[Vision2020] Ken Adelman: Why a Staunch Conservative Like Me Endorsed Obama

[Saundra Lund]

The Huffington Post
Ken Adelman
Posted October 24, 2008 | 10:45 PM (EST)

Why a Staunch Conservative Like Me Endorsed Obama

Who cares? 

That's what I wondered when George Packer (ace of the New Yorker) asked
whether he could post my intention to vote for Obama on his blog.

So I duly ignored him. Only when he bugged me two days later did I say okay,
and responded in quick, instinctive emails back.

Little did I know the splash this would make. Not until a day later, when my
wife and I were up in Philadelphia to teach leadership via scenes from
Shakespeare's Henry V for the Wharton Business School. When friends joined
us for dinner at UPenn, they said their taxi driver had talked about my
"endorsement of Obama," having read it online during a break. 

What's most fun about unexpectedly "breaking through" on an issue is not
feeling powerful, that you're molding minds out there. People make up their
own minds, based on lots more information than my personal inclinations.

Okay, this type announcement can give (maybe a few) conservatives some cover
-- not publicly to use with others, but privately to assure themselves that
it's actually okay to break away. To break with the most conservative, or
Republican, candidate and vote (in my case, the first time ever) for "the
other guy." 

And it's not most fun dealing with longtime friends, fellow conservatives.
Most are polite and say they understand, and they'll get over it. Yet a few
do get heated, show their disappointment, and say they can't understand my
taking a public stance (even if I privately stray). 

I don't enjoy those discussions, since I've long prided myself in being a
staunch conservative.

Not a neo-con, since I was never liberal along the way (having campaigned
for Barry Goldwater in 1964, when at that hotbed of lefty politics, Grinnell
College). I'm really a con-con. 

And not a staunch Republican, as I've never been to a Republican rally or
convention (I came closest in 1980, after writing Don Rumsfeld's speech and
after we drove there; but I left Detroit before the convention opened).

So I've considered myself less of a partisan than an ideologue. I cared
about conservative principles, and still do, instead of caring about the
GOP.

Granted, McCain's views are closer to mine than Obama's. But I've learned
over this Bush era to value competence along with ideology. Otherwise, our
ideology gets discredited, as it has so disastrously over the past eight
years. 

McCain's temperament -- leading him to bizarre behavior during the week the
economic crisis broke -- and his judgment -- leading him to Wasilla --
depressed me into thinking that "our guy" would be a(nother) lousy
conservative president. Been there, done that.

I'd rather a competent moderate president. Even at a risk, since Obama lacks
lots of executive experience displaying competence (though his presidential
campaign has been spot-on). And since his Senate voting record is not
moderate, but depressingly liberal. Looming in the background, Pelosi and
Reid really scare me. 

Nonetheless, I concluded that McCain would not -- could not -- be a good
president. Obama just might be.

That's become good enough for me -- however much of a triumph (as Dr.
Johnson said about second marriages) of hope over experience. 

Now what's most fun about the media breakthrough is hearing from gobs of
people from previous lives. Many long forgotten, reminding me of long
forgotten times together. People emerging suddenly, from the dark matter of
time, into the recesses of the brain. 

These folks were important at various stages of my life -- grammar school
playmates, Grinnell classmates, Indianapolis cousins, Dan Quayle, Dick
Allen, colleagues from the Reagan arms control agency (chuckling over my
quip to Packer that I wouldn't have hired Sarah Palin to a mid-level job
there). 

A veritable stroll down memory lane, to see a line of people who have
touched my life at various times, in its varied stages, reconnecting in a
most unexpected (even bizarre) manner. 

Now that's fun.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-adelman/why-a-staunch-conservativ_b_137749
.html