Election Series, No. 9
This article continues our online series of election-year commentaries. We welcome your response.
No. 9—October 29, 2008
Guidelines for Voting
by James W. Skillen
By what criteria will you make your decision on Election Day?
Over the past several years, the Center for Public Justice has produced eleven “Guidelines for Government and Citizenship,” which could be useful to you as you prepare to vote on November 4. Take a few minutes to read them. I’ll refer to them here in making a number of comparative comments about presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. These comments also build on my two previous election-series commentaries, “Does Our System Demand Too Much of the President?” (July 4) and “McCain, Obama, and America’s Two Exodus Stories” (October 15).
1. The first Guideline sketches the Center’s view of what a political community (such as the USA) should be. Both presidential candidates stand in the American Liberal tradition—McCain on the conservative side, Obama on the liberal side. Consequently, they do not clearly articulate the characteristic identity and limits of a political community in distinction from other institutions and communities, as we try to do at the Center for Public Justice.
McCain’s emphasis is on the freedom people should have from government, while Obama emphasizes the responsibility of government toward and with citizens. McCain’s stump speeches imply that if there are lower taxes and a strong military, then governing will more or less take care of itself and America will remain the world’s undisputed leader. Obama’s stump speeches imply that the art of government requires hard work in its own right and that leaving social and economic outcomes to the market is not sufficient.
The challenge of reforming healthcare policy illustrates the different views the candidates have of the American republic. Obama wants to devise a healthcare insurance system that will include everyone without requiring that every person must participate. McCain wants to maximize individual choice in the healthcare market even if it means that many will not have access to insurance and sufficient care. As Alan Beattie and Krishna Guha summarize the contrast, “Mr Obama thinks government intervention can overcome market failures; Mr McCain wants to increase competition to make healthcare like other markets” (Financial Times, 10/28/08). McCain’s plan could limit government costs but at the expense of those who cannot win in the healthcare market. Obama’s plan would move toward comprehensive inclusiveness, but thus far he has not shown how his program would limit costs. One might say that McCain doesn’t trust government to limit costs and therefore the political community should be structured as much as possible as a competitive marketplace. Obama, we can surmise, believes that if citizens come to feel that they are part of a more equitable political community, they will be willing to support their senators, representatives, and president in finding a way to limit costs and pay for necessary increases in a more comprehensive system.
2. The Center’s second Guideline outlines the task of government, and here there is a similar contrast between the candidates. Each candidate has proposed particular programs and policies that his administration would carry out, and in some instances, such as immigration reform, Obama and McCain come close to agreeing. But overall, McCain de-emphasizes government in arguing for individual freedom. He seldom emphasizes the importance of government. Obama, on the other hand, highlights government’s responsibility to help build a sustainable and stronger national community.
Obama’s call for change includes changing the way politics is conducted in Washington. He wants government to be more just and to do a better job of actually governing. McCain’s call for change implies thwarting the “tax-and-spend” Democrats and reversing the course of “spend-and-go-deeper-into-debt” Republicans, including President Bush. But while it is not clear whether Obama would be able to overcome the partisan divisions and the dominance of interest-group politics in Washington, it is even less clear what McCain would do with the federal government if he really could keep Congress from spending more money.
Neither candidate has offered much of an assessment of how government failed in the exercise of its financial oversight responsibility, leading to the current economic crisis. Nor has either candidate yet outlined a course of action for financial regulatory reform he would follow after becoming president.
3. The third Guideline for Government and Citizenship summarizes the task of citizenship. This is not something that McCain has given much attention to, with the exception of his fight for campaign-finance reform and for that part of immigration reform that would make it possible for long-term illegal immigrants to become US citizens. He urges Americans to serve their country and most often he means by this defending freedom, supporting low taxes, and being willing to serve in, or support, the military. His aim in running for president is to help restore America to freedom, prosperity, and security, not to heighten the role of citizenship. In McCain’s speeches Americans most often appear as people who enjoy freedom apart from government, who produce and consume goods and services, who go to their children’s after-school activities, and who work hard. All of this is indeed creditworthy, but it says little about the practice of citizenship.
Obama has done more than McCain to rouse voters to action, calling them to civic engagement. Obama gives greater emphasis to America as a community of citizens and not only as a market of buyers and sellers who enjoy the security provided by a strong military. Neither candidate, however, articulates clear distinctions between civic responsibility and the responsibilities people have within families, churches, schools, nonprofit organizations, and businesses.
