Bacevich: Why Obama's better than McCain

Writing in The American Conservative, Prof. Andrew Bacevich, the military historian, makes a conservative case for voting Obama solely on the war issue. (As an aside, whether you agree with it or not, this kind of challenging essay is one of the reasons why TAC is so vital on the Right.)

Bacevich begins by saying that Bush has been no true conservative, nor have his predecessors:

The conservative ascendancy that began with the election of Ronald Reagan has been largely an illusion. During the period since 1980, certain faux conservatives—especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire—have prospered. But conservatism as such has not.

The presidency of George W. Bush illustrates the point. In 2001, President Bush took command of a massive, inefficient federal bureaucracy. Since then, he has substantially increased the size of that apparatus, which during his tenure has displayed breathtaking ineptitude both at home and abroad. Over the course of Bush’s two terms in office, federal spending has increased 50 percent to $3 trillion per year. Disregarding any obligation to balance the budget, Bush has allowed the national debt to balloon from $5.7 to $9.4 trillion. Worse, under the guise of keeping Americans “safe,” he has arrogated to the executive branch unprecedented powers, thereby subverting the Constitution. Whatever else may be said about this record of achievement, it does not accord with conservative principles.

As with every Republican leader since Reagan, President Bush has routinely expressed his support for traditional values. He portrays himself as pro-life and pro-family. He offers testimonials to old-fashioned civic virtues. Yet apart from sporting an American flag lapel-pin, he has done little to promote these values. If anything, the reverse is true. In the defining moment of his presidency, rather than summoning Americans to rally to their country, he validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship.

It's not Bush's fault, Bacevich says. We are not a conservative country in the sense he understands conservatism. Consumerism, not conservatism, is our default ideology, and if conservatism gets in the way of that, well too bad for conservatism. But it's right and proper to fault the GOP for not challenging consumerist ideology in the name of conservatism, and for propagating a cynical cultural strategy. And Bush's foreign policy has been deeply destructive of conservative principles.

For conservatives to hope the election of yet another Republican will set things right is surely in vain. To believe that President John McCain will reduce the scope and intrusiveness of federal authority, cut the imperial presidency down to size, and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis is to succumb to a great delusion. The Republican establishment may maintain the pretense of opposing Big Government, but pretense it is.

Social conservatives counting on McCain to return the nation to the path of righteousness are kidding themselves. Within this camp, abortion has long been the flagship issue. Yet only a naïf would believe that today’s Republican Party has any real interest in overturning Roe v. Wade or that doing so now would contribute in any meaningful way to the restoration of “family values.” GOP support for such values is akin to the Democratic Party’s professed devotion to the “working poor”: each is a ploy to get votes, trotted out seasonally, quickly forgotten once the polls close.

Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation.

The essential point is this: conservatives intent on voting in November for a candidate who shares their views might as well plan on spending Election Day at home. The Republican Party of Bush, Cheney, and McCain no longer accommodates such a candidate.

The only reason Bacevich sees justifying a vote for the liberal Obama is that Obama's stance on the war stands in stark contrast to McCain's. For Bacevich, the war is destructive of the nation's interests in profound ways, mostly a) a refusal to see how wrong it was and to reverse course keeps Americans thinking that the ways of empire are justifiable and right, and b) to fight the war, the government has to keep expanding its powers and size. To Bacevich, the war is an issue of such overriding importance that it makes enduring an Obama presidency worthwhile, considering the alternative.

I can't follow him there, not at this point. I agree that the only thing recommending Obama is his view on the war, and that that point, plus my complete lack of faith that the Republican Party and John McCain will do much of anything on the social issues that matter to me (and the concomitant view that Obama and the Democrats will, though go further in a bad direction), at this point puts me in the position of sitting out the presidential vote.

It will be a long year, though. Bacevich doesn't convince me to vote Obama, but his reasoning is more or less why I'm neutral at this point. What do other conservatives on this list think?