The latest criticism of Barack Obama from the right is that he is somehow too ambitious to be president, and too opportunistic. No one mentions that of course he's ambitious -- so is John McCain. In order to become president you have to spend two years and hundreds of millions of dollars telling people how great you are and why you should be in charge of the most important government on Earth. This is not a task to inspire humility. But what's interesting his how the idea of ambition is being tied up in the question of who the "real" Obama is. In this column, Rich Lowry takes up the standard:
But no one can know whether Obama is the leftist his associations suggest, or the irenic uniter of his iconic 2004 convention speech; whether he's the down-the-line liberal who kowtowed to the base of his own party in the Democratic primaries, or the pragmatist who readjusted to the center as soon as enthralled liberals handed him the nomination. The consistent line running through his career is opportunism, a willingness to accommodate whoever -- Bill Ayers or the swing voter in Ohio -- can help him up the next rung in his ladder of ambition at any juncture.
To which I reply: But no one can know whether McCain is the hard-right conservative his associations suggest, or the independent maverick of all of his speeches; whether he's the conservative who kowtowed to the culturally conservative, free market base of his own party in the Republican primaries, or the pragmatist who endorsed a massive government intervention as soon as he was handed the nomination. The consistent line running through his career is opportunism, a willingness to accommodate whoever -- Jerry Falwell, the U.S. Council for World Freedom or the moderate voter in New Hampshire -- can help him up the next rung in his ladder of ambition at any juncture.
I could add some other questions: Is this the McCain who opposed cutting taxes twice in the last seven years because it is wrong to do so in the time of war, especially while benefiting the privileged, or the one who says we should have $300 billion in tax cuts right now, disproportionately benefiting the wealthy and large corporations? Is this the McCain who said he would run a principled campaign and then took a hard right turn into the mud? Or is this the McCain who says walk softly and carry a big stick, but loudly counsels war with any number of states at a time when our military has been stretched to the breaking point by our conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq?
One has to understand that politicians are human, creatures of contradiction and convenience. We study their records, their proposals, try to get a sense of their characters, but we can't ask them to be any less complex than we ourselves are. To my mind, Obama didn't kowtow to the base half so much as Lowry suggests, or shift to the center, either, a mistaken narrative built on a few centrist votes in the Senate. I'd say McCain's flip-flops are much more glaring, but I understand why he chose to change his positions -- there are deep structural imperatives to doing so. Understanding those structural incentives is key to figuring out the heart of McCain's ideas. To do otherwise by demanding complete consistency -- as Lowry suggests or as Jonah Goldberg in a similar fashion demands or -- is to deny what makes politicians so compelling. I thought conservatives were supposed to have the nuanced understanding of the crooked timber of human nature, but I suppose that went out of style in the with-us-or-against-us years.
Lowry, I'm sure, has a strong opinion about Obama's "true" identity. By pretending otherwise, he's simply trying to spread the McCain camp's new meme of confusion. But he does more credit to his profession and his intellectual integrity when he simply answers his column's question and makes an argument about Obama's candidacy.
-- Tim Fernholz
