Last week, John Schwenkler posted the latest in a series of well-taken criticisms of those of us anti-warriors who plan to vote for Senator Obama. The fundamental conflict here is between John’s claim that “if we all beat the drums nice and loudly on the issues that are close to our hearts and refuse to join into marriages of convenience where too many core principles are violated, there’s the possibility for a real shake-up,” and mine that the best outcome of this election at any possible world within the inner (relevant) sphere of possibility (to borrow a Lewisianism) is an Obama victory. There’s certainly nothing I can say to decisively refute John, and I feel somewhat sheepish trying, since an occasion on which, ahem, Bismarck’s maxim that “politics is the art of the possible” applies is also highly likely to be an occasion on which Orwell’s maxim that politics is “the defense of the indefensible” applies. By the same token, I don’t see how John can decisively refute my position either. The stalemate is something like Schopenhauer’s description of the philosophical sceptic (from memory, not verbatim): a knight guarding a fortress which can never be conquered, but from which he can never sally forth to challenge others. (John’s the one with the morally unblemished position here, so I take it he’s the knight for purposes of this metaphor.)

So rather than attempt to mount a decisive positive case for Barack Obama’s candidacy (which I wouldn’t wholeheartedly believe in), let alone a defense of his spinelessness on FISA or his less-than-full-throated (let’s say) opposition to the war, allow me to offer a few points that might help clarify for others in the anti-imperialist wings of the left and right where they stand. First of all, John is very definitely an unconventional conservative if he is optimistic about the prospects of a brighter future provided that we all band together the right way during this election. I take it that a starting assumption of normative principled political conservatism is the view that politics can aspire to little more than rearguard defenses against encroachments on liberties, rights, and values that transcend the gunk of practical politics, and that efforts to accomplish more than that ought to be prima facie suspicious to conservatives. Where one will find pollyannishness about the possibility of politics bringing about some ideal (or asymptotically close to ideal) reorganization of the nation or the world is among certain kinds of libertarians, and obviously, on the left.¹ With respect to this election in particular, I would think the methodologically conservative assessment is that the short- and medium-term outlooks of any relevant possible outcomes are fairly dismal (the long-term outlook being futile to try to judge).

If all that is correct so far, then it would follow, given a few more credible and modest premises about the actual state of affairs today, that an Obama presidency is at least marginally the optimal outcome of the election. Which doesn’t yet entail that one should support Obama, but add a further few modest premises about about the downside of declining to vote for the candidate whose election would be the optimal outcome, and the conclusion that one should support Obama follows. That, I take it, is a plausible methodologically (if not necessarily politically, though maybe) conservative assessment of the election.

Why might one dissent from that assessment? For two reasons I can think of. One could go in John’s direction: We can achieve better than an Obama presidency — maybe even much better — but only if we stop compromising our values and accepting lesser-evilism. Or one could go in the direction typified by Daniel Larison’s opposition to Obama: it’s true that all the possible outcomes are dismal. But Obama supporters who hew to principles anything like John or Daniel’s (or mine, when push comes to shove) are deluding themselves if they think Obama is the best of a set of dismal outcomes; he’s not measurably better than the alternative, and may well turn out worse. Although these two reasons for opposing Obama are divergently motivated, they reinforce one another, the former highlighting the possible outcomes Obama supporters ignore to make their analysis work, the latter taking a skeptical machete to the papier-mache foundation of optimism about Obama.

One can tune into John’s place, or Daniel’s, or any one of a network of smart paleo/pomo/non-neoconservative conservative outlets that I really ought to plug more frequently², for evidence to support the small government partisan’s case against Obama. Obviously though, I agree with my position (otherwise it wouldn’t be my position), so here are a few evidentiary considerations in its favor: First and most importantly, the next president (barring disaster) will be either Barack Obama or John McCain; any middle or outside is strictly excluded. Therefore the crucial question to ask in deciding whom to support is whether the election of Obama or the election of McCain will be a better outcome. Having reached an answer to that question, someone who decides to do anything other than support the one of those two candidates who is better than the other on balance, however marginally, is deliberately acting to bring about a sub-optimal outcome. The only instance in which this rule doesn’t apply is when the two candidates are equally good (or, more realistically, equally bad).

