With Reservations, I'm Voting for Obama

The Potomac River primaries on February 12 are just a few days away and I have to make a decision on whom to vote for in the District of Columbia primary.  I’ve struggled with this decision for some time as my first choice, Al Gore, passed on the race and my second choice, John Edwards, never got the traction I hoped he would and bowed out just before Super Tuesday.  I’m faced with a tough choice between two outstanding candidates.  Barack Obama, while inexperienced, represents an exciting challenge to the status quo that I find attractive.  Hillary Clinton, more of a known quantity, is an underrated fighter for many of the issues about which I feel very strongly.  While she butchered the healthcare reform effort in 1993, the reality is she’s taken that fight farther than anyone else in American politics.  Nonetheless, after considering all the positions, the hype, the hypersensitivity, and history, I’ve decided, with reservations, to vote for Barack Obama.

I have at least three reservations about Obama.  First, I’m always interested in Black political empowerment and understand that for that to occur, Black people must be in the room making decisions.  As a political scientist who specializes in Black political behavior, I’m deeply concerned by what I’m hearing from smart people in Chicago who tell me that Obama has very few African Americans in decision making positions in his campaign.  It is less likely that uniquely Black issues, such as the prison-industrial complex that warehouses Black men, removes them from society and, ultimately, undermines Black families, will get an airing in such an environment.  I understand why he has to run a deracialized campaign – it’s simply the reality of American politics and culture.  I don’t understand why his campaign apparatus has to be deracialized.

Second, there is a rhetorical naivete’ to his campaign that I think is nearly disingenuous.  His talk about unifying the country and that there should be no “red state America or blue state America, but the United States of America,” sounds great, but ignores the history of the country.  America has always been divided along racial, nationality, and economic lines.  From early battles between southern agrarian barons who took credit for building the country on the backs of free slave labor to northern industrialists fighting to drag the country into a new direction, America has careened from one pole to the other on issue after issue.  Other than brief, wartime periods, this nation has never exemplified the unity Obama claims he can bring to the country.  The hordes of naive young voters that are buying this line don’t know their history and he is reaping the benefit.  There isn’t anything wrong with hoping for unity, but we can’t ignore history.

Third, Obama’s ascension will narrow opportunities for Black politicians.  I know that sounds counterintuitive, particularly since there are so many examples where Black politicians already have a low ceiling.  There have been many capable Black mayors over the years who could have been governors in a more open society with a level playing field.  Obama makes it even more difficult because some White voters may take the measure of some Black candidates and say “why can’t he be more like Obama.”  Implicit in that comment is the belief that only certain kinds of Blacks can win the votes of Whites, which disqualifies anyone seen as overtly Black.

So why am I voting for Obama?  There are some traits to commend him to the presidency.  First, people who know him say that while he is supremely ambitious, he also knows what he doesn’t know.  That’s very commendable when one considers the fact that most elected officials confuse their electoral success with the notion that they know everything – a sure path to arrogance and failure.  It’s my hope that a President Obama will surround himself with people smarter than he in the areas in which he lacks institutional memory or professional experience.  While I think being president is no place for on-the-job training, an inexperienced officeholder can do great things if he or she is comfortable in his or her own skin enough to listen and learn.  I think Obama can do that.

Second, I’m all about challenging the status quo and I write this with an eye toward November with a conservative status quo slowly losing its grip on the country.  They are responsible for the economic social woes that are now befalling our country.  Moreover, it was neo-conservative thought that led us into Iraq and destroyed our standing in the world.  These regressive moves must be reversed and Obama best represents a move in a new direction.

Third, his election strikes a blow at White supremacist thought that continues to dominate the world.  From Asia to Africa and South America, an Obama win will shake up things in countries that are still under the thumb of an intellectual mindset that suggests that people of color are inferior to Anglo-Saxons.  This blow must be struck and now is as good a time as any.

My decision to vote for Obama is more a leap of faith than a conviction that he will actually the bring real, deep, and substantial change he professes.  Voters who claim to want a transformational president have to be willing to give the country a Congress that will be equally change oriented.  Given that 90 percent of all members of Congress who seek reelection win, voters need to be brave enough to turnout out their own Representatives and Senators to actually make change occur.  History suggests that change is unlikely.  While I have doubts about Obama and the nation, I’m hopeful that the country is ready to move in a new direction.  I’m also hopeful that Obama can bring it all together.

Michael K. Fauntroy is an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University an author of the book Republicans and the Black Vote.  A registered Independent, he blogs at: www.MichaelFauntroy.com