Ken Adelman, who claimed to be a staunch conservative, tells about his reasons why he’s endorsing Obama :
McCain’s temperament — leading him to bizarre behavior during the week the economic crisis broke — and his judgment — leading him to Wasilla — depressed me into thinking that “our guy” would be a(nother) lousy conservative president. Been there, done that.
I’d rather a competent moderate president. Even at a risk, since Obama lacks lots of executive experience displaying competence (though his presidential campaign has been spot-on). And since his Senate voting record is not moderate, but depressingly liberal. Looming in the background, Pelosi and Reid really scare me.
Nonetheless, I concluded that McCain would not — could not — be a good president. Obama just might be.
That’s become good enough for me — however much of a triumph (as Dr. Johnson said about second marriages) of hope over experience.
Essentially it is “I would rather have a competent, leftlist, liberal president than a lousy rightist, conservative president”. Well said. Decency and competency should triumph over ideology, race, religion anytime. Here lies the real strength of Obama’s campaign and how McCain is sorely missing the point. He has constantly put himself above the useless bickering over ideology and instead focus his campaign on the message of unity and problem solving. He has shrewdly elevated himself above the fray and become untouchable while our image of McCain is that he’s still stuck in the bottom doing mudslinging. I think Obama has shown how presidential campaigns can be run and won that’s not based on negativity which has caused much cynicism in the political process. But I’m not sure that there’s gonna be another Obama who will have the character, steadfastness, confidence and stature to pull another campaign like this in future. It remains to be seen. Here’s another good article describing Obama’s superb campaign strategy, the non-campaigning passive campaign.
