Andrew Sullivan Endorses Obama (!)
This is pretty amazing. Sullivan, a conservative, argues that Obama is the right man for the times. He has two primary points:
1. Obama would be, in his words, the best weapon the U.S. could possibly deploy to change the calculus of the "War on Terror":
"Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close."
2. Obama is the only candidate who can transcend another round of Baby Boomer cultural warfare, which would be the inevitable result of a Clinton-Guilani/Romney (though not necessarily McCain) matchup, and in so doing provide a way out of Iraq and a host of other problems:
"The man who opposed the war for the right reasons is for that reason the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it. Clinton is hemmed in by her past and her generation. If she pulls out too quickly, she will fall prey to the usual browbeating from the right—the same theme that has played relentlessly since 1968. If she stays in too long, the antiwar base of her own party, already suspicious of her, will pounce. The Boomer legacy imprisons her—and so it may continue to imprison us. The debate about the war in the next four years needs to be about the practical and difficult choices ahead of us—not about the symbolism or whether it’s a second Vietnam."
As Sullivan goes on to discuss, Obama's generational stance--post-Boomer, that is--enables him to move beyond the divides of religion and race and culture that have been played out in every election since at least 1988 (not to mention 1968 and 1972). The notes on religion jibe with a post I wrote in this space earlier this year: Obama offers a third way, beyond the either/or choice of belief or science, and instead points the way to a "both/and" approach--science is true, and so is faith.
As I have already written to friends, I am on the Obama bandwagon. And after this piece from Sullivan, I am even more committed. Friends, his time has come.
1. Obama would be, in his words, the best weapon the U.S. could possibly deploy to change the calculus of the "War on Terror":
"Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close."
2. Obama is the only candidate who can transcend another round of Baby Boomer cultural warfare, which would be the inevitable result of a Clinton-Guilani/Romney (though not necessarily McCain) matchup, and in so doing provide a way out of Iraq and a host of other problems:
"The man who opposed the war for the right reasons is for that reason the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it. Clinton is hemmed in by her past and her generation. If she pulls out too quickly, she will fall prey to the usual browbeating from the right—the same theme that has played relentlessly since 1968. If she stays in too long, the antiwar base of her own party, already suspicious of her, will pounce. The Boomer legacy imprisons her—and so it may continue to imprison us. The debate about the war in the next four years needs to be about the practical and difficult choices ahead of us—not about the symbolism or whether it’s a second Vietnam."
As Sullivan goes on to discuss, Obama's generational stance--post-Boomer, that is--enables him to move beyond the divides of religion and race and culture that have been played out in every election since at least 1988 (not to mention 1968 and 1972). The notes on religion jibe with a post I wrote in this space earlier this year: Obama offers a third way, beyond the either/or choice of belief or science, and instead points the way to a "both/and" approach--science is true, and so is faith.
As I have already written to friends, I am on the Obama bandwagon. And after this piece from Sullivan, I am even more committed. Friends, his time has come.
posted by Rabbi Josh Feigelson | 6:13 PM
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