Another conservative endorsement for Barack Obama, this time from Francis Fukuyama writing at The American Conservative:
I’m voting for Barack Obama this November for a very simple reason. It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush. It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined the standing of the United States throughout the world in his first term. But in the waning days of his administration, he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don’t work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale.
McCain’s appeal was always that he could think for himself, but as the campaign has progressed, he has seemed simply erratic and hotheaded. His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was highly irresponsible; we have suffered under the current president who entered office without much knowledge of the world and was easily captured by the wrong advisers. McCain’s lurching from Reaganite free- marketer to populist tribune makes one wonder whether he has any underlying principles at all.
America has been living in a dream world for the past few years, losing its basic values of thrift and prudence and living far beyond its means, even as it has lectured the rest of the world to follow its model. At a time when the U.S. government has just nationalized a good part of the banking sector, we need to rethink a lot of the Reaganite verities of the past generation regarding taxes and regulation. Important as they were back in the 1980s and ’90s, they just won’t cut it for the period we are now entering. Obama is much better positioned to reinvent the American model and will certainly present a very different and more positive face of America to the rest of the world.
Francis Fukuyama is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
While numerous Republicans and conservatives have endorsed Obama over McCain, it is hard to think of any prominent Democrats who have endorsed McCain (unless you still consider Joe Lieberman to be a Democrat). (Some other recent endorsements here and here). The future of the Republican Party looks even bleaker. Hopefully they will reexamine where they have gone wrong, but at present it looks more likely that the party will be taken over by people who think Palin would have been a better choice than McCain. The social conservatives appear to be the dominant force remaining in the Republican Party, with the Democratic Party turning into a big tent representing the views of both Democrats and former Republicans excluding the social conservatives of the far right.
Kudos to Professor Fukuyama for his endorsement. He was one of the first Neo-cons to come out against the Iraq war (which he did back in 2005) and now he has the courage to actually publish what most conservative intellectuals are thinking anyway. These people aren’t stupid, they know that their ideas were hijacked by the Bush administration and distorted through the incompetence of the White House. It is my hope that President Obama doesn’t entirely disregard the Neo-Con community and consults them on some topics in foreign security policy.
This may make me unpopular but…
The fact that Fukuyama endorses Obama does nothing but scare me. This is an original signer of PNAC, whose primary mission was global domination through military strength and “education” (a little too Pot Pol for my tastes), and that this person could come out against the war, when that was specifically the first go round in PNAC’s mind (which, btw, should you want to see who some of the other PNACers are, click here…it’s a Who’s Who of people in our current government…no wonder PNAC itself folded its site and offices; they became our government!) is a useless declaration.
I am discomfitted by ANY PNACer endorsing Obama.