Many of my friends were very enthusiastic supporters of Barack Obama during the 2008 Presidential election. Although I never thought he was as progressive as some of them did, I too was inspired by his soaring rhetoric, his promise of change, and the prospect of electing a man who self-identifies as African-American as President. Some of my friends have already announced their intention to support President Obama for reelection in 2012. I, however, am struggling mightily with the question of whether I will be able to bring myself to vote for him in 2012. Because I respect my friends who will support the President for reelection, and because I respect even if I do not share their reasons for doing so, I want to state here as simply and plainly as I can why I probably will not vote for Barack Obama again.
The principal reason why I will not vote for Barack Obama again is thatI have become more committed than I have ever been to Jesus Christ’s message of nonviolence. In recent times I have become more convinced than ever that nonviolence is the only legitimate way of the Christian. I do not judge those who have reached other conclusions on this issue. Judgment is not mine to render; but I know that Jesus taught and lived nonviolence, and I claim to be a follower of Jesus. If we are truly to be his followers, I believe, we too must teach and live nonviolence. Beyond that, I am convinced that a commitment to nonviolence must be a central part of any effort to save the earth from the destruction humans so inflict upon it. A commitment to environmental justice and responsibility is also required; but we humans have the means to destroy the earth not only gradually through overpopulation and environmental degradation but suddenly through our weapons of war. I have become convinced that only a radical commitment to nonviolence can save us from ourselves. I have also become convinced that only a commitment to nonviolence by us Americans can save the rest of the world from American imperialism.
Barack Obama has no commitment to nonviolence whatsoever. More than two and a half years into his presidency we still have troops in Iraq. He has conducted a “surge” of military forces in Afghanistan that is indistinguishable from the policy of former President George W. Bush in Iraq, Bush being the President whose policies we elected Obama to change. President Obama has resorted to the use of violence in Libya. Particularly hard for me to swallow is the President’s order to our military to murder Osama bin Ladn rather than capture him and bring him to trial. I do not see how a true disciple of the nonviolence of Jesus Christ can vote for any politician who so readily resorts to violence, and I cannot see how I can do so with a clear conscience.
Beyond that, not only is President Obama not an advocate of nonviolence or even of a more restrained and defensive use of military force, he is as much a proponent of American exceptionalism as George W. Bush ever was. His speeches ring with the echoes of American exceptionalism, the notion that what America does is right because it is America that does it. There is no other possible justification for the violation of international law and the act of murder involved in the operation Obama ordered against bin Ladn. The President is perfectly happy to perpetuate and perhaps even to increase America’s self-appointed status as policeman to the world. As nearly as I can tell, when it comes to foreign and military policy there is no significant difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
I also have profound issues with the way President Obama has handled domestic matters. The things that he touts as great accomplishments are anything but great accomplishments. The prime example is the health care reform law that Congress passed and President Obama signed last year. That “reform” of our health care delivery system consists primarily of Republican ideas. Some of them come from Richard Nixon from the 1960s and the 1970s. Some of them come from Mitt Romney when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Their primary effect is to deliver millions of new victims into the grasp of the for-profit health insurance companies. Yes, there is some good in that law. Insurance companies will be somewhat less able to deny insurance to applicants on the basis of preexisting conditions. Still, the law is a lukewarm reform at best. It is obvious and undeniable to any impartial observer that the only health care delivery system that makes any sense in a modern nation that truly cares about all of its people is a single payer, government-run system that covers everyone without exception and that eliminates the profit motive from the provision of health care benefits. President Obama gave up on that, the only sensible option, before the battle over health care was even joined against the representatives of the private insurance industry who control Congress. The joke of the Obama health care reform, that he touts as his major domestic achievement will do little or nothing to change the reality that the US spends more on health care than any other nation but gets health care outcomes in some areas no better than those of impoverished, underdeveloped countries. It is another reason why I probably will not vote for him again.
