Obama and McCain offer a choice, not an echo

31 May 2008

This presidential race will be the first real Right v. Left contest in a long time, says Irwin Stelzer. On free trade, healthcare, tax and pariah regimes, the two men are worlds apart

In the Republican corner it is to be John Sidney McCain III, white, age 71. In the Democratic corner we have Barack Hussein Obama, black, age 46. No American election battle since the days of Franklin Roosevelt has attracted so much worldwide attention. A recent visitor to North Korea, a nation supposedly hermetically sealed from the rest of the world, tells me that the first question his ‘minder’ asked was: ‘Who will win the American elections?’ His concern is unsurprising: a President McCain would favour continuing existing multilateral pressure on North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons, and might even give some meaning to the phrase ‘or else’. President Obama would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to talk things over, no preconditions.

The rest of the world has broader reasons than does North Korea for its interest in the American elections. Two, in fact. The first is Barack Obama. The Illinois senator is the first African-American who will represent a major party in a presidential election. As if that is not enough, he is tall, handsome, articulate, telegenic and charismatic — an example of the personal becoming the political. For those Obama supporters who don’t remember that Jack Kennedy sent troops into Vietnam, and tempted Nikita Khrushchev to put missiles in Cuba by appearing weak at a no-preconditions summit, forcing a showdown that took the nation to the brink of nuclear war, Obama represents a return to the glorious days of Camelot, when a handsome couple occupied the White House, university professors dined there on French cuisine at a table arranged by Jackie Kennedy, and Texas boots sullied Vice-President Lyndon Johnson’s residence but not the Oval Office.

Equally important is David Miliband’s observation that none of the world’s problems can be solved without the co-operation of the United States. Whether it is a war in the Balkans, global warming, the world trading system, or the maintenance of world order — if the USA does not get involved, nothing good is likely to happen. This is conceded even by people who wish America would not get involved in quite the way it sometimes does. They probably remember Winston Churchill’s remark that America always does the right thing, after exhausting all of the alternatives.

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DougS

May 29th, 2008 9:13am Report this comment

Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . . OK summary, but nothing new really.

And "world's apart"? That's nonsense. Communists and monarchists are world's apart; by the standards of the West, European parties are more like world's apart; Reagan v Carter or Reagan v Mondale by the standards of the U.S. are world's apart.

But Obama and McCain? No.

McCain rather famously (or notoriously) has to shore up his "base," which means the Reagan conservatives don't particularly like him. At the same time he was considered the most "independent" Republican running and the one probably most appealing to cross-over Dems.

Why? Cuz' on some issues (e.g., immigration) his politics are indistinguishable from Democrats. On others, he's not that far off, including Israel, Afghanistan, NATO, etc. And even on free trade, Obama is hardly a tariff monger; mostly a free-trader.

Petty differences over the environment, gas mileage standards, corporate regulation, campaign finance reform, etc.

Summary: On the scale of American politics, these two are closer than any two Dems. and Repubs. since possibly Ford and Carter. On the scale of all possibilities in politics, there's scarcely a dime's worth of difference between them.

Matthew Blott

May 29th, 2008 1:08pm Report this comment

I agree with a lot of Doug S's comments. Obama is against doing anything about gun control, supports the death penalty and is largely backed by big business. Michael Foot he is not. Similarly McCain is divorced from the Christian Right and would be a welcome break from the theocratic approach of the White House's current occupant. It's not quite the Left versus Right election Irwin Stelzer would have us believe.

Scott Redding

May 29th, 2008 4:25pm Report this comment

With regard to white voters and Obama, you need to look at age as well. 40% of white voters in North Carolina under the age of 40 voted for Obama, even after the Wright firestorm. Obama will have problems with older white voters in Penn and Fla during the general election. If he does well out west, he might not need Appalachia as much as pundits think.

In South Carolina, in July 2007, amongst African-Americans, Clinton was at 52%, Obama 33%, Edwards on 5%. (the figures are from Meet the Press, last Sunday, transcript on their website). When Obama won South Carolina, he carried the African-American vote by 78 to 19%, over Clinton. Clinton had the African-American vote, but Iowa showed that Obama was viable and a possible winner. Between that, and her hubbie's comments in North Carolina, and her "hard working Americans = white hard working Americans" guff, she blew it. So, it's a bit more complex than saying all the black folks were voting Obama from day one.

Napoleon

May 30th, 2008 1:22am Report this comment

"but if 90 per cent of white voters had opted for Hillary Clinton, charges of racism would undoubtedly have filled the pages of the predominantly pro-Obama media."
Agreed. I don't always agree with your articles, actually most of them I disagree, but this time you're spot on(maybe it's because most of them are facts!).But it's nice to read a fair and balanced article about the American election, when everyone seems to be pro-Obama!

V.R.S. Arni

May 30th, 2008 1:44pm Report this comment

For a journal of the repute of Spectator, this is a wishy-washy article giving no insight. Any commentary column in NYT brings more to the reader than this.

jon livesey

May 30th, 2008 11:47pm Report this comment

I'm not sure if the author understands Europeans as well as he thinks.

No matter what they say, Europeans are happy to have an assertive US, because it keeps the heat off them, but they are also appreciative of Obama because in his person he flatters their image of themselves, an American politician who wants to adopt some of their social policies, and so on.

The last time something like this happened, they got JFK, a guy who talked like an anglo, but who was not afraid to confront the USSR. A man who flattered Europe and then protected it. Who could ask for anything better?

It is, however, not clear that Obama is a second JFK. JFK could talk and blockade, negotiate and threaten. There is a residual fear that Obama gets the talk part, but hasn't thought through the rest.

My own nightmare scenario is that Obama starts with the talking, gets nowhere, and retreats into isolationism. While this might be poetic justice on Europeans, it does not bode well for world stability or for Europe itself.

David Chorley

June 1st, 2008 3:58am Report this comment

Selzer repeats the global warming mantra as if it were true: There is no way the president or anyone else can affect our climate: All the protocols are designed to build big government and tax the US middle class, whom everyone simultaneously hates, and wants to join.