Which is why it’s important to remind ourselves, secondly, that despite his extremely disappointing (to put it mildly) vacillations of the last couple of months, it takes some fairly substantial obscurantism to deny that Obama is vastly better than the alternative on matters of war, security, basic liberties, and (small-r) republicanism. Not, to make absolutely clear, because Obama is a shining beacon on any such matters. But because the alternative is simply abysmal. To anticipate a number of well-taken Larisonian criticisms of Obama, there is nothing good to say about his FISA cave-in, he will not withdraw American forces from Iraq on anything like the timescale anti-warriors prefer (if he withdraws at all), he will not substantially reorient American foreign policy on Israel and Palestine, he will not significantly curtail defense spending, etc. etc. All true.

But here’s the rub. The 4th Amendment-gutting FISA non-compromise would never have come before Congress under an Obama administration — not, at least, with retroactive immunity for telcos included, though I’m not sanguine about what a President Obama might make of a bill stripped of retroactive immunity that nevertheless abrogates constitutional protections against government surveillance. He may not withdraw from Iraq as expeditiously as possible (here I break from some anti-warriors; I’m relatively okay with the idea of a phased withdrawal over 1-2 years (though not much more than that) if tactical considerations call for it); he may not withdraw at all. But he will not — or at least, is overwhelmingly less likely than John McCain — to start new Iraq-style fiascos. If, say, the Republicans had nominated a principle-free lizard like Mitt Romney, this counterpoint might have been somewhat blunted. (I.e., Romney might talk tough about “doubling Guantanamo,” whatever that means, but he also gained a comprehension of the concepts of scarcity, risk, and sunk costs through his business experience.) Instead, they nominated John McCain, a man who, at least since his conversion to neoconservatism about a decade ago, has not encountered a foreign policy dilemma he would not strongly consider “solving” by going to war or at least taking the antecedent steps to going to war, and whose only criticism of previous military engagements is that they have not been large, costly, and long enough. To equate Obama’s swerves and hedges on the occupation — or even the fact that he has never been a thoroughgoing anti-warrior — with McCain’s conception of diplomacy as the continuation of war by other means, is, at the risk of repeating myself, willful obscurantism.

Things go similarly with the issues of the Israel/Palestine conflict and republicanism and executive power. Obama has shown himself not be sitting under any sort of halo. But a return merely to the status quo ante George W. Bush (e.g., to the state of things under any other post-war president, including Richard Nixon), which is presumably Obama’s lower bound, is in every conceivable respect better than what McCain presages. Do you think US policy on the Israel/Palestine conflict is too one-sided, uncritical of a flawed state, and bellicose? Picture how that policy might change in John McCain’s hands. And so on with the matrix of issues on which anti-warriors and civil libertarians attack Obama. In other words, keep close to mind the conservative wisdom that things can always, always get worse.

There are a number of issues, to be sure, on which McCain’s position is prima facie more appealing to libertarians and conservatives than Obama’s — mainly issues of domestic policy and budgetary priorities. A couple of points:

(1) McCain’s self-ascribed fiscal conservatism is an obvious chimera. When a numerate observer looks at the McCain platform, it becomes crystal clear that the senator is proposing signing America up for a national subprime mortgage on which we’re virtually assured of defaulting. Given the median age of Americans and our average lifespan, most voting-age Americans will be around to suffer the costs of McCainonomics. Those who won’t be around — like McCain — might still give a passing thought to the burdens they are willing to place on their descendants.

(2) But (1) is almost beside the point, because the most salient feature of McCain’s presentation on economics construed as broadly as possible — that is, any question pertaining to a finite allotment of resources guided by game- and decision-theoretic thinking — is that the man doesn’t have the first clue (see also) about what any of the issues are, or even, in many instances, his own position.

