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MY HOUSE DIVIDED - March 24, 2008

(Editorial) I have been told recently that publishing editorials, especially on some divisive issues, is not always the smartest move. It’s hard not to agree with that considering that my last editorial about Kosovo’s independence produced some mixed feedback. Some emails we received were complimentary, some deeply criticizing and a few very over-enthusiastic.

The reason I decided to step in again and draft another editorial is because of the continuing race for Democratic presidential nomination, which has deeply divided my house and seriously endangered my marriage. Well, my wife strongly supports Hillary Clinton, while I have recently become a backer of Obama’s candidacy. The disagreement got so far that my wife already pledged that she is moving out of the U.S. if Obama becomes the president, what was met by my counter-pledge that I am going back to Europe if Hillary wins.

However please don’t get it confused that I am a strict Democratic Party supporter (I am not such an audacious guy). As a matter of fact, I used to be a silent fan of Mike Huckabee, however once he dropped out my sympathies went to Barack Obama (as he is the last one remaining in the race, who displays some preacher’s qualities, although of a different sort).

REPUBLICAN HOPEFUL

So originally, Mike Huckabee was my presidential pick. My wife can attest here that I became his supporter actually in the middle of last year when nobody was giving him any chances of running a meaningful campaign. What I liked about Huckabee was his devotion to religious values and his conviction that morality may, and should, play important role in politics. It is not an easy thing to be a religious Republican in America, especially when somebody asks you a question how does your support for death penalty relates to your opposition to abortion (as it is always contradictory to be pro-life when abortion is concerned and against-life when death penalty is discussed). I personally am against death penalty, the same way I am against abortion, so I was naturally curious how Huckabee would answer this questions. However, when confronted with it during one of the early Republican debates, he simply said that whenever he was dealing as a governor of Arkansas with death penalty cases and requests for clemency, he always devoted every time he could to investigate all cases properly and look for any exonerating circumstances which may justify pardoning. As a matter of fact, from all the Republican candidates, he was the one who granted the highest number of pardons (what actually Mitt Romney tried to use against him as an example of Huckabee being soft on crime).

What I also liked about Huckabee, were his views about approach to homosexualism. Many conservative politicians (especially in my country) tend to confuse adherence and promotion of family values with homophobia, which leads to prejudice to all people who are in some way different than the rest of us. Huckabee said that he does not support homosexual marriages (neither do I), although if gay and lesbian communities wanted to vote for him he had nothing against it because as a President he would not do anything to diminish their civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution (I would give the same kind of an answer).

Another thing which convinced me that he was an interesting candidate, were his views on immigration issues. He supported a solution granting children of illegal immigrants a possibility to attend public schools in Arkansas. It’s a visionary and very humane approach in my opinion. It is visionary because Hispanic population is being rapidly increased in the U.S. by two factors: unprecedented number of illegal immigration (mainly from Mexico) and a higher birth rate of Latinos in comparison to white and black populations. Government may build a fence at the U.S.-Mexico border and hope that nobody will jump over or dig under it, but the higher Hispanic fertility rate still remains a factor of fast demographic changes in America, which weaken assimilation processes. Therefore some more comprehensive approach to illegal immigration is needed - not only the one, which will reduce it but also such a one, which will improve assimilation of new immigrants and make American “melting pot” work again. Certainly a way to do it is to open public education to children of illegal immigrants. It has also one more advantage, as the research shows that there is a correlation between higher level of education and lower fertility rate. In other words, better educated people tend to have less children (even in Muslim populations in the Middle East) than people without education.

Additionally, Huckabee has this sense of humor, rather rare for a top spot politician, which you cannot deny. When asked if he would support NASA’s program to colonize the Moon, he replied yes and that the first person he would send to Mars would be Hillary Clinton.

Huckabee was a real and compelling candidate for me; he had a message to the voters, which he was conveying in a convincing manner. However soon it became clear that he is not yet ready for the presidential seat. Particularly, he appeared very weak on economic issues and on foreign policy. His “fair tax” proposal seemed populist and utopian (even to me). Wall Street never supported Huckabee’s economic vision and until the last days in the race he had trouble raising some significant amount of money to continue campaigning.

As far as foreign policy/national security issues were concerned, Huckabee not only had no experience to offer, but also no relevant advisers circle. It was an enormous mistake and soon Huckabee was making public comments, which showed his lack of knowledge in international relations (unforgivable for a presidential candidate). He should have followed Obama’s example over here, who also lacking experience and thorough understanding, at least surrounded himself by a group of first tier foreign policy advisers, what so far prevented him from making any damaging comments.

