Apparently rethuglicanism isn't hereditary.
William Buckley's son, Christopher Buckley, has endorsed Obama for President. Buckley's endorsement is interesting because of what he says about McCain and because as a symbol of his father's conservative values his defection speaks volumes about this Presidential race.
McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were "jerks" (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, "The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor." Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
I think it is clear to all of us, and has been for some time, that McCain's ambition has undermined his sense of honor. This is what makes the current debacle of his campaign so difficult to watch. None of us at Kos were ever McCain "fans," but certainly he wasn't worthy of the kind of hatred Bush/Cheney are and were. Now McCain has degraded himself and whatever legacy of honor he had. The McCain Christopher Buckley describes above is no more:
But that was—sigh—then. 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?
And Christopher goes on to Obama:
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...
Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy "We are the people we have been waiting for" silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.
Clearly Buckley is ambivalent about Obama. His ambivalence can be read in parts of the article I didn't quote, as well as his reference to Obama's "rhetoric" as "airy-fairy," (problematic in itself) as well as his prayer that "God Save America" after he votes Democratic fort the first time in his life. But if William F. Buckley's son, who writes for the National Review, and is conservative through and through is voting for Obama, it is a clear sign of a sea change in this country. My favorite line of this essay, of which there are many points with which I disagree, is "We are all in this together." This is a clear recognition of the fact that Obama has managed to communicate to all thinking Americans that it's sink or swim and that he is the swimmer.
Pretty soon, the only people left in this country who will vote for McCain will be hard-core racists. There seems to be plenty of evidence that "softer" racists realize the importance of voting for Obama. I feel genuinely excited when I think that what we might see is a major transformation of politics in America, where the "right" becomes the last bastion for the most reactionary and unacceptable views in American society. They will be marginalized and that point of view made unacceptable. Will another party form out of this? Will fiscal conservatives, but social liberals, those moderates, those traditionally Republican-leaning independents who are not racists, defect from the Republican party and create a new one? Will they join the ranks of the Democratic party (which if this is the case, our party will change too)?
Whatever the case, I hope this is the end of Republicanism in our society. It's time for something new. Even the descendant of William F. Buckley can see that.