That is, he understands nothing. How else can one explain, e.g., his farcical ideas about cutting the deficit by selling off useless bridges in Alaska, or his tragifarcical idea that he’ll our national P&L sheets in the black by “winning” the war (which, on McCainian terms, almost certainly includes large increases in (deficit) war-spending)? How else can one explain his perplexing swerves on a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions — perplexing, that is, until one realizes he doesn’t comprehend what he’s saying — which have so far featured him flip-flop-flipping on whether what he is proposing includes mandatory emissions caps and auctions for emissions permits (i.e., flipping on the contents of his proposal, not his view), and finally settling on opposition to caps and auctions without a glimmer of recognition that (a) his own avowed reasons for supporting cap-and-trade entail supporting caps and auctions, (b) the voluntarist alternative just is the Bush position, even though (c) it’s of course a smear to suggest that McCain is like Bush? If these sorts of outlandishly imaginative departures from reality were isolated one-(or two- or three-)offs, we could perhaps chalk up his risible errors of fact, logic, and judgement to ordinary politicians’ mendacity. But risible errors of fact, logic, and judgement don’t merely recur frequently in McCain’s enunciation of his economic views; they exhaust the content of those views nigh-on completely.³ It’s not an accident that informed observers, irrespective of their ideological backgrounds, have found it an excruciating ordeal to watch the McCain economic agenda as it takes shape.⁴

Thus, even when he takes surface positions libertarians and conservatives like, he has no rational grounds for doing so. At best, any (broadly) economic issue on which he is right is a case of Gettier-truth/belief: he’s right, the justification for being right is within his grasp, but something goes haywire and he arrives at justified true belief by accident. (Repeat: best case scenario.) Which should set off loud alarm bells: McCain doesn’t have the requisite knowledge or intellectual tools at his disposal to be a principled economic libertarian or conservative; to the extent that he adopts conservative economic views, he does so perfunctorily in order to check the necessary boxes for a GOP nominee. But if elected, those boxes having been checked and whatever putative knowledge he has of the economy Gettierized, it’s anybody’s guess what positions McCain might take or legislation he might propose. Not a fan of McCain-Feingold? Imagine a McCain-Feingold for the US economy writ-large — some sort of bill to “solve” the moral crisis of whatever McCain thinks is in crisis — and then try to tell me why such a thing, especially given a Democratic congress, is any less likely than any other possible McCain domestic agenda. (Even worse, the odds are much higher than in ordinary cases that a President McCain wouldn’t seek a second term; if he doesn’t, depending on how early in his term he knows he won’t run again, there could be literally no pragmatic constraint forcing him to hew to any sort of conservatism.)

Here again, the contrast with Obama is telling. At the very least, Obama has consistently displayed the ability to think game- and decision-theoretically — like an economist. Primary season rhetoric notwithstanding, he has always been (or at least, since becoming a US senator) on the right-wing of the Democratic party on bread and butter economic issues. He got his religion on the subject from Austan Goolsbee, and Jason Furman is guiding his economic team; Hugh Hewitt’s deranged scribblings aside, the notion that he belongs to the radical left is self-evidently preposterous. And there are items and emphases in his agenda that conservatives and (especially) libertarians can applaud, from his stand on net neutrality and really impressively forward-thinking technology policy, to his push for increased transparency in budgetary procedures, to his (admittedly hesitant and tepid) support for a relaxation of the drug war, to his (and Goolsbee’s) vision of a drastically simplifed, “ipod” version of the welfare state. The lower bound for Obama on domestic policy is something in the neighborhood of Clinton redux. That wouldn’t be so bad.

Finally, any discussion like this one must eventually come around to the courts. As I’ve been yelling for a few weeks now, there is no such thing as the pro-liberty wing of the federal judiciary. There are the so-called liberal judges and justices with their priorities that cross-cut libertarian values, and there are the so-called conservative judges and justices with their opposed priorities that also cross-cut libertarian values. From a libertarian — and dare I hope, a paleoconservative — perspective, the “conservative” judicial camp offers gun rights, a restrictive reading of the commerce clause, and a restrictive reading of the scope of eminent domain and “public use.” And very little else. The “liberal” judicial camp offers support to most constitutional liberties that appear outside the 2nd Amendment, a check on executive branch arrogations of legislative and judicial power, habeas corpus, due process protection, and a minimal guarantee of the continuation of rule of law. But abrogations of 2nd Amendment rights, preposterously broad readings of interstate commerce, eminent domain power, and concepts like “public use,” to name only a few downsides, are (for now, anyway) an inseparable part of the judicial liberal package.

So there’s no denying that arriving at a preference for one or the other judicial camp — and there is no third alternative — involves some careful weighing of the import of the benefits and costs that come with each camp’s jurisprudence, and perhaps a readjustment of one’s own sense of a judge’s appropriate priorities and most important commitments. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to imagine a cogent case against the conclusion that at least given the present state of affairs in Bushland, placing more liberals on the bench is enormously preferable on libertarian (and again, I hope, paleoconservative) grounds to appointing more conservatives.⁵ Obama will appoint judicial liberals. McCain will appoint judicial conservatives (with all due deference tothe ongoing snipe hunt among high-contrarian liberal pundits and AP-style bootlickers⁶ for proof that McCain is deep down pro-choice). QED.