Another thing, which Huckabee got wrong was his description of America’s war on terror, which he saw as a fight against “Islamo-fascism”. Firstly, it was inappropriate and misleading to connect Islam with fascism, because those conceptions simply do not go together and have nothing in common. It was also disrespectful to call it like that. Can you imagine how outrageous it would be to speak of “Christiano-fascism”? The misnomer of “Islamo-fascism”, was putting the war on terror in the context of a clash of civilizations/religions, what is a concept, which should not be promoted by any politician.

Another Huckabee’s flaw, was his approach to international law. I was amazed to hear him saying that any judge in the United States, who invokes international law as a basis of a Court’s ruling should be impeached (because America has its own laws). Such a comment only further revealed his lack of understanding of global issues and was a very poor argument. One may right away counter it by saying that judges in Courts in China should be impeached as well if they invoke international intellectual property treaties, which lack of adherence to costs American companies to lose billions of dollars in intellectual property infringements every year. Because if Americans do not have to abide by international law, why should Chinese?

Overall, Huckabee’s example proved that it is not enough to be a great social conservative to become the president. Many more things are needed to complete the picture. It was good, however, that he ran in this race, which exposed his weaknesses. He now needs to work hard to eliminate them if he wants to win Republican nomination in 4 or 8 years. He definitely needs to boost his economic and foreign policy credentials, which are poor as of present. However, what he already possesses is a strong moral backbone (great value in politics), which predestines him to become a good leader in the future. Because as it was recently proved by Spitzer’s scandal, it is much easier to acquire great professional credentials than deep personal morality, which can properly guide you through your public service.

DEMOCRATIC RACE

So, once Huck was out, I moved to support Barack Obama. To be honest, I never read his books, never heard of him much and never paid to him much attention either. I did, however, thoroughly study foreign policy of former President Clinton, of which I became critical (especially of his first term), and came to the conclusion that it would not be a good idea if the same team came back to the White House. Moreover, Obama has been supported by Samantha Power, a brand new intellectual leader in foreign policy issues, who impressed me a lot in her Pulitzer Prize winning book on genocide (too bad she was recently forced to resign from Obama’s campaign after her “monster” remark - nevertheless it is pretty much obvious to me that she will be back, should Obama win the November election).

The first time I discussed Obama’s presidential prospects with anybody, was sometime in the middle of last year when we were interviewing Mo Sacirbey (whose opinion about former Clinton Administration is much more favorable than mine). When I told Mo that the next U.S. president will be Hillary Clinton (she was leading Obama by 20% around that time), he remained skeptical and replied that if the voters learn how to properly pronounce Barack Obama’s name and accept that his middle name is Hussein, he may have some good chances of winning as well. I thought Mo was wishful-thinking (although it proved he wasn’t).

Obama is a charismatic politician and that’s always a statistical rarity in politics. He is young, inexperienced but enthusiastic. My wife and I at least agree that he most probably would not make a great president in terms of domestic policy issues and that Hillary Clinton would do better. However, my main focus has not been on domestic politics but rather on foreign policy issues, which are pertinent not only for America’s future but for the whole world. In my opinion, Obama would do better in this field than Hillary Clinton.

He has been the only presidential candidate who mentions a word “genocide” in his public speeches (starting since his victory speech after Iowa caucuses). He recently moved even further by pledging America’s leadership (what does not necessarily mean committing troops) in solving Darfur crisis. I have not yet heard McCain or Clinton making similar pledges. Actually it would be hard for Hillary Clinton to make such kind of a pledge because it would right away brought into public light her indifference and inaction during the time of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia. As Samantha Power describes it in her book, Hillary Clinton never came to fully comprehend the complexity of Bosnian crisis in the 90's and claimed it was a part of ethnical hatred and racial killings going on in the Balkans for ages.

OBAMA’S FLAWS

There is an advantage of being inexperienced the way Obama is because nobody can accuse you of your past wrongdoings and flaws (it is better to have no record than to have a bad one). Nevertheless, Obama’s image still can be seriously damaged by some other issues.

