Obama, Patriotism and Me

One of the reasons to vote for someone for president—perhaps the key reason, in fact—is good judgment. Hillary Clinton may have taken a lot of flak for her "3 a.m. phone call" ad during the Democratic primaries in 2008, but she was basically right: Ideologically, there wasn't that much distance between Obama and Clinton, which meant that a big part of any liberal's decision that year was deciding which candidate had the better judgment. We knew how both of them felt about health care reform and climate change and education policy, but what would they do when something came up that no one could predict? How would they handle a Katrina or a 9/11?

I was one of many who ended up voting for Obama on the grounds that his judgment seemed a bit sounder. Maybe not as toughminded as Hillary, but just as smart and, in foreign affairs, seemingly a little more willing to look at the world with fresh eyes and resist the siren call of intervention at every turn. So how's that working out for me?
Kevin Drum, Mother Jones