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Obama Rising

By Philip Klein on 8.14.07 @ 12:08AM

(Page 3 of 5)

It fascinated me, this strange power of his...

Watching Obama on the campaign trail made me wonder if he is channeling his father, because whenever he speaks, it's as if September 11 had never happened, as if there weren't terrorist groups throughout the world plotting to attack us, and the only thing we have to fear is "cynicism."

Obama has called for increasing the size of the military and moving against terrorist groups when the subject specifically comes up, or when he is addressing a more general audience, but when speaking to a partisan crowd, he strikes a different balance.

Before the Rye, New Hampshire town hall meeting I attended, a woman handed out cookies decorated with a pie chart representing the size of the Pentagon budget, suggesting that money wasted on outdated weapons could be diverted to health care and education. (She was with the group PrioritiesNH, which claims to be nonpartisan, but is run by liberal activist Ben Cohen, co-founder of ice cream company Ben and Jerry's.)

During the question and answer session, Obama was asked about withdrawing all of our troops based throughout the world. Responding, he held up the cookie and noted the disproportionate amount of money America spends on defense relative to the rest of the world. "We spend more money on defense than the next 30 nations combined, "he stressed. "Combined." Obama acknowledged that "we have very real enemies out there, "but argued that we could be spending money more wisely, and lamented the cost of the Iraq war. Instead of proposing that money saved by pulling out from Iraq be spent to improve national security in other ways, he said we could use the money for early child education, or to expand access to health care. This was quite a different tone from the major foreign policy address he gave a few weeks earlier. In that speech (which got good reviews from neoconservative Robert Kagan), he called for adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.

ANOTHER QUESTIONER WANTED TO KNOW what could be done to increase humanitarian assistance to the rest of the world. "How do we see a Department of Peace be a bigger item than a Department of Defense?" she asked.

In response, Obama reiterated his call for a "new security" that would involve the doubling of foreign aid. "We have come to view security only in terms of military spending, and military action," he complained. He said he has spoken to terrorism experts who have told him that there are only about 10,000 committed terrorists, and the rest are people facing hardship, or being educated in madrassas that teach hate. "That environment allows the hardcore terrorists to recruit," Obama said.

It isn't "naive" or "soft" to argue that humanitarian assistance could be used to reduce terrorism, he said, but simply a matter of making a smart investment. "If you spend the money up front, you don't end up having to spend as much money on the back end on much more costly military interventions," he said.

Obama provided the example of the Marshall Plan as an instance of foreign aid contributing to our long-term security. There is an obvious problem with that analogy. Before instituting the Marshall Plan, we first had to defeat the Nazis. We didn't attempt to deliver humanitarian assistance to Europe or try to re-educate Germans while Hitler was still in power. The prime breeding grounds for terrorists are in nations ruled by corrupt totalitarian governments hostile to the United States. As long as those governments are still in place, it is unlikely that they will take too kindly to American efforts to feed and re-educate their people.

Obama does not even bother to pay lip service to going after terrorist groups in his standard stump speech, which indicates where his heart really lies. In outlining his top priorities, he talks about pulling out of Iraq, fighting global warming, achieving energy independence, creating universal health care, and improving education. He sounds quite genuine in his concern about all of those issues, but fighting terrorism does not make the cut.

The core of Obama's message in his run for president may be captured in a refrain he uses in his speeches, that "it's time to turn the page." More than anything, Obama's candidacy taps into a desire among a certain portion of the electorate to move beyond September 11, to return to a time when terrorism may have been a part of political life, but far from the central focus. It is only human nature that the more time that elapses after a traumatic event, the less it stings, and the more people desire to return to normalcy. As we move farther away from September 11 without another terrorist attack, it is only natural that this tendency will manifest itself and people will want to "turn the page."

That is why, though it is just a silly button slogan, the phrase "Carpe Diem" may be the best way to describe the rationale behind Obama's candidacy. Before he announced his intention to run, many pundits argued that the 45-year-old with less than three years in the U.S. Senate should wait until he gets more experience. Some still consider his campaign a dry run, or a bid for the vice-presidential nomination. But clearly, he intends to capitalize on this particular moment in American history. He is, in fact, seizing the day.

TO SEIZE THE DAY, HOWEVER, he'll have to get past Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, and she will not go quietly. Over the course of the campaign, it is likely that everything about Obama will come out in the worst possible light, from his admission of past cocaine use to his controversial land purchase from indicted businessman and fundraiser, Tony Rezko. Clinton still has the support of many in the party establishment, and benefits from Bill's popularity among black voters. Rep. Charles Rangel has already endorsed her over Obama.

Hillary will also do her best to portray herself as battle hardened. In campaign appearances, she recalls the 1993 fight over her healthcare plan, joking, "I still have the scars to prove it." And in February, she said of Republicans, "I'm the one person they are most afraid of. Bill and I have beaten them before, and we will again."

But considering that Democrats vehemently oppose the war, want change, and are sick of divisiveness, it would actually be odd for them to choose somebody who voted for the war, who is the most polarizing figure in politics, and who has already occupied the White House for eight years, over a fresh face who opposed the war all along.

Hillary has dispatched Bill to make the case that the media has exaggerated the differences between her and Obama on Iraq, arguing that since Obama joined the U.S. Senate, their voting records are practically identical. But the bottom line is that she voted to authorize the war (for which she still hasn't apologized) and in 2002 Obama called it a "dumb war."

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Foreign Policy, Education, Health Care, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Business, Environment, Global Warming, Law, Military, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Conservatism, Energy, Medicare