On October 15, 2007, Chalmers Johnson gave an interview to an Australian radio station to talk about his new book: Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. During the interview, Johnson endorsed Barack Obama for President, though without any particular confidence that Obama can alter our imperial road to disgrace and bankruptcy.
No transcript is available on the internet, but I, a good and loyal Kossack, have transcribed the relevant section (at 27:45 through 29:00 of the interview).
Chalmers Johnson: There are two powerful institutions on the south bank of the Potamac River in Washington. One is the pentagon and the other is the CIA, running sixteen secret intelligence organizations that are entirely in the hands of the president and it is almost impossible to imagine that any president of either party could effectively take them on and start to dismantle them, return them to their original purposes, bring them under democratic oversight.
Interviewer: Can you imagine any of the hypothetical or putative presidents who are running around your country at the moment tackling the issue, even trying to tackle it?
Chalmers Johnson: No, that is the problem. I will probably myself personally, its not relevant or not (sic), but I probably will vote for Mr. Obama but not because I think he particularly can do anything, its simply that I have some friends at Yale Law School who happen to know him personally who say that he is extremely intelligent and I say that is about all we can ask for any longer.
Interviewer: That is always a bit of a help, isn't it?
Chalmers Johson: Yes, well, I don't see that we can get him to promise anything more than he can possibly hope to do.
I encourage everybody who hasn't to read any or all of the books of Chalmers Johnson's brilliant and elegant trilogy about our military-industrial-petroleum complex, our vast empire of overseas bases, and our dismal record of bloody and secret interventions all over the world.
For myself, Chalmers Johnson is such an admirable figure, that even this offhand endorsement is enough to make me waver in my support for Edwards (who did, after all, co-sponsor the Iraq war resolution).