Why I’m voting for Obama

Complex issues are complex because they embody many disparate conflicting goals, issues and values, and it is not clear how to balance those conflicting goals and values. In making decisions about really complex issues the trick is to figure out which of the many conflicting values or issues is most important; which is so important that it overrides all other issues.

Choosing a presidential candidate to vote for in this election is a complex decision (at least for those of us who don’t just automatically vote the party label). Both candidates are personally appealing. Both are nice guys. While there are differences between them in style, in truth there probably isn’t going to be a lot of difference in how they govern, because (rhetoric aside) there really isn’t that much difference these days between the two political parties in America. Both have to compete for the same voters, both have to satisfy the same big-money corporate interests (big corporate interests hedge their bets and give to both parties), both have to respond to the same public concerns and react to the same swings in public sentiment.

And although we often ascribe a lot of power to the President, in fact the presidency is normally too constrained by Congressional pressures, the inertia of the vast established federal bureaucracy, budget realities, public expectations, and world events to make radical or sudden changes. Whether Obama or McCain is the next president, the federal deficit will no doubt continue to climb, Iraq and the Middle East in general will continue to be a problem, oil prices will continue to escalate, politicians will continue to be unable to bite the bullet and do the necessary painful things to combat global warming or solve the Medicare and Social Security problems, and the economy will continue to have problems. These are all long-term structural problems, and no president is likely to make much of a dent in them in one or two terms.

But there is one place where the president has a good deal of long-term power – the appointment of Supreme Court justices. It is true that these appointments have to get past Congress, and it is also true that Supreme Court justices, once appointed for life, sometimes turn out to have different judicial views than expected. Nonetheless, the liberal-conservative balance of the Supreme Court has significant long-term implications for the nation, and a president can (if enough openings occur during his/her) term) affect that.

In my mind, one of the most important issues in our nation today is the erosion of civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. We now hold suspects (at Guantanamo) indefinitely without trial. The government has sanctioned torture of some prisoners. Congress has just meekly passed the Electronic Surveillance Act that allows the government to continue to wiretap our phones and monitor our email without a warrant (and both Obama and McCain supported that bill). For several years now the FBI has been eliciting private information about citizens in secret (the law forbids those asked to reveal that a request has been made). These are all trappings of a police state.

I am reminded of words Benjamin Franklin wrote: “Those who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.

I’m also reminded of the text of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Now it’s to be expected that governments, and especially the police forces of governments, will always push for more powers and less civil liberties, because it makes their jobs easier. The counterbalance to that pressure in our society are the courts, and in the end the Supreme Court. So the makeup of the Supreme Court is crucially important to the long-term preservation of our civil liberties. And at the moment, the Supreme Court is finely balanced between conservatives and liberals, which is why recent important cases have often been decided by 5-4 splits.

So I’m voting for Obama, not because I expect him to govern better than McCain, but because it is more likely he will, if given a chance, appoint a liberal to any Supreme Court openings that occur during his terms, and that makes it more likely (not certain, but at least more likely) that the Supreme Court will in future cases come down on the side of protecting our civil liberties. And, on balance, I think that protection of (even restoration of) American civil liberties is an issue that trumps all other issues in this election, and matters more for the long-term health of this nation than any other issue currently being debated in the election.

The really critical issues in this election

Iraq and the economy have been the dominant issues thus far in this election. And given the public’s normal short-term focus, that is not surprising. But are they really the most important issues?

Here are some of my candidates for far more important issues that ought to be hotly debated in this election, but of course won’t be:

1. Global warming. Risk management processes generally rate risks as a function of both likelihood and consequences. Things that are highly likely and would have very large consequences go to the top of the list. Global warming certainly fits that model. By now the evidence is overwhelming that the climate is changing worldwide at an unusually rapid pace, and the consequences include potentially displacing hundreds of millions of people and starving billions. Thus far the reaction to this threat from politicians worldwide, as well as from American politicians, have ranged from outright denial to ineffective promises. One might think that would be an important enough issue for serious debate.
   

2. Civil infrastructure. Most of the infrastructure in this nation has been neglected for almost half a century, and shows it. It’s not just the highways and bridges that have been neglected. City water and sewer systems, the national electric grid, railroads, port facilities, oil refineries and power plants have all been neglected, used well beyond their planned lifetimes, patched up at minimal expense, and generally allowed to gracefully decay. The reasons for this are many and complex, but the issue is critical, and deserves attention.
   

