I was musing about this over lunch, and I hope it's a helpful observation.
When we talk about policies and appointments and pronouncements and so forth, we're not so much critiquing or supporting Obama in particular as we are projecting ongoing disagreements amongst ourselves onto our President-Elect.
To put it simply, while Obama has been in Washington for nearly four years and running for president for nearly two years, his movement, his campaign, has been to get people excited, energetic, believing they can participate in the system. It hasn't really been about resolving the places where our values clash.
That complemented the demographic and economic changes in our society quite well. For the second election cycle in a row, we elected more and better Democrats.
But also for the second election cycle in a row, our success has helped smooth over the fact that our cooperation is based as much on opposition to the GOP as a common belief in what should happen. In the big picture, we're all basically all on the same team; I believe that the bulk of Americans, in fact, share a pretty narrow view of how this country should move forward. We are at once more heterogenous demographically yet less divided in our public policy preferences than perhaps any other developed nation in the world.
But when we get to specifics, at some point, we have to resolve clashing values. I don't think this is unhealthy. I don't think it's showing disrespect or lack of support for our leaders. It's a necessary process to do stuff. It's what compromise is. There are specific policy areas that Senator Obama and candidate Obama could sidestep or be vague about, but at some point, decisions have to be made, and naturally, there are multiple viewpoints (and I would stress multiple, not two).
This is the cost of running a big tent campaign. When we don't try to resolve these questions in the campaign, we have to resolve them in the transition. What we don't resolve in the transition, we'll be discussing during the presidency.
So I thought I'd make a list of the core stuff we're really contesting, the areas where our values have some clash, because support for Obama isn't one of them. We're all Obama supporters. Please add more in the comments. My intent here is to raise self-awareness about areas where there are disagreements, not to have some fantasy about resolving all this stuff in one post.
Afghanistan/Pakistan
Iraq
Overall military spending
Israel/Palestine
Corporate welfare/bailouts
Corporate and governmental lawbreaking
Health insurance
Continuity vs. fresh blood
Public financing of campaigns
The drug war/prison system
Executive powers
These are areas where we have core differences and where, quite frankly, Obama has given limited or mixed guidance. And I would stress that these are not simply left/right issues. It's not that there's a far left idealistic group vs a center-left pragmatic group. Different people have different opinions. Sometimes 'leftists' and 'centrists' agree against the 'rightists', but sometimes 'leftists' and 'rightists' agree against the 'centrists'. And sometimes there are notable differences between what I would define as a centrist and what somebody like our President-Elect's new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel would define as a centrist. There's more than a little overlap between the ACLU and the Libertarian Party, the Drug Policy Alliance and the CATO Institute. My opinions get mistaken for left, right, and center depending on what the opinion is. I don't think I would be especially unique in that observation.
When we don't sort out the details, when we don't have specific reasons for why we like policy a or why policy b is bad, things get muddled. I value clarity and consistency very highly. The drug war is a great example. My core opinion is at once Libertarian, Capitalist, and social justice Leftist. I oppose the Christian rightists and the Liberal regulators, but obviously there are a lot of Americans that believe drug related activity should be criminalized. What I think is most important is that, whatever we collectively decide to do, we treat all drug users the same.
And that's really my request. Reasons for supporting or rejecting a position need to be clearly articulated and defended. They need to be based upon universally applicable principles and publicly available information. Otherwise, we end up with wars of choice instead of wars of necessity, we end up with some criminals suffering inhumane imprisonment while others aren't even prosecuted. I believe that's how you get everybody to buy in, through transparency not just of the final course of action, but of the reasoning behind the action.