I could go on but that’s about all I’ve got for insights; any further evidence or thought experiments would just be padding. Ultimately, the information guiding our decisions about how to act during this election is necessarily and definitionally imperfect (if it weren’t, there would be a single mathematically correct decision about whom to vote for⁷), and we’re all going to have to rely on hunches and gut a bit to fill in the gaps in our information. Which raises a further point John alluded to in a comment to his post. He wrote:

This is why, even as a conservative (of an admittedly unconventional variety) who still identifies more strongly with the GOP than the Dems - perhaps this is just because old habits die hard - I would be delighted to see the Republicans go down in flames (again) this November and in 2010 as well, so that the Ron Paulites and the Grand New Party crowd could fight over who gets to build in the ashes.

Political affiliation is very little above and beyond tribal affiliation, as Jeffrey Friedman taught me. It’s extremely difficult, no matter how widely one reads or travels, to break free of the partisan commitments of one’s parents. And rarer still is the person who does so without going completely batshit the other way, like the neocons (specifically, the ex-leftist cadre among them; see Horowitz, David). I’ve never been registered as a Republican or even fleetingly thought of myself a Republican (though I have, and in some ways do, think of myself as a conservative). I was raised a Democrat, stopped being a Democrat at a certain point, but in a mirror-image of John’s experience, pay significantly closer attention to and place significantly greater importance on the internal politics of the Democratic party.⁸ This is a product, I suspect, of a hereditary instinct to the effect that however awful the actual Democratic party may be, however unlikely its transformation in a helpful direction, it could conceivably be the vehicle for the politics that I advocate; and that’s the best our two-party system has to offer.

On top of that — how should I put this? — Obama is considerably more like people I went to school with and became friends with than any other nominee I can think of. (During primary season, I followed that observation by noting that Hillary Clinton reminds me of people I went to school with and detested; whereas I cannot begin to relate to McCain.) So I’d be lying if I claimed this judgement of Obama subconsciously inclines me to trust him a bit more and give him a bit more benefit of the doubt. I mention this not to bolster my argument, but rather to offer grains of salt freely and pre-emptively. These are my biases, and it would be silly to deny that they play a role in making me more supportive of Obama than I would otherwise have been. But everyone has such biases. The best we can hope for is to make our arguments accessible to those whose biases clash with our own.

One last point about one specific alternative to Obama that John mentioned: Bob Barr. As I’ve said here before, Barr has been by far the most appealing candidate for at least the last month or two. He is also, in many ways, about as good a candidate as paleocons (if not necessarily libertarians) can hope to get. Nonetheless, he is still a seriously flawed candidate. For many libertarians, myself among them, immigration ought to be subject to as few restrictions as possible (and to very few restrictions in absolute terms; arguments that a large number of restrictions are necessary won’t fly). On that ground, Obama and McCain are both much better candidates than Barr, a committed immigration restrictionist from what I understand. Likewise, if I’m not mistaken, Barr has a record of opposition to reproductive freedom (I know many opponents object to that term; but I won’t withdraw it). Now abortion, access to contraception and birth control, embryonic stem cell research, etc., intersect the communities of self-described libertarians and small-government conservatives at odd angles. Some might find Barr’s positions exemplary. But many others, like me again, fall squarely on the side of maximal reproductive (and every other kind of social) freedom, on which lights an anti-choice platform is at least as objectionable as, say, the (partial) socialization of health care that Barack Obama proposes. The same goes, comically, for “hard” currency and gold-standard issues (though Barr, wisely, is much more muted on the subject than Ron Paul), and anything but comically for free trade issues. In other words, there are ample grounds for small-l libertarian opposition to Barr.