4. Beginning with its fourth Guideline, the Center takes up particular areas of public policy. In this one, it outlines its approach to welfare policy. Obama wants to continue the kind of welfare reforms that President Clinton inaugurated in 1996, though he has been ambiguous about how government should cooperate with non-government organizations in offering welfare services. On the one hand, he strongly supports the contribution of religious service organizations; on the other hand, he has said that he does not favor allowing religious organizations to hire staff on the basis of their organizations’ religious commitments if they are receiving funding from government. McCain has said very little about promoting or advancing government welfare services, but he has said he supports the right of non-profit organizations to hire on a religious-identification basis.
Neither McCain nor Obama believes that all issues of poverty and joblessness can be addressed by welfare policies. But Obama believes government has an important role to play in this arena, along with its responsibilities in education, job training, and tax policies, to help empower people for work and self-supporting roles in society. McCain believes in the positive fruits of private investment and market freedom to get at unemployment and lack of opportunities.
5. In its Guideline on education policy, the Center calls for major reform of our system to open up choice of all schools to parents on an equal per-student financial basis. And for this to happen, government must play an important role in providing financial and legal support for all students while protecting the independence of schools and families. Moving to genuine pluralism in American schooling will require a major system change.
McCain has been forthright in calling for school choice while Obama has stated his opposition to public funding of students who attend religious and other nongovernment schools even though he supports the Charter-School movement. McCain is on the right track here, though he has not made an adequate case for justice in regard to families, diverse schools, and equal treatment of all citizens. Instead, he implies that the value of choice is to be found in enhancing freedom and competition for better employment and economic growth.
6. In its human life Guideline, the Center is emphatic in calling for the protection of unborn life and not allowing abortion to be practiced as an ordinary part of private family planning. Abortion should require public authorization as an emergency provision in dangerous and unusual circumstances. McCain has affirmed his commitment to the protection of the unborn while Obama has affirmed his commitment to a woman’s right to choose an abortion. There is a clear and obvious difference here, though Obama has said more about how to encourage families to stay together with adequate healthcare, jobs, and early childhood education. McCain has not addressed the question of what government should do if the Supreme Court were to reverse Roe v. Wade during his term in office. Such a ruling would most likely leave states free either to outlaw or to permit abortions. Would that put an end to the abortion debate or only heighten tensions between pro-life and pro-choice parts of the country, leading to more litigation and new appeals to the Supreme Court?
7. On the matter of homosexuality, the Center’s next Guideline argues that the institution of marriage is heterosexual in identity, so the phrase “same-sex marriage” is a contradiction in terms. At the same time, the Center affirms that a person’s sexual orientation should have no bearing on the government’s responsibility to protect the civil rights of all citizens. The challenge is that most of the efforts now being made across the country to grant same-sex partners the right to marry are being made as if the definition of marriage is a civil-rights matter. The Center contends that this is a mistake, a confusion in legal reasoning because the issue is a matter of substantive marriage law.
Both McCain and Obama affirm the equal treatment of citizens who are homosexual, believing that same-sex couples should enjoy most of the privileges of married couples. But neither supports “same-sex marriage.” So the question is how either of them would deal with the ongoing legal developments in this arena as some states press ahead to affirm the “civil right” of marriage for same-sex partners.
8. The Guideline on security and defense emphasizes the importance of police protection at home and military preparedness to defend the country from foreign attack. But its stress on the principles of justifiable warfare as part of just governance raises questions about some of the uses to which America’s military forces have been put in recent years. Calling for more multifaceted foreign and defense policies with greater attention given to diplomacy and international cooperation, the Center’s argument has more room for the approach that Obama is calling for than the one McCain has articulated.
