NEW YORK: The winner of America’s presidential election will inherit a perfect storm of problems, both economic and international. He will face the most difficult opening-day agenda of any president since – and I say this in all seriousness – the man who saved the Union, Abraham Lincoln. But a more instructive precedent is 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt offered inspiring rhetoric and “bold experimentation to a nation facing economic meltdown and a breakdown in public confidence.
For me, the choice is simple – and not only because I am, by temperament and history, a Democrat. The long and intense political campaign has revealed huge differences in the two candidates’ positions, style, and personal qualities. And the conclusion seems clear.
Judgment
John McCain has shown throughout his career a penchant for risk-taking; in his memoirs, he proudly calls himself a gambler. His selection of Sarah Palin, a charismatic but spectacularly unqualified candidate, as his running mate, is just the most glaring of many examples of the real McCain. His bravery in combat attests to his patriotism, courage, and toughness, but his judgment has been found sorely lacking time and time again over his career.
Barack Obama is tough, too, but in a different way. No one should underestimate how difficult it was to travel his road, against incredible odds, to the cusp of the presidency. But where McCain is impulsive and emotional, Obama is low-key and unemotional. He makes his judgments in a calm and methodical manner; McCain’s impulsiveness is anathema to Obama, and rightly so – one cannot play craps with history. Having seen so many political leaders falter under pressure, I prize this ability above most others. And Barack Obama has it.
The economy
The first priority of the new president will be the economy and the financial crisis. Since the crisis hit, Obama has been calm and, indeed, presidential. He consulted the best advisory team in the nation, weighed each course of action carefully, and then issued a series of precise, calm statements. Meanwhile, McCain has veered bizarrely, issuing contradictory statements, “suspending his campaign (while continuing to campaign), and urging that the first debate be canceled (when it was all the more needed). Advantage Obama.
Foreign policy
The most explicit disagreements between the candidates are over Iraq, Iran, and Russia. But there are deeper differences. McCain’s positions, with the notable exception of climate change, suggest that he would simply try to carry out George W. Bush’s policies more effectively. Obama offers a different approach to foreign policy.
By starting to draw down combat troops in Iraq, Obama would change the image and policies of America immediately. By engaging Iran in talks that would cover not only the nuclear issue but other aspects of Iran’s destabilizing role in the region, he would either reach agreements that lowered the dangers from Iran, or he would mobilize a stronger international coalition to isolate Iran. Either way, engaging Iran is the right policy, and it is hard to understand why Bush and McCain have continued to hold out against such an obvious change of course, which, if carried out with firmness, will not compromise American or Israeli national security.
On Russia since its invasion of Georgia, Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden (who was the first member of Congress to visit Georgia after the invasion), emphasize helping Georgia rebuild its economy and maintain its independence in the face of a continuing Russian campaign against it. McCain, on the other hand, wants to punish Russia by such actions as expelling it from the G-8.
Such measures may ultimately be necessary, but they will not help Georgia survive as an independent democracy. Moreover, even after the outrage in Georgia, there are issues of common interest – such as energy, climate change, and Iran – on which the West and the Kremlin must cooperate. This was true even during the Cold War, and remains true today, yet McCain seems not to recognize it.
Leadership
In the end, all presidential elections come down to the intangibles of leadership. The vote for a president is a sort of private contract directly between each voter and his or her preferred choice. Who do you want to see on your television screen for the next four years? To whom do you wish to entrust the nation’s fate?
Here again, the contrasting styles of Obama and McCain offer a clear choice between a calm and confident man and a highly emotional one, between a major change in the nation’s direction and a minor one, between a conciliatory style and a more combative one.
Effectiveness
Finally, in a year in which the Democrats are certain to increase their majority in both houses of Congress, an Obama victory would offer the Democrats control of both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since 1994, and with it the possibility of legislative achievement after years of stalemate. After so many years of polarization at home and unilateralism abroad, the choice for president seems clear.
Richard Holbrooke is a former US ambassador to the United Nations and the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. This commentary is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