But beyond all that, it’s vital to keep in mind that Barr is enjoying the consolations of being a hopeless candidate: He can take any principled stand he would like, to negligible if any effect at all. For those who think Barr would be running on the same platform if he were in a position possibly to win the election, I urge reflection on what is likely to be your take on movement enthusiasm for Obama. Moreover, in Barr’s case, we can dispense with counterfactuals. He used to be in government, and built up a record of his governance. That record was, in many respects, appalling. Granted, he claims to have had significant changes of heart on a wide cross-section of issues, and there is no reason, apart from undue cynicism, to deny the sincerity of his conversions. But the efficient cause of those conversions is his fall from power, and the nature of his conversions in turn just about ensures that he will never hold power again (certainly no more than he had as a congressman).

Notes:

1. Appropriately disposed theocons and eschatological religious GOPers share the tendency too. They’re not on the left, of course. I tend to doubt that they are conservatives, either.

2. Some of them hardly need plugs from me. In those cases, I could surely use a plug from them. Always be closing.

3. I was strongly for Romney in the GOP primary. It was America’s loss — and I say this without a hint of sarcasm — that he didn’t get the nomination. (Discounting Paul. Paul never had a prayer. Romney might well have won if things had gone slightly differently.)

4. This reminds me to say something about the Reihan Salam case for McCain, which Reihan laid out on Hardball last week. The argument is that McCain has the experience to deal with the challenges America faces. I find this absurd, and second-order baffling that someone as sharp as Reihan would find such a case persuasive, let alone make it himself.⁹ Sure, McCain has spent many years in Washington. Does that experience logically, nomologically, or any other way entail the capacity to grapple with the issues with which Reihan is concerned? Obviously not. Has something in the content of McCain’s experience, discounting its sheer duration, provided grounds for thinking that he is the right man at the right time? He has passed many bills, a non-distinction for a senator with so long a tenure, of which the highest profile cases were more or less uniformly atrocious. He did do a satisfactory job assisting in the negotiations for normalizing relations with Vietnam. That’s hardly a compelling record. Has McCain, on the contrary, provided more than ample evidence that he has exceedingly limited capacity to make justified, responsible decisions on a broad range of urgent issues that require executive decisions by the president? Indeed he has, on one occasion after another after another. If a man spends more than a quarter of a century in the federal government and runs for president without knowing how social security is funded, believes deficit spending can be financed and the budget ultimately returned to surplus by “winning” a war, flogs his support for a cap-and-trade scheme for carbon emissions without understanding what such a scheme is, maintains that cutting earmarks out of the budget is a meaningful step towards restoring the solvency of the federal government, and myriad ceterae, do those facts offer grounds to be bullish or to be bearish about his aptitude for the job? (Never mind his inability to use modern technology. That’s hardly the most significant — or twentieth most significant — substantive (i.e., not merely political) problem with his candidacy, but it’s a problem.)

5. I guess, if overturning Roe v. Wade is so much more important to you than any other judicial priority, you could make a cogent case for appointing more judicial conservatives. I deny that the required antecedent argument reversing Roe takes precedence over everything else — in particular, the things that a further shift to the right among the judiciary would put at risk — is cogent. You could play an Achilles-and-the-tortoise game to sustain a preference for Scalia-like SCOTUS appointees — in which case you’d come perilously close to glibertarianism — but it’s guaranteed that at some stage in your dialectic (even though we can’t say which one), you’ll have to talk nonsense to be able to ultimately get to your preference for more Scalian jurisprudence.

6. The set of high-contrarian liberal pundits and the set of AP-style bootlickers: different in extension, therefore different sets; each annoying in its own right.

7. The mathematically correct play might be not voting.

8. Over time I’ve developed a borderline-positive view of Ronald Reagan, and think of Barry Goldwater as a national hero, despite each of their manifold flaws. I also regard Dwight Eisenhower as the greatest president of the 20th century. But that — and occasionally cheering on Jeff Flake and Ron Paul — is the extent of my affinity for the GOP: i.e., almost entirely backward-looking and entirely causally inert.

9. I find Reihan’s auxiliary apologia to the effect that tough political conditions force McCain take take self-contradictory stands similarly unconvincing. The issue is not (just) that McCain’s platform is self-referentially incoherent in numerous ways. It’s his near-total failure to grasp the content of his own avowed positions. Also, McCain’s most flagrantly incoherent position is on Iraq. But this is the same position that, according to Team McCain’s election narrative, McCain stuck to at enormous political cost because he believes so deeply in it. If pragmatic considerations are forcing McCain into self-contradiction, but he really knows what’s up and doesn’t believe contradictory things, then the foundation of his candidacy goes missing.

Tags: McCain, obama