BUCKLEY ENDORSES OBAMA

No, not the late William F. Buckley, his son writer and satirist Christopher. Christopher Buckley is one of *my* favorite conservatives as well as the author of two of the funniest novels I've ever read: Thank You For Smoking and Little Green Men. Buckley wrote a piece  entitled, Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting For Obama wherein he makes a case for why libertarian conservatives should back Barack.

For some reason, Mr. Buckley doesn't like the mindlessly anti-intellectual Governor Palin. Oops, I guess that's why. Here's my favorite bit in the article:

John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

Short term political advantage? Rolling the dice, hoping for a 7 or 11 and crapping out instead? Here are a few of the reasons why Buckley is voting for Obama:

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. <snip> I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

Welcome aboard, Mr. Buckley. I hope your parents won't return to haunt you after this public declaration. On the other hand, I'm trying to imagine Bill Buckley's reaction to Sarah Palin's rabid anti-intellectualism. I doubt that he'd be a fan: I recall him referring to J. Danforth Quayle as a "dolt."

tags: politics  obama  2008  election  

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