Why I will not vote for Obama

Long before this year’s campaign began, I was favorably disposed toward Obama. A friend of mine (not liberal by a long stretch) had heard him speak and was enthusiastic about both his demeanor and his message. I have friends in Chicago who spoke highly of him. Without having seen or heard anything of him myself, I had him on my “people to watch” list.

Fast forward a few months, to just before he announced his presidential candidacy. Everybody was talking about it: will he or won’t he? I said then that I thought it would be a mistake for him to run this year. He was too new to the scene, had too little experience and too short a record. I thought it would be much wiser to wait four or eight years; let Clinton have her shot now, bide your time, become a little more seasoned. He would have made a great successor to a strong Clinton presidency (I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton, mostly for policy reasons, but there is no doubt that she is a strong politician, and I think she would have made an effective and popular president.) He decided to run this year; oh well, thought I, there’s another high-profile figure who unaccountably fails to hear or heed my advice.

So then, for me, there were three ways of looking at Barack Obama: either he was vain and impatiently ambitious, or he was naïve and lacking in judgement, or he was a genuine idealist who believed that the political machine in Washington needed to be shaken up, right now. I’m an idealist myself, painful as that can be sometimes, and so I kept my fingers crossed for the third option. I was moved by his soundbite, very early in the campaign: “People say I haven’t been here long enough to know the ways of Washington; but I have been here long enough to know the ways of Washington must change.” Right on. Hear hear. As a young, smart, liberally educated person, how could I fail to like another young, smart, liberally educated person who was running for office?

I was rooting for him all through the Democrat primary. Sure, his ideas and goals were a ways to the left of my own, but I had been sure, along with everybody else, that our next president would be a Democrat, and what better Democrat to have? A fresh face, a compelling voice, and an oft-spoken commitment to bipartisanship. Moreover, the enthusiasm he generated among voters, particularly in my generation, was thrilling. So many of us have been frustrated and disgusted with the political scene. Chesterton put it so well: “The Republic of the young men’s battles / Grew stale and stank of old men’s bribes.” A figure whose voiced idealism was igniting an answering spark in so many of us, saying that there is a different way to do politics, a cleaner, more noble way, with less gamesmanship and underhanded tactics, and more cooperation and coming together from different ideological positions to accomplish what’s best for us all… how could we not like this person?

As the brutal campaign dragged on, his image as a figure of change became considerably tarnished, but I still had my fingers crossed. A battle as nasty as that one leaves everybody a little dirty. The closing out of the primary election was an opportunity for Obama to get back on track with his message; to put on a clean shirt and show that he was really committed to a new way of doing things. Oh how I would have loved a candidate who was willing to lose the election, in order to maintain the moral high ground!

Well, it’s just over a month now to voting day, and that dream has died. Obama has failed in his promise to show us a cleaner, more noble way of doing politics. Whatever change he’s bringing, it’s not that. He talks as if he’s still got it: continually berating the other side for its underhanded tactics. But he’s engaging in them too; if you haven’t seen it, look more closely.

Here’s a particularly egregious example. He had an interview with George Stephanopoulos, which made a mercifully tiny splash because of an unfortunate slip of the tongue (I’ve tried saying the sentence he was trying to say, and there isn’t a natural way to phrase it, so it would be—and was—fatally easy to get your tongue tangled and utter the exact wrong phrase… fortunately the press did the right thing and mostly ignored it.) What bothered me about that interview was not the slip, but what he was saying before it. Here is my own transcript of the essential part of that interview. :

Stephanopoulos: “Yesterday you took off after the Republicans for suggesting you have Muslim connections. Just a few minutes ago Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, said, they’ve never done that, this is a false and cynical attempt to play victim.”

Obama: “You know what? These guys love to throw a rock and hide their hand…”

Stephanopoulos: “The McCain campaign has never suggested you have Muslim connections.”

Obama: “No, but I don’t think that when you look at what is being promulgated on, Fox News, let’s say, and Republican commentators, who are closely allied to these folks—”

Stephanopoulos: “But John McCain said that’s wrong.”

Obama: “Listen. You and I both know that the minute that Governor Palin was forced to talk about her daughter, I immediately said, ‘That’s off-limits’—”

Stephanopoulos: “But John McCain said the same thing about questioning your faith.”

Obama: “—and what was the first thing the McCain campaign went out and did? They said, ‘Look, these liberal blogs that support Obama are out there attacking Governor Palin.’ Let’s not play games.”

Did you catch that? Obama is attacking the McCain campaign for what some McCain supporters are saying, even though the McCain campaign has disavowed that message. He then turns right around and attacks the McCain campaign for attacking the Obama campaign for what some Obama supporters had been saying, even though Obama had disavowed that message. And then he says, “Let’s not play games.”

I kind of hate him for that. It’s just so blatant and audacious. Does he think nobody will notice? If anyone else in Washington had said that, I’d have rolled my eyes and said, “Okay, politics as usual, idiot tactics, how gross.” But from Obama, it hurts me and makes me angry, because he was not supposed to be like that. He said—and affirms to this day—that he is not like that. I really hate being lied to.

(Just to be clear, that’s not the only example. I’ve seen this kind of new and shiny doublespeak, where you accuse the other guy of gamesmanship while engaging in it yourself in the same breath, repeatedly from Obama. It’s disgusting and insulting.)

So now I’m talking like a wronged woman. Let’s take it back to a more analytical plane. Remember near the beginning of this article, when I listed three reasons he might have decided to run for president prematurely (in my view)? Vanity and ambition, naïvete, or genuine idealism. The idealism bubble is burst. I don’t think it’s naïvete either; he has shown himself to be too savvy for that. I have, however, seen plenty of evidence for vanity and ambition. Two autobiographies is just the beginning.

Let me just start here by saying that I am a vain person, and sometimes an ambitious one. I know the hallmarks of vanity very well. You are always, always conscious of how you appear. When you speak, you hear everything in your head before you say it, to make sure it sounds okay. You are stung when you’re attacked, but you don’t show it. Instead you retreat a pace, looking gracious, but slightly bewildered (just the right amount to make sure you look like the victim, but not helpless). All the while you’re searching wildly for a vulnerable spot in your attacker, and when you find it you strike, not viciously or angrily, but with an air of quiet poise. To the outsider, it looks as though you knew you were right all along.

This is the kind of thing I see when I watch Barack Obama, especially in debates. It’s subtle, it’s subjective, but combined with clearer markers (okay, really? Two autobiographies?), and the fact that one of the few major public decisions we’ve seen him make was the decision to run for president this year, it’s convincing to me. I believe Barack Obama is a highly intelligent man who is driven by a deep vanity; a need to look awesome in as many eyes as possible.

And here’s the kicker: in that respect (if it’s true), he’s very like George W. Bush. More intelligent, more attractive, and a much better communicator; but a need to appear well is not so different, on the ground, from a need for approval. I see both men as profoundly egocentric, and this, to me, is not a desirable quality in a leader.

Still, Obama certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on vanity in our great capital. If we were going to root all the vain, ambitious, and egocentric men and women from high office, Washington D.C. would be a ghost town. If you’re generally a liberal, if you like the idea of socialized health care and a Robin Hood tax policy, then there’s no reason not to vote for him. But the people like me, the independents and conservatives who were seduced by his message and his manner, need to take a good hard look.