Newsweek: How Obama and McCain See The World

[babylonsister]

Newsweek: How Obama and McCain See The World

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161325

The Vices of Their Virtues

John McCain's impetuosity is either thrilling or disturbing. Barack Obama's cool is either sober or detached. It's clear now how each would govern.

By Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 27, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Oct 6, 2008

snip//

With the troubled markets and the ensuing debate over the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, October started in September. By suspending his campaign and threatening to postpone the foreign-policy debate in Oxford, Miss.—after a campaign in which he's taken hawkish stands on Russia, Iraq and just about everything else—John McCain quickly emerged as Mr. Hot, a candidate who makes no apologies for his often merry mischief-making. (See Palin, Sarah H., selection of for further evidence.) With his measured responses to the news of the season and his steady insistence on projecting a cerebral image, Barack Obama came off as Mr. Cool, at once impressively intellectual and yet aloof.

The three tests of recent weeks—the vice presidential nominations, the conflict in Georgia and now the financial crisis—have raised, in a serious way not always evident in presidential politics, the key question: how would each man lead? Our view is that if you are among the 18 percent or so of undecided voters (the current figure in most national polls), we think you now have more than enough on which to decide. McCain and Obama see the world differently, and you can see how; they behave in their own skins differently, and you can see how. The drama of the autumn has served perhaps the noblest end we could hope for, shedding light on how each man would govern. McCain is passionate, sometimes impulsive and unpredictable; Obama is precise, occasionally withdrawn and methodical.

It would be comforting, of course, if there were such a man as Mr. Just Right, but human nature is rarely so accommodating. Politicians, like the rest of us (only more so), tend to overcompensate. Obama cannot afford to be seen by voters as an Angry Black Man, but he sometimes appears calm to the point of passivity. At moments during the past two weeks of dizzying market gyrations and grim economic tidings, he seemed more like a bystander than a player. This may, in fact, have been the wise choice, both for the country and for his political fortunes. He understood that, by butting into the delicate negotiations between the White House, Treasury and Congress to shape a rescue package, a presidential candidate risked injecting politics and partisanship into a situation that demanded statesmanship and discretion.

On the other hand, McCain may have figured he had nothing to lose by plunging in. As his running mate, Sarah Palin, mangled her canned answers to Katie Couric and showed up on YouTube submitting to anti-witchcraft ministrations from a Pentecostal pastor, McCain was rapidly losing his postconvention bounce. McCain is an improviser and, on occasion, a hip-shooter. A former Navy pilot, he has not always demonstrated the soundest judgment. (Of course, Obama enjoys a natural advantage from not having been in public life as long as McCain: you can't be criticized for making decisions when you haven't been in the arena to make them.) In his most recent book, "Hard Choices," McCain describes how, on his last bombing mission over Hanoi, he heard the warning tone of an enemy SAM missile locking on to his plane. Bravely, or rashly, McCain did not take evasive maneuvers but rather kept on flying straight in an attempt to deliver his bombs on target. The missile blew off his right wing, and he spent the next five years in captivity. Over the subsequent years, mostly spent in politics, McCain has learned to "jink and juke," in pilots' parlance, but he sometimes still demonstrates a willfulness that can be admirable, or just foolhardy.

Watching McCain swoop and veer over the past two weeks has been enough to induce vertigo, even among his admirers. He began by saying that the "fundamentals" of the economy were "strong" and then, ridiculed by Obama, declared that the economy was "in total crisis." He took an angry populist tone against Wall Street and the regulators and proposed a 9/11-style commission to investigate what had gone wrong. He said if he were president, he would fire SEC Chairman Chris Cox. Informed that the president cannot fire the head of the SEC, McCain pronounced Cox to be a "good man," while still calling for his resignation.

Obama, meanwhile, kept his statements about the crisis measured, citing principles that should be taken into account in any bailout package but not offering a grand explanation for why one was needed. Throughout, he was quietly talking to Hank Paulson on a daily basis and grew to like Bush's Treasury secretary so much that he told CNBC he was thinking of keeping him on for at least a transition period.

more...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/161325/page/2

[BlooInBloo]

1. I love their attempt at fair&balanced...

I don't know a single person - Democrat or republican, who would call Obama "detached". :rofl:

[H2O Man]

2. I would

in the sense of detached irony, where one has a relaxed yet focused state of mind, and fully appreciates both the complexities and incongruities of a set of circumstances.

[shraby]

3. I agree Waterman..when one detaches from

the heat of the times, the intricacies of a situation can be sorted out easier and more reasoned conclusions can be reached. Similar to when there's a physical fight going on between two people..the bystander can better see what happened than the one flailing.

[kurt_cagle]

4. Detachment is the Heart of Zen

A good leader is one who is able to see the strategic landscape, to look beyond the immediate crisis to the larger implications of what the factors are that are shaping the crisis - and how best to change those factors. A good leader knows how to delegate responsibility and authority so that his or her agents can do those things necessary to make the change happen, and also understands that sometimes you have to sacrifice local tactical advantage in order to gain larger strategic advantage, sometimes at personal cost.

Obama's very good at getting things accomplished by keeping himself at the strategic level. I suspect that at heart, he's probably something of a Taoist, which is not so much religion as it is philosophy.

McCain ... isn't. McCain is a tactician. He lives very much in the moment. He's impulsive and inclined to react when threatened, often without necessarily understanding why he does so. He relies upon "gut-checks", and he tends to be "decisive" without necessarily accomplishing a lot in the process - he goes for the quick kill. It's not surprising he was a fighter pilot - its a profession that rewards this kind of behavior. He would accept death before dishonor, would tend to go for glory rather than make a strategic withdrawal. I don't really see him as being a strong Christian - he's always struck me as being areligious though he'll go through the motions in order to pick up the necessary votes - but there's no real question that his first calling is that of the warrior.

I don't think McCain is that bad of a person, though I do question whether his facilities are beginning to decline significantly. There are places for warriors in leadership, though whether the POTUS should be one is highly debatable. My impression is that McCain would tend to become too focused on one thing ("It's the Surge!") at the possible expense of the bigger picture (perceptions of the world toward the US, drawdown of strength elsewhere, effects upon the budget, etc.)

McCain is not Bush. Bush is a failed son who has been promoted to ever higher levels of responsibility to promote other people's agendas. Inside, he's always known he's a failure, but he refuses to consciously acknowledge that fact. He's neither a strategist nor a tactician, though I think he's craftier than most people give him credit for in that regard. Like Obama, he's disengaged, but unlike Obama that disengagement is not to gain a sense of the bigger picture - rather it's hiding from the job that he has to do and ignoring the political landscape entirely. This is the kind of man who can move mountains, because of the power that he wields, but who refuses to understand to understand why moving mountains isn't necessarily a smart idea. From his comments this week, it was evident that he was far less concerned for Americans out there than he was for his legacy, not really even appreciating the fact that this legacy is so bad precisely because of the lack of concern for the people he governs.