This week Bill Clinton made a remark in which he indirectly questioned Obama’s patriotism. I have been watching CNN and FOX where pundits were wondering what actually Clinton meant by saying that a race between McCain and his wife would be a one between two candidates, who love their country. Well, the implication for me was pretty simple. Are you ready America for the president, who has a dual citizenship? If one can question Obama’s patriotism it can be done only through that. Obama is a son of a first generation immigrant, what means he has both citizenships: American and Kenyan. My daughter was born in the U.S., my wife is American, I am Polish; getting an American passport for my daughter would take maybe 4 weeks, getting her a Polish passport would take maybe 2 months. There never was a president in the U.S. history, who had a dual citizenship and that would be a really big change in perception of American politics.

Another thing, which Obama is weak on, in my opinion, is his early opposition to war in Iraq. He made it a virtue but it can be quickly reversed by McCain in general election. Simply put, at the time the war was started there were reliable reports by CIA and intelligence agencies from other countries that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destructions and was a real danger to American interests in the region and the interests of its allies. Can you be against the war in such circumstances, especially knowing that all diplomatic means, including actions at the United Nations, were already exhausted by both Clinton and Bush Administrations? Can you decide as a commander-in-chief not to defend America’s national interests if they are clearly endangered? Obama was lucky that it turned out that those intelligence reports were inaccurate, but if the weapons of mass destructions were found in Iraq he would have no prospects of becoming a reliable presidential contender. He was also helped by a change of Bush’s strategic goals in Iraq, which now are promotion of democracy in the Middle East and adherence to the theory of pre-emptive war (what makes it easier for its opponents to argue against accuracy of strategic judgment of current Administration). Another contradictory thing connected to Obama’s early opposition to war in Iraq are his present remarks that he wants to step up to end genocide in the world. Well, Saddam Hussein murdered tens of thousands of Kurds in Northern Iraq, what amounted to genocide, but Obama was against U.S. troops ousting him, arresting and prosecuting for mass killings of innocent people. Clearly, Obama’s views are inconsistent in this context and I cannot see him winning a debate with McCain about strategic implications of the Iraqi war.

Obama, however, can do pretty well in a debate about national security issues and broadly understood war on terror. He has a clear advantage over McCain and Clinton, which is that he is a dark-skinned and has some Muslim background from his early childhood. It would be a lot harder for the terrorists to ideologically attack America, if its president had some personal history and understanding for Muslims, which come from his own heritage. The war on terror has been too much focused on sending tanks and bullets to fight Islamic extremist ideologies. Ideologies have to be confronted at a different level, therefore Obama’s Muslim background could be very helpful in that. He could advance American interests in the Middle East a lot easier and successfully mediate in Israel-Palestine conflict.

FEMALE PRESIDENT

I don’t believe that Hillary will become the next president, although her candidacy has shown that the country is ready for a female commander-in-chief (what is a big progress in nation’s mentality). She will most probably lose, but the outcome will be positive. Her candidacy makes a big opening for the next female presidential contender. So far there are three meaningful female presidential hopefuls on the horizon. First one is Nancy Pelosi (she has been working hard to boost her foreign policy/national security credentials by paying a controversial visit to Syria and recently going to India to support Tibet’s Dalai Lama). Second one and the most experienced is Condoleeza Rice, however she has been repeatedly claiming that she sees herself as an expert, not a politician, and is never going to run for an elected office (she even rejected possibility of becoming a vice-president). The third one is Chelsea Clinton, who would have pretty good chances of winning in some distant future if Hillary loses this presidential race.

FACTOR OF CHANGE

There is a conclusion from Clinton-Obama fight for the Democratic nomination, which all future prospective candidates should take into account. One simply cannot be 60 years of age and convincingly claim that she/he is a factor of change (hoping to attract young and independent voters), when confronted by a charismatic 46 year old rival. Hillary Clinton tried to establish herself as a factor of change by pointing out that she is the first woman in America’s history who has serious chances of becoming the president. Nevertheless, the voters came to understand it not as a real change but rather inevitability of American politics that sooner or later a female will become the commander-in-chief. Therefore the term “change” in this campaign is not defined in the context of candidate’s gender.

Sebastian Aulich

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Author of the article holds Master of Laws degree in EU and Polish law from Lazarski School of Commerce and Law in Warsaw, Poland.

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The Countinuing Democratic Race - March 10, 2008

Foreman vs. Ali 2 - February 15, 2008

Super Tuesday Truth - February 8, 2008

Into the Stretch: Landscape before Feb. 5 - February 2, 2008

Turnaround! - The New Hampshire Primary Results - January 10, 2008

Out of the Gate: Obama makes history - January 5, 2008