Obama and McCain have similar views on a number of security and defense matters, and both plan to expand the size of the American military. However, it is in connection with America’s role in the world that one of the greatest differences between the two candidates becomes apparent. McCain repeatedly expresses a view of the world that is almost “Cold War-ish” in character. Russia is still a primary enemy and threat to our future security. McCain was ready to call NATO into action when Russia sent troops into Georgia. Terrorism, for him, replaces communism as the newest great threat to America and the world and it calls for a military response. Even in the face of the global financial crisis and negative reactions from many of our friends to American unilateralism under President Bush, McCain gives little indication that he is alert to the immense changes in world affairs since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of American military might to secure peace and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama, by contrast, seems to be more aware of the changed conditions of the shrinking world and of the need for the US to take a more multifaceted and more diplomatic approach to world affairs. This is not to say that the actions Obama would take will automatically produce peace and security. Yet the truth is that the US is less able today than 20 years ago to determine by itself the role it will play in the world. We are far more dependent on the actions and reactions of friends and enemies now than before. Careful, sophisticated diplomacy is a necessity, not a luxury. Obama has surrounded himself with advisers on every front of foreign policy in a way that McCain has not done. Obama appears to be more conscious of what he does not know and is preparing deliberately for the role of foreign policy leader and commander-in-chief.
Although the Center’s Guideline on security and defense does not address all of these issues, it moves in the direction of urging that the US should make international relations and the building of better international institutions a very high priority. Obama more than McCain seems to be on the right track in this regard.
9. Religious freedom is the Center’s Guideline that calls not merely for the right of individuals to worship freely in private but also for the right of organizations as well as individuals to practice their religions publicly. This has huge implications for education and welfare policies, among others. Obama strongly supports religious freedom and equal treatment of all faiths, and he has articulated his Christian faith in some detail. However, as we said, his position on the hiring rights of religious nonprofits in the welfare arena and his opposition to public support of students choosing to attend nongovernment schools run counter to the Center’s argument. McCain affirms religious freedom, religious school choice, and the hiring rights of nonprofits cooperating with government in delivering welfare services. Yet, these issues have not figured as high priorities in either campaign.
10. The Center’s tenth Guideline deals with the environment. Both candidates intend to give serious attention to environmental dangers. Obama, however, has been more expansive about this in connecting government’s responsibility for environmental protection with the efforts government should make to encourage the development of alternative energy sources, increase mileage standards for automobiles, and support cooperative international efforts to deal with global environmental degradation. McCain wants to rely more on market forces to improve environmental protection and appears less willing to use government for these purposes at home and internationally. Both say they want energy independence at home, but it is not clear how either will achieve that goal.
11. The Center’s most recent Guideline (with more still to come) is on the family. Both McCain and Obama support families and see them as fundamental to society’s health and stability. However, neither calls, as the Center does, for the public recognition of the family as an institution that is more than the sum of the individuals who make it up and that is more than a means to larger societal and economic purposes. Yet Obama’s attention to the interconnections of families with the economy, education, religious life, and the political community orients his proposals to reform healthcare policy, Social Security, and tax policy in ways that are more thorough than McCain’s focus on freedom for families to make more of their own choices with their own money.
Both candidates have called for responses to the financial crisis that would help families stay in their homes rather than lose them. But at this stage of the crisis, it is not clear whether either plan will work. If the current financial and economic crises lead to greater unemployment and the loss of housing despite government’s efforts, then Obama’s concern for the way government’s policies support those families could mean more than McCain’s insistence that government is not the answer to most economic challenges. We cannot know what either candidate would actually do in cooperation with or in resistance to Congress to address the fallout of this ongoing crisis. But the campaign declarations and past practices of the two candidates suggest that McCain will rely on indirect effects of government incentives for economic growth while Obama will take more direct government aim at the causes and effects of the crisis as it hits those families who are having the most difficult time holding themselves together with limited (if any) health care, jobs, education, and financial savings.
Take time; vote wisely
Having referred briefly to the Center’s Guidelines on Government and Citizenship, which provide some criteria by which to assess the presidential candidates, I can only encourage readers to take time in the final days before the election to reflect on them while preparing to vote. Don’t fall back on single-issue voting, or simply on what some of the commentators or your neighbors are saying.
On the basis of the Center’s Guidelines, it is apparent that neither candidate meets with our full support. But how do the candidates compare in the light of these criteria? Who looks better able to lead now? Who is more prepared to work with a team in Congress and in the executive branch to secure public justice at home and abroad? How does the character of each candidate hold up to the scrutiny each has endured during this long campaign? How have their actions—picking their running mates, confronting the financial crisis, dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan—revealed their temperament, their principles, and their ability to lead the country?
Consider and discuss all of these things and then vote as wisely as you can!
Dr. Skillen is President of the Center for Public Justice.
The John McCain campaign website: www.johnmccain.com
The Barack Obama campaign website: www.barackobama.com
