To vote for McCain or not: Farah vs. Glick

Joseph Farah’s thinking on the election is similar to mine. Interviewed by Israel National News, he says conservatives should not vote for McCain and that an Obama election would be better for the country in the long run:

“Every generation, I believe, has to learn the lessons” of a left-wing government and to “unlearn the false lessons taught to them in schools in the political arena at some point in their lives,” Farah asserted….

As for John McCain, Farah warned that the Republican candidate is no Reagan-esque hero. In fact, Farah argued, McCain is not to be trusted, that he would “remake the Republican party into his own image,” which is, in fact, a Democratic image. Farah referred to an article in the neo-conservative New Republic magazine that called McCain “the most effective member of the U.S. Senate in promoting the Democratic agenda.”

“We have to go through these periods. Politics is a cyclical business.” We have to see it in action. We have to see Barack Obama presiding… with a Democratic Congress. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to hurt,” but in the end, he says, “it’s going to lead to something much, much better” than what even John McCain has to offer.

The article then quotes Caroline Glick who disagrees with Farah:

“People who look at Carter as an enabler of Reagan belittle Reagan and also downplay the enduring legacy of Carter, which was to bring anti-Americanism into the mainstream American Left.”

Glick insisted that the damage caused by Carter in the international sphere could not be undone in Reagan’s administration. “In the geo-political perspective, he enabled Khomeini’s rise to power. He didn’t support the shah, he supported Khomeini.

“Reagan didn’t undo Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. This is a general lesson that it really behooves conservatives in Israel and America to learn: There is no silver lining to losing elections, because you’ve lost them.”

She added that Carter “also legitimized animosity towards Israel in mainline Democratic thinking in the U.S. He was extremely hostile towards Israel.

“When you have somebody who is hostile to your interest in power, they are able to advance their agenda” no matter how long they are in power, and “in the end, it doesn’t matter who comes in to save the day—they are unable to repair the damage that was already done.”

Therefore, says Glick, the cathartic hindsight of a Carter-esque Obama presidency that Farah espouses is far outweighed by the glaring flaws of Obama’s worldview.

Farah and Glick both make strong arguments. But here is what is decisive for me. Glick’s premise is that a Democratic president, or at least a Jimmy Carter type Democratic president, must never be elected again. But of course a Democrat is going to be elected sooner or later (the Republicans don’t own the White House for all eternity, after all), and he could very likely be a Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama type. If a Democrat is going to be elected sooner or later, isn’t it better that this happen in a year when the Republican nominee is so terrible and has an agenda to destroy conservatism?

I like Farah’s point that every generation has to “unlearn the false lessons taught to them in schools” by having a left-wing government.

- end of initial entry -

Sebastian writes:

I like the Glick versus Farah angle as a way to frame the debate. I would suggest that a future Democratic President may be a Clinton and not a Carter or Obama. Clinton’s economic policies had internalized the insights of the Reagan Administration: the country prospered under Clinton and we have never returned to the punitive tax rates Carter and his Congress implemented. If it’s true that the left won the culture war (or part of it); it is also true conservatives won the economic argument, thus the socially liberal, fiscally conservative urban and suburban professionals who supported both Reagan and Clinton. In foreign affairs, too, though hardly a Reagan, Clinton was never anti-American. He followed most of the basic tenants of post-War American policy—interventionism, including the possibly unjust bombing of Serbia, which was nevertheless a NATO operation. Note that some paleocons and anti-war right-wingers who supported Ron Paul toyed with the idea of Obama.

Obama represents a step backwards for the Democrats, one that may hurt their party and lead to another three terms for Republicans. They, too, should be worried about what their candidate is doing to their party, not just conservatives who dislike McCain’s make-over of the GOP. If McCain wins and governs like a Lieberman (or appoints such people to his cabinet) we will be living through a synthesis; a kind of consensus that we are to be a capitalist nation with a liberal social fabric. Whatever traditionalists may think, the synthesis is attractive because at some level it works and speaks to the Zeitgeist. After ending the civil wars, Augustus governed as a fairly tolerant monarch, mitigating the authoritarianism of Caesar with Senate consultations. It’s what Rome needed. Perhaps it’s a dramatic example, but I think a liberalized GOP with a majority is preferable to a genuinely leftist Democratic party fighting with an intractably imperial GOP. Something has to give in this election, and it would be irresponsible to vote for Obama on the basis of a what-if speculation regarding future presidents. The next Democratic President may be Caligula, true, but he may also be Claudius. Why vote for Nero now—so we can learn a tough lesson? No, that’s just too dangerous and assumes a God-like ability to see the future.

LA replies:

Sebastian repeatedly misstates the issue. Farah has not said he’s voting for Obama, he says he’s not voting for McCain. And that of course is my position too, repeated scores of times over the last nine months and again in the title of this entry. Further, I’m not aware of anyone at VFR advocating voting for Obama. Once the counterposition to voting for McCain is framed as not voting for McCain, rather than voting for Obama, I think Sebastian’s argument is somewhat weakened.

I’ll grant Sebastian this: We should not vote for evil, and therefore we should not vote for Obama. But, according to the very same principle (that we should not vote for evil), we should also not vote for McCain.

Unless, as I’ve said, one determines that the evil of Obama would result in existential or very grave harm to this country. And I have not determined that. To the contrary, see my exchange with M. Mason, where I argued that a list of issues that supposedly closed the deal for McCain in fact showed not that much practical differences between the two candidates.

September 12

Kevin writes:

You wrote in another entry:

The issue is, what will he actually do. In his actual political career, notwithstanding his personal association with various anti-American anti-white radicals, he himself has not manifested anti-white, anti-American, James Cone-ish ideas. He has not even manifested Michelle Obama type sub-textual racial resentment. To the contrary, he seeks to appeal to white people. And this, I believe, is the true index for understandinig how he would behave as president.

I have to agree with Caroline Glick on this one. I think at the very least he’ll be a foreign policy disaster where at best he’d govern as a reincarnation of Jimmy Carter and at worst as an anti-American radical. And I just can’t put too much faith in his demeanor. How do we know that he’s not something of a Trojan horse for the radical left and the black liberation theologists? I just see him as too dangerous. But of course it’s a judgment call and no one knows for sure. Your position certainly makes sense too. Given that you aren’t convinced that Obama is an existential threat I think your position comes down to seeing absolutely nothing good coming from a McCain victory but the chance of something good coming from an Obama victory namely a rejuvenated conservative Republican party.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 11, 2008 11:32 AM | Send