What McCain Defectors See in Obama

[Dan J 277]

Much has been made of the wave of high-profile Republican defections from the McCain campaign. The mass departure has been explained largely in terms of the disaffection of its intellectual wing with the direction of the party. In one quarter, it is explained by the choice of Sarah Palin . In another quarter, the story is that there has been a deep fault line in the 30 year old Republican coalition, for which the Palin choice is but a symptom, or perhaps merely the last straw in a process already well in the making.

There is much to be said for the thesis that the coalition's days were numbered. The coalition of the rich, the mean, and the uninformed has always been unstable and it had begun to unravel before McCain tore at the seams.

The rich and the well-educated classes from one step down on the socioeconomic ladder could tolerate the mean wing of the party as long as the vulgarian hit men like Karl Rove could guarantee the economically beneficial status quo. They could even swallow their pride and be willing to be seen publicly with the know-nothings who deny all evidence of global warming and reject the theory of evolution. While some may well have their own misgivings about matters such as abortion, they generally do not share the moral certitude expressed by some of their allies.

In a way, Bush is the paradigmatic - and tragic - figure of that frayed coalition. He is the embodiment of all three wings. He's part Yalie and part yahoo, and he's always palled around with a bad crowd. In the end, few found much reason to stick by him. Some went for Palin and grudgingly embraced McCain, for now. Some stayed on board with McCain and the vulgarians who serve up the political equivalent of the WWF on cable news every night. Others found that it was time to leave.

There seems to be more at work behind the Republican exodus than the centrifugal forces that have pushed a few prominent conservative opinion leaders away from their party roots.

For one thing, there are just too many of them, and they are a diverse in background, outlook, and experience. It's not just the effete intellectuals who've jumped ship. The growing list includes Republicans who were governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet officials, military leaders, corporate directors, and even some stodgy old newspaper editors. They are serious people, genuinely concerned about the future of the country, and they are not much given to fads and fluff.

In short, the rank and file of defectors are not merely the Republican party irregulars who are, in reality, the party regulars of the much maligned Georgetown cocktail circuit. Nor can this phenomenon be explained as some sort of mass, late-life ideological epiphany.

They could have chosen to sit this one out and pin their hopes on regrouping for the next time around, or they could silently cross party lines and go back to their cocktails (in someplace other than Georgetown). But they did not remain silent, and they did not break their silence simply by pronouncing their verdict based on an assessment of the lesser of two evils.

What is most striking about these high-visibility defections is that that overwhelmingly they come with ringing endorsements. They speak to Obama's skills, abilities, and temperament. Everywhere, except in the occasional tepid endorsement such as the one in the Washington Post, the precipitating factors may be the lead line, but the bulk of these statements is taken up by extraordinary praise for Obama. That cries out for explanation.

The defectors are a mixed lot, but all represent some brand of recognizably conservative thought. Some like Doug Kmiec, Andrew Sullivan, and Ken Adelman are probably conservatives by anyone's definition, while others are cut partly from an older mold. They bear some resemblance to the moderate Republicanism of the Rockefeller era, but the issues of their time are not the same.

Also, there are the venerable Republican names of Goldwater, Buckley, and Eisenhower who have signed on to Obama's cause, and while no single one perhaps meets all litmus tests some true believers might want in a conservative, there is an unmistakable family of conservative ideas represented. These include a commitment to greater fiscal responsibility, a distaste for foreign interventionism, and a principled Burkean resistance to aggressive programs of social experimentation.

My hunch is that many conservatives find qualities in Obama that are reassuringly familiar. Obama is the kind of liberal that Burkean conservatives can love. He calls for change, but he does not advertise "bold" change. Conservatives who find an intellectual affinity with classical conservative thinker, Edmund Burke, prefer the Eisenhower type of leadership. They prefer a steady hand, a willingness to depart from tradition in gradual steps. They find most appealing a person with a predilection for sticking with what works, making modifications incrementally, and not rushing out to place large gambles in times when so much is already at stake.

Obama's health care plan is a good example. That so many people lack health care insurance is a moral and economic blight on the nation. Few people from any point along the ideological spectrum deny that.

Any number of alternatives for reform are imaginable. Obama has said that were we in the position to design a health care system from scratch, a Canadian-style single payer plan would have much merit. But he is clear in acknowledging that we are not in that position.

Instead, Obama's proposal involves building on the federal system of insurance programs. The uninsured or those unsatisfied with their current insurance plan would be able to join existing plans available to federal employees around the country. There is no new bureaucracy to create. There are no fundamentally new policies or procedures to craft from the ground up. There are no new opportunities to be exploited by new market entrants seeking to get in on government-funded largess without established mechanisms for accountability. Moreover, the federal employee system is national in scope. It's ready to be extended to people in Mississippi and Montana alike.

Even more reassuring for some conservatives is the fact that the plan resembles in many respects the ideas put forward by Rep. Jim Cooper , a Tennessee Democrat who is leader of the powerful Blue Dog Democratic coalition.

There is more to this than mere policy affinities with ideas already in principle vetted by center/right forces within both Democratic and Republican parties. Obama recently met with the Blue Dogs and his message was a direct statement of how he intends to govern.

He acknowledged that they have the power to "clear or block" legislation, and that he would seek their partnership from the outset. Instead of trying to govern solely from the left side of the aisle, Obama reassures conservatives by pursuing liberal principle with a deliberateness and cautiousness that most conservatives don't usually associate with the Democratic brand. If Obama becomes president, my guess is that we are in for some big surprises beyond the surprising nature of the campaign he has run.

Madison Powers is Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. His column appears regularly on Wednesday in CQ Politics.

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