An Open Mind on Obama

I think we need to keep an open mind about Barack Obama. I know that many friends of liberty disagree, and I understand their reasons. He came up as a leftist, voted in the Senate as a leftist, and won the early contests in his party’s presidential race as a leftist. It is not completely unreasonable for people to conclude from these facts that the man is a leftist. However, I am not sure that he is. Sensible people regard all the actions and statements of professional politicians with cynicism and suspicion. We have certainly seen plenty of instances where (usually Republican) politicians profess a deep commitment to freedom and limited government before being elected and turn out to be big government porkers and cheerful boosters for unnecessary wars once in office. We should give Obama the benefit of the doubt and consider the possibility that he may have been as calculating and disingenuous as most other politicians are. Remember he came up as a big-city, black politician in the Democratic Party, a position in which moderation and tacking to the political center are not exactly tools for political success. Then he gained his early lead over Senator Clinton partly by winning over his party’s fervid true believers on the left, a group of people who take their doctrine and orthodoxy pretty seriously and yearn for candidates who will give them that old time religion in a totally undiluted way. It is interesting that as soon as he stopped needing such people, he (mainly) stopped pandering to them. His actions in the fall campaign and his statements and appointments since election suggest that he might govern in a fairly moderate and pragmatic way. Of course he could be faking now too, but even if so, it is encouraging that he wants to appear to be a centrist. (To successfully pretend to be one for four years, he would often have to act like one.) There is even the chance that he really is a moderate left-centrist and will do a fair job as president.

At least he seems to be a smart and articulate guy who made it more or less on his own. He isn’t a hereditary pseudo-patrician or a yahoo, and that is a point in his favor. (Our current president, oddly, manages to be both of those.) He also knows how to appear to be reasonable, which could indicate that some of the time he is reasonable. So I think that, while of course remaining appropriately cynical and suspicious, we should not assume that he will be a bad president. He could be another Carter, but maybe not. He might be another post-1994 Clinton or even a Jack Kennedy. I suggest that we wait and see and not buy the wheat grinders and the freeze dried food just yet.