Andrew Sullivan has written a very interesting piece for the Atlantic in support of Barack Obama’s candidacy. He also appeared on This Week yesterday to discuss it, an appearance I missed because I was watching Fred Thompson jump ugly on Chris Wallace on another network. (More on that incident in a bit.) Sullivan’s thesis is that the Boomers have so distorted our political dialogue, only the shock-therapy of an Obama presidency can heal our internal wounds. President Obama would have the added benefit of instantly “rebranding” us to the rest of the world. There’s much there to agree with. Anyone familiar with my oeuvre knows I’m always up for a little Boomer bashing. Yes, David Petraeus and countless other Boomers are fantastic people, but as a generation? Yeesh! My brother and I had a hopeful dream back in 1996 that Bob Dole would defeat Bill Clinton, serve eight years, and then a young Kennedy-type would follow Dole making Clinton the only president to ever hail from the Baby Boom generation. But I digress. Sullivan correctly argues that the Baby Boomers continue to poison our politics with their Vietnam fixation and their petty hostilities. He leaves out the fact that the Boomers are laying in wait to bankrupt the rest of us with their demands that we lavishly fund their golden years. In Sullivan’s telling, a uniting, post-Boomer president like Obama purportedly will be, will mend our domestic divides and cause the world to view us differently. “Consider this hypothetical,” Sullivan writes. “It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man-Barack Hussein Obama-is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm.” Put aside the fact that “exponentially” would have made more sense than “a logarithm.” Sullivan is quite correct that the next president will have as his two most pressing duties leaching the crippling bile from our body politic and winning the battle for hearts and minds that is such a vital part of the war on terror. It’s unclear how many of the current Oval Office aspirants understand these pressing tasks, especially the former. Given the non-stop angry rhetoric in the Democratic race coming from everyone but Obama, the hopes of a uniter rather than a divider emerging from the Democratic party other than Obama are slim. On the Republican side, I can’t recall a candidate addressing this concern, let alone making it a priority. While the idea of an Obama presidency has its appeal, the success of a potential Obama presidency will depend on whether or not Obama has the skills to execute while in office. That’s where Sullivan and I part company. We’ve tried the “rebranding” thing before; Jimmy Carter’s unfortunate ascension rebranded an America tarnished by Nixonian paranoia and corruption. Too bad Carter was a small, petty man who lacked any of the talents necessary to be even an adequate president. As I’ve written before, Obama strikes me as a good and decent man. But his judgment and potential CinC skills are questionable. His promise to take a Diplomacy-palooza tour to schmooze with our enemies is hopelessly naïve. His support for issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, something that 90% of the country opposes, suggests he might not be the healing force some suspect. His often indifferent campaigning, scandalously low level of experience and his generally not-ready-for-primetime ways imply that he might not competently carry out a president’s awesome responsibilities. Worst of all, his Carter-like emphasis on decency and reflexive pacifism raise the fear that he may not be up to handling a word full of thoroughly indecent malefactors. Andrew Sullivan’s conception of Obama is better than the candidate himself. But Sullivan’s conception itself is important, and hopefully something that the winning candidate will be mindful of and perhaps shoot for.
