Why I’m going to vote for Obama (and deviate from a lifetime of Republican voting)

McCain, if he continues to be as inconsistent as he has hitherto been, might turn around once in the White House, stop his on-again-off-again fetish with being the lap dog of the ultraconservative GOP money base, and do some good things. Clinton, if elected, might become reliable, honest, noncorrupt, and for some reason uninfluenced by her hefty campaign contributions from pharmaceutical and oil companies. However, neither of them has expressed any intention of working to fundamentally reverse the anti-constitutional, antidemocratic policies that our current administration has turned into the executive office’s status quo.

Bush’s (and his lackeys’) use of signing statements, the State Secrets privilege, the Justice Department, and other less obvious loopholes and tactics has begun to turn this nation into something much less than the republic our forebears signed up for, over 200 years ago. Shoot, less than the one we thought we lived in, even 20 years ago. Almost anything can be done by government agents citing “terrorism” as the reason, the police have sweeping powers and near impunity to implement any “anti-terrorist” actions (which are beginning to look like warm-ups for martial law), and nearly every government-related agency seems to be turning into police, whether they like it or not. We flout the very international war conventions we pushed so hard for after WWII. The President, at his discretion, has taken disturbing precedents going back to the 1960s to a new level, essentially claiming the right to unilaterally declare war. He ignores his constitutional limitations and keeps questionably legal actions from public scrutiny while citing privileges that no president before him has used to this extent. Notably, a congress full of Democrats seems too cowed to call him on most of these things, so he keeps doing them.

As a side note, perhaps you can understand why I have little hope left that we will see the end of 2008 without another unjustified war of aggression in the Middle East.

Barack Obama has gone farther than the other candidates in expounding a clear intention to adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the constitution reverse these trends, and bringing the real power of the Executive Branch back down to where it was intended to be, under our constitution. My hope is tempered, as every single candidate, including Barack, has reserved the right to use signing statements in at least some situations. On the other hand, Barack, if elected, will be less beholden to special interests for his election, and have (arguably) a stronger record of keeping campaign promises, than any president in at least a generation.

I firmly believe that the consequences of letting the executive branch hold onto the power that the Bush administration has grabbed will be far greater and have worse long-term consequences than any decision (pro or con) on the other substantive issues that seem to be driving the elections. More than immigration. More than civil rights. More than abortion. More than  economic policy. More than military policy. More than foreign policy. This is partly because the question of executive power can, conceivably, subsume all of those other issues.

Of course, Obama is a politician, and he’s only human. I can only hope that (a) he gets elected, and (b) he does what he says he will do. This is still a great nation, despite our apparent economic comeuppance. However, unless we fix the trend toward allowing our presidents to dominate through military/political fiat, our children might not get to live in this beautiful nation. They will live in a nightmare, and they will simply accept it as their dismal reality.