The way President Obama handled the health care reform issue is characteristic of how he has approached the political process in Washington, D.C., generally, and that approach is another reason why I probably will not vote for him again. He has put “bipartisanship” above principle at every turn. He has tried to work in a bipartisan manner with the Congressional Republicans, apparently oblivious to the fact that the Congressional Republicans have no interest in working in a bipartisan manner with him at all. His devotion to bipartisanship with people whose only goal is to destroy him and his presidency has produced compromise after compromise that is really nothing but Obama and the Congressional Democrats caving in to the demands of the Republicans, demands which work to the benefit of the wealthy not of the people in every instance. The best example is the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Those tax cuts are perhaps the worst piece of domestic legislation in recent history. They are largely responsible for our huge budget deficits. They are a primary engine of the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich that has been going on in America since the disastrous presidency of Ronald Reagan. Candidate Obama promised to repeal them or at least to let them expire, but when, as President, he was faced with a refusal by the Republicans even to compromise on them, much less repeal them, he caved; and those disastrous tax cuts remain law. Yes, there is a new expiration date; but we have no reason to believe that the Republicans will be any more reasonable and decent with regard to them down the line than they are now, and we have every reason to believe that Obama and the Democrats will cave in on them again in the future. President Obama’s muddle-headed commitment to bipartisanship with the Republicans has produced nothing good for the American people, and it has made him weak and ineffective.
It is a legitimate question whether President Obama would have gotten anything more, and better, done if he had stood up for Democratic principles and the American people and refused to cave in to the destructive demands of the Republicans. It seems probable that he would not have, but that fact does not, in my opinion, justify his repeated giving in to the Republicans. The Republican Party has swung so far to the right that its policies truly threaten to destroy our country. If we are ever again to be (assuming that we ever were, which may be assuming facts not in evidence) a country that truly cares for what matters—for people, for justice, for peace, for the environment—the Republicans simply must be not just defeated but must be routed at every level of government; but they must be routed by candidates who stand for what’s right, not candidates like President Obama who are functionally if not ideologically Republican light. That is never going to happen as long as the American people continue to see the Republicans as a legitimate political alternative. It is never going to happen as long as progressive Americans continue to vote for conservative and ineffective Democrats out of fear of the Republicans, however justified that fear may be. President Obama could have shown the Republicans up for the tools of the wealthy and the corporate special interests that they truly are by refusing to cave in to their outrageous demands. He could have made it the mission of his presidency to lay bare the hypocrisy and the lies of the Republicans so that the American people might wake up and stop voting for them. He could have made himself a true progressive alternative. He chose not to, so I will probably choose not to vote for his reelection.
Yet you have probably noted my repeated use of the word “probably” when I say I will not vote again for President Obama. There is one, and only one, reason for that qualification. I can state it in three words—the Supreme Court. The appointments to the Supreme court by the two Presidents Bush (especially bush II) have been unmitigated disasters for our country. They are corporatist ideologues posing as judges who practice legitimate jurisprudence. They do not practice legitimate jurisprudence. Their decision in the Citizens United case that overturned decades of settled precedent and opened the floodgates for corporate money to corrupt our political system even more than it already did is all the proof of that truth that we need, although there is a lot more proof available to anyone who goes looking for it. The question of whether or not to vote for President Obama next year comes down to this for me: Is taking a stand against the Republicans having the power again to nominate justices for the Supreme Court, given the fact that the Democrats in the Senate routinely cave in and refuse to block those nominations, enough to justify a vote for someone I consider to be guilty of crimes abroad, who is an abject failure at home, and who shares virtually none of my core values?
I don’t yet have an answer to that question. I don’t know who I will vote for, or even if I will vote for President in the 2012 election at all. I lean toward refusing to vote for President Obama reluctantly. He remains personally appealing. He remains one of the best orators ever to occupy the White House. His family is beautiful, and the symbolism of a Black man as President of the United States remains powerful. We had so much hope when we elected him in 2008. Yet, for all that, my deeply held personal convictions probably will not let me vote for him again.
No comments:
Post a Comment