Near Perfect President?

In the last Presidential election my initial choice was for James Edwards because he ran on a blunt and direct agenda of wealth redistribution. I think the US system is an excellent system, that works well for the vast majority but needs to be tinkered with and adjusted from time to time. The way the US got out of kilter in the last two decades is that while the country continued to get wealthier at the usual fast pace this wealth was concentrated with the wealthy. What was called the Middle Class, and now basically consists of everyone with a career who isn't rich, for the first time in US history got poorer while the country got richer. The long term health of the country depends on an educated, skilled, productive and solvent Middle Class, so I was in favor of the person who had identified this problem and said they were going to fix it.

One of the problems with the US electoral system is that each party picks their candidates through an extended "primary" process that goes state by state. I lived in Oregon, and Oregon has its primary election near the end of the process. By that point James Edwards had dropped out of the running. It turned out that Mr. Edwards had been sleeping with someone who wasn't his wife, and for some reason large portions of the American electorate will not vote for someone who sleeps with people who are not their spouse (although what this has to do with the ability to run a country I do not understand) and so he would have lost anyway.

So what we had was a choice of Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama, and John McCain, and I chose Barak Obama because he seemed to correctly identify problems and said he was hopeful that the US could fix them. This was an emotional choice rather than a reasoned choice, I thought Hilary Clinton would be more skilled at producing useful (if compromised) legislation, but since I know that in a first-past-the-post system your vote only matters if the result is within one vote, I went with my heart so I could feel good about myself.

Obama got elected and I have been enormously impressed with what he has done. What he has done mostly is avert catastrophe, the result being that while the country is not in a good place, everyone knows that it will recover while a year ago many predicted absolute disaster. The USA is respected around the world again, the rule of law has returned, and there are plans to address basic problems such as health care, education, banking and global warming. At the end of Obama's first four year term we can reasonably expect a growing economy and a country at peace when he started off with two wars and an economy on the verge of depression. For me that's good work.

What really has convinced me that Obama is as close to a perfect President as I will ever see is the following transcript in which he answers questions from Republicans in a setting entirely made up of Republicans. It isn't his obvious intelligence, knowledge or communication skills that got me, it is the following unprepared quote, "I am not an ideologue. I'm not. It doesn't make sense if somebody could tell me you could do this cheaper and get increased results that I wouldn't say, great. The problem is, I couldn't find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made."

This approach is repeated throughout the whole transcript, and I want to summarize it here. Obama identifies goals that Americans can all share, such as reducing the cost of health insurance, creating more jobs, improving education, and so on. Then he asks for ideas on how to achieve those ends and he doesn't care where those ideas come from or what philosophy those ideas derive from. The next stage (the most important bit for me) is that these ideas are then taken to experts in the subject area to find out if they will work. If they work then they are implemented.

This is the exact system of government that I have been wanting all along. A results-based government that uses ideas that will work rather than ideas based on one person's ideology. If socialized medicine produces better results, then use socialized medicine. If pseudo-fascist corporate policies produce the best growth rates for the economy then run the economy like fascists. If free hardcore porn reduces the number of rapes ensure hardcore porn is available for free to all citizens.

Simply within the economic plans of the government you can see this happening because the economy has stabilized and is heading in the right direction and the ideologues at both ends of the spectrum are wildly furious with elements of what has happened. Bail outs for big banks are seen as fascism from the left, and bank take-overs are seen as socialism from the right. The end result has been a stabilized banking system, that is paying back the money it has been lent because of free market incentives, which is then being channeled towards community banks and middle class mortgages. Socialism, fascism, payouts to fat cats, government takeovers, just as long as it works.

Now, the most interesting thing for me is that now there is a President in office with whom I pretty much agree on everything. This then gives me the opportunity to find out whether what I have believed politically is right or not. This so rarely happens that I must view it as a wonderful opportunity to scientifically evaluate my own beliefs. If I was a pure progressive, left-leaning, borderline socialist like my friend Dade I would never get to find out if I was right or not unless I moved to Denmark. If I was a Christian, "moral majority" believer like my friend Dave I would have just endured the evidence that my brand of politics is an absolute failure through the eight years of Bush. So, in about two and a half years I can check to see whether this brand of politics not only appeals to me, but also works, or whether the cynicism of politicians and the ignorance of experts renders this style a failure.

I am hopeful.