Obamatarian
Reason did a piece, “Who’s Getting Your Vote?” in which they asked a bunch of sort-of-celebrities who they were voting for. It’s long and predictably full of pithy humor and yuck-yuck jabs at the candidates. It’s also chock full of anger and a omnipresent desire for vengeance; far, far, too many of the respondents answered that they’d be voting for Obama because they want to punish the Republican party.
The idea is that we should punish the Republicans for abetting the Bush administration. The Bush administration’s failures in this regard (there are many, so let’s be specific) are the militaristic foreign policy, the huge increase in entitlement spending, the rise of the deficit, the funding of sectarian religious organizations, and the erosion of individual liberty. All granted.
But in what universe does voting for Obama signal to anyone that those ideas are wrong? Obama has opposed the Iraq war, but he’s been surprisingly militant about Afghanistan, Iran and Darfur. Obama promises to expand existing entitlement programs and create new ones. He’s proposing tax increases and spending increases in the middle of a recession and seems unable to find a single government program that needs to be cut. He’s promised to maintain funding for faith-based programs. He promises to undermine property rights, is opposed to free trade, and his health plan is a disaster.
Voting for Obama signals to Republican party that you want more government and less individual liberty.
In a much more thoughtful piece at Reason, “Is There Any Hope For this Man?” Richard Epstein makes the point,
Unfortunately, on the full range of economic issues, both large and small, I fear that [Obama's] policies, earnestly advanced, are a throwback to the worst of the Depression-era, big-government policies. Libertarians in general favor flat and low taxes, free trade, and unregulated labor markets. Obama is on the wrong side of all these issues. He adopts a warmed-over vision of the New Deal corporatist state with high taxation, major trade barriers, and massive interference in labor markets. He is also unrepentant in his support of farm subsidies and a vast expansion of the government role in health care. Each of these reforms, taken separately, expands the power of government over our lives. Their cumulative impact could be devastating.
Voting for Barr would send a message to the Republican party. Voting for Obama would not. (I think it would cost us far, far too much to deliver that message.)
Todd Zywicki has a good post at Volokh,
And from what I can tell none of those libertarians or conservatives who are Obama supporters are attracted to because of his positions (other than those who care strongly about the Iraq war and foreign policy), but rather because of who he is. Obama is a compelling personality. But in reading these encomiums to him, I haven’t seen any explanation as to how Obama’s policies on tax, trade, spending, or regulatory would be friendlier to individual liberty than what is likely to be McCain’s (as weak as those will be). As someone observed somewhere recently, this is about the first time in history that you have endorsements from people who endorse Obama on the hope that he won’t do what he says he’ll do rather than because of what he says he’ll do.
Now, if you agree with Obama, then by all means, vote for him! But there is no plausible universe in which anyone can coherently argue that a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for free-markets, free trade, property rights, or fiscal discipline.
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