Frank Hearts Barack

Endorsements have about as much impact on the winner of an election as water boys on the outcome of a football game, but this one from Francis Fukuyama for Obama is interesting. (I think got the link from the Plank.) Fukuyama has been among the right's foremost thinkers since his book The End of History came out almost two decades ago, but after the Iraq War, he grew disillusioned with neoconservatism (imagine that).

"I think the Republicans don't deserve to get re-elected this year," he said in an interview in Sydney yesterday. "I think they could use four years, or eight years, in the wilderness."

It is not merely that he does not endorse the Republican candidate for the presidency, Senator John McCain. "I think John McCain is by far the best of the candidates the Republicans had, but when you have some responsibility for policy failure on the scale of Iraq, I don't think you should be rewarded."

The Republicans' future offerings do not impress Fukuyama either: "Their two big things are fear of [terrorism] and fear of immigrants - that's not an agenda."

I especially like the last section. He's absolutely right. The Republicans have used fear (and outrage and disapproval) as their primary electoral tactic for so long now that it seems normal, but we optimistic Americans will only put up with it so long. A charismatic, credible optimist almost always has an advantage over a dour realist (think Reagan over Carter), and the Republicans have put themselves on the wrong side of that equation.

This is a rather passive endorsement given to a newspaper a world away, so even if endorsements did matter, this one wouldn't. However, given Obama's celebrated lack of foreign policy experience, I'd be interested to see if the defection of more conservative hawks to Obama's camp could remove some of the sting from McCain's inevitable attacks on national security. Probably not.