My Support for Obama

At the risk of losing friends of this blog, I want to say a few words about why I intend to vote for Obama in November. I'm not trying to convince anyone to vote one way or another. And I don't ultimately trust in any political party or human government. I have pledged my allegiance to the reign of God. I serve the future day of God's shalom, and that is bigger than any national or political identity. (I guess I'm wiritng mostly because some of my Christian friends find it totally inconceivable that I could vote this way).

Having said that, I tend to line up more with Democrats than Republicans, not all the time, but much of the time. And it has to do less with the specifics of particular issues than it does an overall picture of what it means to be human in God's world. Specifically, it has to do with what it means to be a person.

So, here it is. We tend to think of persons in terms that we inherited from the Enlightenment. I think notions of what it means to be human that found expression during the Enlightenment are severely flawed. What do I mean by this? Many Enlightenment perspectives view the person as a radically autonomous individual, or subject. It's what Charles Taylor calls the buffered self. It's what philosophy refers to as the turn to the subject. It's what the Bible, in my opinion, calls sin. There are a lot of different ways to describe it, but it tends to define the world as a series of autonomous objects and subjects. The individual is primarily a self-consciousness, radically free, able through common sense to see things as they actually are. Truth is an object in this scheme, it exists independent of observation and is to be uncovered, not disclosed. And the individual is the final arbiter in these matters. I think all of this is wrong.

This tends to drop a cluster bomb full of polarities or dualisms--subject-object, public-private, theory-praxis--always a bad idea when thinking about reality in a world created by one God. And it places the individual as an autonomous actor at the center of this reality, a radical free agent. What is best for the individual, therefore, is best for everyone. Enlightened self-interest is the way to deliver a society that works for all.

This is the opposite of what passes as good theology for me. Personhood is not defined through autonomy or through self-consciousness, but precisely through relatedness, through community. And the individual is not simply a blank slate freely choosing in situations characterized by freedom. There are things that precede our acts of interpretation that are given to us, that we do not simply choose and are largely unaware of. The bible refers to this as principalities and powers. Heidegger referred to this as thrownness, Gadamer as fore-grounding. There is always a pre-understanding that enables us to understand. We are not simply acting upon reality, but are always a consequence of that reality that preceeds us.

Because of all of this, I'm interested in understandings of reality that begin with otherness, where otherness isn't defined as threat, but as opportunity for real community and genuine discovery of meaning. I believe otherness, not the unfettered conscience of the individual, is the precondition for both personhood and truth.

So when someone divides the world into good guys and bad guys, when the perspective of the other is diminished, when a candidate accuses the other as not being like us (both do it, but it's been pronounced on the Republican side in my opinion) when enemies are persons to vilify and not speak to, we move further from the possibilities of the Kingdom of God.

The Republican philosophy tends to be more committed to a social vision rooted in the autonomous individual. I tend not to be impressed by their arguments. Even if this vision of the world "works," which I don't think it does, it still isn't in line with the perspectives of the Kingdom.

I want to begin with an understanding of reality that is defined by community. Society is not just a collection of individuals who create a social compact. We are inescapably relational and communal, and we find our true personhood when we act not out of self-interest but out of the interest of the whole. And the test here is related to the plight of the poor. Discernment of the good in the Kingdom of God is always about mercy, and that is often defined in economic terms in the Bible. The question is not so much, am I better off than I was four years ago? The question is, are the poor better off? Are children in poverty better off? Are the mentally ill better off? Are the elderly better off?

You should know that both Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olberman turn my stomach, that both Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken are big fat idiots in my book. This is not primarily because of where they stand on the issues, but because they treat otherness as dangerous. They are community killers. And there are politicians in both parties who are absolutely clueless in this regard.

I'm anticipating that some of you will want to know how in the world I can vote for a pro-choice candidate. I am anti-abortion, though I'm not sure where legal definitions should begin (historically speaking, the church has varied widely on this issue through the centuries) and what to do with cases like the health of the mother and rape and incest which makes this terribly difficult to legislate. Here I understand McCain's frustration expressed in the last debate. The health of the mother seems to make this impossible to address from a legislative standpoint. But I think he's wrong to characterize this as a radical position on abortion.

I'm not a one issue voter (you can't isolate abortion from economic or health care issues in my opinion), and I'm fairly cynical that the Republicans are really serious about it as a public policy issue. They've had all the branches of government for the better part of the last decade and have done virtually nothing. I've read that abortions are more frequent today than they were during the Clinton years, and I don't find this surprising. I don't think this is about personal choice (I am not in that sense pro-choice which assumes the sovreignty of the autonomous individual), but neither is this simply a problem of personal morality either (which likewise assumes individual autonomy). I am for a culture of life, but this would also include issues like the death penalty and war and torture for me, and there are no candidates or parties that have a monopoly on these issues.

Here's my final point. Obama has two things I like that I think are necessary given the mess we're in. I'm convinced he's not an ideologue (I know this is disputable, but he's simply not a black and white thinker). He's a pragmatist and he runs a tight ship. He's out campaigned both the Clinton machine and the Republican juggernaut that has dominated presidential politics the past 16 years. He's disciplined and will get things done. And he's a brilliant orator, and in times of massive social dislocation the poets are the ones who lead. When Hillary says, all he's done is make a great speech, she diminishes the power of a great speech. It's true, as McCain points out that oratory can simply gloss things, but its also true there is no transformation apart from new images, apart from language that moves past previous limit-expressions. We believe, after all, that God creates through his Word. It's the poet-prophets who deliver Israel, not the kings.

I've been disappointed with Senator Obama at points during the campaign. I am under no illusions that either candidate will usher in the Kingdom of God. But I will vote in a few weeks, and I am voting for Barack Obama.