Why I support Barack Obama in the US Presidential Elections

I support Barack Obama not because of any particular position or plan or promise. In fact, promises make me uncomfortable because I’ve seen the limits on presidential powers. Obama is not the only one who will have a voice when it comes to tax policies in the upcoming years.

I support Barack Obama because he has the spirit, strength, and understanding to guide us as in a nonzero direction as we participate in the formation of a global human society. In his book, Nonzero, Robert Wright argues that human history shows that new technologies permit new, richer forms of non-zero-sum interaction that lead to social structures that realize this potential, turning non-zero-sum situations into positive sums, embedding people in larger and richer webs of interdependence (p. 5-6).

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

We are participating in the formation of a global web of interdependence. I believe that Barack Obama has the better understanding of the direction the world is moving, a better grasp on the impact of technology, and a greater ability to lead us as we face “tests of our moral imagination” (p. 9) that can lead to a world at “a new equilibrium at a level of organization higher than any past equilibrium.” He gives me hope.

The Audacity of Hope

I also believe that Obama has the capacity to listen to many voices, respect people who do not agree with him, and search for tradeoffs that honor many interests. Here’s an example in the chapter called Values in his book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. In the state of Illinois, he sponsored a bill to require videotaping of confessions and interrogations in capital cases.

“It would have been typical of today’s politics for each side to draw a line in the sand: for death penalty opponents to harp on racism and police misconduct and for law enforcement to suggest that my bill coddled criminals. Instead, over the course of several weeks, we convened sometimes daily meetings between prosecutors, public defenders, police organizations, and death penalty opponents, keeping our negotiations as much as possible out of the press.

Instead of focusing on the serious disagreements around the table, I talked about the common value that I believed everyone shared, regardless of how each of us might feel about the death penalty: that is, the basic principle that no innocent person should end up on death row, and that no person guilty of a capital offense should go free. … At the end of the process, the bill had the support of all the parties involved. It passed unanimously in the Illinois Senate and was signed into law.” pp. 58-59

I support thet man whose debate comments sometimes started with the words, “Here’s where I agree with Senator McCain…”