I am having one of those moments of “run induced clarity” this morning. After Mitt Romney stepped out of the race for President in early February, I have been often been asked why I posted the Barack Obama for president button on FB. “This does not make any sense,” I am often told by Republican and Democratic leaning friends alike.

After my run this morning, I decided to write a post explaining the thinking in the hopes that other similar leaning conservatives will vote for Obama.

So…how does a Reagan, Diefenbaker, Sir. John A. MacDonald, Bush I, Schwarzenegger, Thatcher, and Harper loving conservative come to decide to vote for Obama?

It may help to understand that I am fundamentally a Jeffersonian fiscal conservative and social libertarian. My favorite quote from him being:
“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

Unfortunately, our government (we) for the last 30 years has both broken many legs and picked our pockets with abandon.

A fiscal conservative perspective:
We are broke and we have no one to blame but ourselves. As baby boomers and generation Xers we have shamelessly indulged ourselves by spending more money than we have earned. Collectively, this group, born between 1940 and 1975, should be called the “Mañana” generation. Tomorrow we will pay our debts, fix social security, fix the environment, fix dependence on oil, and on it goes….

We let the government spend more than it took in for most of the last 30 years. We want programs, but don’t want to pay for them, don’t want accountability, and don’t want consequences that affect our cushy life. The easy ride….

We have spent more and saved less for over thirty years (most of my adult life). Americans used to save 10-12% of what they earned every year for retirement, medical, and as a buffer on bad times. We now have a negative savings rate and we owe $790B in credit card debt (33% of people are not making payments) and upwards of 25% of us took adjustable rate mortgages that we cannot pay.



The smartest and the brightest financial wizards developed collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that were suppose to manage risk and help home owners, but instead just turned into another get rich quick Ponzie scheme.

We have leveraged everything we can – our credit cards, companies, and homes. A new perception of Americans is starting to sink in for the rest of the world – “Americans are dead beats and cannot pay their debts”. This is a massive problem when we have no savings, owe $11 Trillion in debt and our economy is in the tank.

The governments we have elected have been no better. These two generations have built up our government Debt to just under $11 Trillion dollars. This administration and congress has increased the debt by $5 Trillion dollars in just the last 8 years alone. Wikipedia has enough data to spin your head on this.

Worse yet, we owe about 25% of our debt to other countries. At $11 Trillion and rising, the interest payments leaving the US and going to China, the Middle East, and Russia and a few other countries is now approaching $100 Billion a year.
Don’t ever get me started about the fact that we also decided to set up programs knowing we can’t pay for them!

Huh – so what we are telling our kids is that when they graduate from college that they will owe $110,000 each for services that we have used over the last 30 years. Worse, they will have to pay for our social security and medical needs that we neglected to save for…. Worse yet, they will owe most of this money to other countries that don’t like us and don’t think we are credit worthy….

Every American family should be getting a statement every year that shows them what their share of the national debt is. Maybe then, they will think twice about the “I love my congressman/woman because they do great things for out district, but congress is out of control”. The truth is – Congress is doing exactly what the majority of Americans want.

So why does this make Obama a better candidate than McCain for me? There was a brief moment in the Clinton administration and Newt Gingrich congress that we actually started to live within our means. On balance, I think that Obama financial team (many ex-Clinton advisors) has a better chance of tackling these problems than McCain. Obama will have an even better chance of solving them if there is a Republican congress, but this looks very unlikely. Divided government can be a very good thing for the country.

A social libertarian perspective:
I was a frequent flyer on UA 93 and 9/11 profoundly impacted me. Al-Qaeda is a highly aggressive, nihilist philosophy cloaked in a religious framework that is being propagated the world over. We have no choice, but to cut the cancer out. Unfortunately, we used a sledge hammer instead of a scalpel.

Not to make excuses, but I do give the Bush administration credit for four things. First, they successfully exposed the propagation of nuclear weapons via Pakistan, Libya, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The fact that the nuclear genie was almost out of the bottle had totally escaped the Clinton administration.

Second, the prevention of an additional terrorist attack on American soil. These were two of the very few positive outcomes of the Iraq war.

Third, you can argue results, but Bush’s “No Child left behind” push did focus Americans on the failure of their education system. The desperate need to increase our expectations and accountability made progress, but the US still ranks 18th in the world in education.

And fourth, Bush gets credit for the aggressive funding of AIDS treatments in Africa. AIDs is a plague that the world has yet to really see the threat of. There are 38 million people with AIDS and every year 57,000 more Americans get this deadly disease. This is the same amount of people that died in the Vietnam war. Bush put this massive public health issue back on the priority list globally and should get credit for the funding he pushed for.

Unfortunately, the balance sheet on the Bush presidency is anything but balanced. The failure to protect the American citizen’s privacy, the mishandling of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the totally out of control spending, the lack of a cohesive energy policy, the failure to moderate the housing bubble, the failure to understand the impacts of global warming, and…….and……..

Reflecting on the last 8 years, there was a bunker mentality post 9/11 and the Bush administration was never able to develop a long term view. They had no plan for the occupation of Iraq, no plan for fixing social security and medicare, no plan for energy independence, no plan for fixing the debt, …..just no plan.

So what does this have to do with this election? I believe that Obama does have a thoughtful plan for most of these issues – energy, debt, education, health care, and Iraq. He has also surrounded himself with advisors that are bi-partisan for the most part and have the skills to roll out his plans.

McCain, by contrast, has always been a “by the gut” kind of leader. This similarity to Bush is a scary one. I am not persuaded that he either has the plan or the team to lead the country effectively given the challenges we have in front of us. He bounces from issue to issue changing his ideas depending on the facts of the day.

Lastly, much has been made of the idea of change in this election. For most of my adult life, we have been fighting the battles of the 1960’s: Vietnam protester vs. veteran, black vs. white, abortion rights, gay marriage, Hispanic vs. Black, rich vs. poor, unions vs. business, women vs. men, north vs. south, evangelical vs others, and Republican vs. Democrat. Jefferson would be devastated to see the total lack of true discourse on issues that matter in American politics over the last 30 years. The politics of division are slowly destroying civil society.

Barak Obama is the first candidate for president that brings hope that we can turn the page. Turn the page on all this divisiveness that has tied the country up in knots for 30 years. Maybe we can start to think of ourselves as Americans, drop the labels, and actually fix the problems.

I am mailing my ballot this morning and hopeful that President Obama will guide us to a better place. A place where we pay our way, respect our differences, and appreciate what can make the country good again.