate ads that run during a campaign. Opponents see it as an infringement on free speech.)
McCain's campaign disappointing
Sen. McCain's campaign has been as disappointing as his move toward party orthodoxy. More than his opponent, he has run a relentless stream of commercials that have been discredited by nonpartisan fact-checkers. (Last week, all his ads were negative.)
He has articulated no vision for the country other than to suggest that it should believe in him as an individual, as a war hero of independent judgment.
His selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate was stunning. She is shockingly lacking in presidential qualifications. Some of Sen. McCain's most enthusiastic supporters have been forced to admit this. Her defenders say her resume compares well with Sen. Obama's, but it does not.
Alaska is tiny in population and atypical in its issues. And she'd been governor for only a year and a half when she was tapped. At any rate, as some interviews have shown, she's no Barack Obama.
Sen. McCain presents her as a fellow "maverick." Nonsense. The important sense in which he's been a maverick has been his willingness to flout conservative orthodoxy. But she's an orthodox conservative and then some, opposing abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and, for example, long denying man-made global warming.
Was Sen. McCain, in selecting her, making a cynical effort to get the hard-core conservatives excited? Or was he just wrong about how unready she is? It hardly matters. He royally blew the most important decision he has ever had to make in politics.
The selection undercuts Sen. McCain's effort to sell himself as the one who is most ready for the presidency. So does another momentous decision.
He was one of the most gung-ho advocates of the Iraq war. He confirmed in the first presidential debate (right at the end) that he sees Iraq as the great cause of our time. It is no such thing.
Given that there were no weapons of mass destruction, given that there were no important ties between Saddam Hussein and the perpetrators of 9/11, given that al-Qaida is resurgent today, Iraq is a tragically costly diversion from a sound foreign policy, which, of course, must focus on the terrorist threat where it really exists.
That Sen. McCain was right — while Barack Obama was wrong — about the "surge" in American forces in Iraq last year is beyond dispute. Too little, though, and too late.
Sen. Obama's opposition to the war goes a long way toward making the case that experience isn't necessarily the magic ingredient in making a national leader. Nevertheless, many millions of Americans have been appropriately skeptical that somebody who only came to the U.S. Senate after the 2004 election, and hasn't been a governor, is the best pick for president.
They must be comforted, though, by Sen. Obama's cool, even masterful performance in the campaign. Nobody could have expected any more. He has made his supporters proud, as Sen. McCain has made his supporters wonder.
When Sen. McCain pretended to suspend his campaign, to help Washington through the bailout crisis, it looked like a clever move by a veteran warrior. But the new guy deflated it gracefully and easily, noting that he and Sen. McCain ought to be able to do two things at once, if the second was as important as a presidential debate.
Added to their vice-presidential decisions, and to the ability of the younger man to stand next to the veteran in debates and demonstrate every bit as much command of issues, the bailout incident was a suggestion of readiness.
Barack Obama has been in the public spotlight for four years (since his memorable debut speech at his party's 2004 convention). He has withstood relentless, withering attacks. The more attacks he survives, the more comfortable people seem with the idea of him as a leader.
With any candidate, there are doubts
On the issues, he is in the liberal mainstream of the Democratic Party. He worries less about the taxes of the people at the top of the economic system than those in the middle. He unambiguously embraces decent health care as a "right." He would like to put more public resources into education and efforts to extend the American dream to those still dreaming.
He favors more regulation of Wall Street. He sees diplomacy as underused by the current president. He wants — perhaps unrealistically — to shape trade treaties so that they work better for American workers.
Any alert citizen must be skeptical that Sen. Obama can accomplish all he wants, must know that he has not answered all the reasonable questions about his plans, must wonder about the trade-offs. But such doubts are there about all candidates.
For some people, the liberal tag makes Sen. Obama a nonstarter. But he built his early appeal around the promise to get beyond the liberal-conservative wars, to show a level of respect for the views of others that helps build a new kind of politics. It is his most ambitious promise.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party is asking the American people to ignore their discontent with President George W. Bush and give the party another chance. But if a party can retain the presidency after failing in it — just by putting up somebody different — then accountability is undercut. Failure should exact a political price. If it doesn't, failure becomes harder to deter.
The nation's moment of choice arrives even as some sort of new era has arrived in the realm of the economy. The problems the nation is obsessed with at this moment are not problems that John McCain has any particular experience with. Neither does Barack Obama.
But in a time of change, Sen. Obama is the more promising leader. With his agile mind, often pitch-perfect judgment and preternatural calm and self-confidence, he seems built for the job of sorting through this thing, if anybody can.
The nation faces a choice that looks more and more like a choice between the future and the past. It has never been one to shrink from the future.
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