3. Civil liberties. The Bush administration, in the name of 9/11 and global terrorism, and with the meek cooperation of Congress, has mounted the most recent assault on our civil liberties, with laws that allow the government, among other things, to eavesdrop without a court order on telephone calls and email, monitor the books we check out of the library, and hold suspects indefinitely without trial - rules we have generally associated with police states. But in fact this erosion of civil liberties has been going on for decades. One might think this would be an issue of serious concern.
   

4. Social security and Medicare. Both of these programs, as currently constituted, will bankrupt the government within the next few decades. That is, as currently constituted they will eventually require more money each year than the entire federal budget. One might think that would be a serious enough issue for discussion in this election.
   

5. Public education. Despite spending more money per pupil than almost any other nation on earth, our public school students rank almost at the bottom in achievement among developed countries. And it is generally accepted that the current “No Child Left Behind” initiative has been an unmitigated disaster. For a nation whose economic well-being depends on a highly-educated workforce, I should think this ought to be a hot topic for debate and discussion in this election.

Will any of these topics get serious discussion and debate during this election?

The dangers of Balkanization

We just visited Montréal Canada for the first time. It’s a lovely city, but as American visitors we were certainly struck by the strong, even militant, emphasis on preserving French as the dominant language. And one certainly gets the sense that many in Montréal consider themselves citizens of Quebec province first, and citizens of Canada only secondarily, if that.

Now I can understand how this state of affairs came to be, as a residue of the early colonial battles between the French and the British for control of the new continent. And I can understand how the small remaining enclave of French-speaking descendents, surrounded by English-speaking provinces, want to keep alive their French heritage and language, and how this fosters the long-running separatist movement. Nonetheless, this Balkanization has caused Canada continuing problems and unease, and we ought to learn from their experience.

There are other similar examples around the world; the Basques in Spain and the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey come to mind. And, of courser, the Balkans stand as the prime example, even providing the name for the effect. In each case, the preservation within a state of a minority with their own separate culture and language and national identity sows the seeds of continual revolution and strife.

America’s great success has been the ability to absorb immigrants from all over the world into a vast continent, yet weld them all within a generation or two into a coherent single nation with a common language, common values, and a single, common national identity.

But in recent decades there has been a liberal movement to allow the Hispanic community to have dual-language schools, and to accept Spanish as a co-equal official language. Well-meaning as this seems, we ought to oppose it, because it leads eventually to just the sort of Balkanization that has caused Canada such troubles.

Certainly immigrants ought to be encouraged to remember and honor their heritage, and even to maintain their language as a second language. America always has and continues to benefit enormously from the infusion of new ideas, customs, cuisines, languages, attitudes and the like that new immigrants bring to us.

But all efforts ought to be bent toward assuring that all immigrants to this nation come to see themselves first and foremost as Americans, fluent in the common language and customs and values of the mainstream American culture. To allow any substantial minority within America to maintain a national identity separate from America – to continue generation after generation to see themselves not as Americans but displaced nationals from their country of origin – is to sow the seeds of revolution and separatism, and we ought to avoid that like the plague.

Recommended: The Can't-Do Society

I recommend the recent short article The Can't-Do Society by Victor Davis Hanson. Faced with a variety of critical national problems, from crumbling infrastructure to rising oil prices to ballooning national debt to global warming consequences, our society and our leaders seem paralyzed. We look uncomfortably like many previous empires - French, British, Dutch, etc - at their peak just before they collapsed.

Helm’s Law – name it and it will go away

Some 40 years ago I had a colleague named Helm (can’t recall his first name) who only half in jest proposed Helm’s Law: name it and it will go away. For example:

Mother: My child doesn’t speak. What is wrong with him?

Doctor: He is autistic.

Mother: Oh, now I understand.

The physicist Richard Feynman recalls his father (also a brilliant man, though only a tailor) teaching him that knowing the name of a bird tells you absolutely nothing about the bird itself. It only tells you the word that people in a given culture apply to animals that look like that.

I was once hospitalized for an intestinal problem that was eventually diagnosed as “idiopathic ileitis”, a fancy Latin name that essentially means “something unknown wrong with the digestive system”. But it had a name, so now it was understood…..

Helm’s Law seems to be applied in some fields more than in others. Psychotherapy is a rich source of examples, as is economics. Political science also provides some good examples. My own observation is that Helm’s Law seems to get used more in fields where fundamental understanding is in short supply.