Why I Refuse Not to Vote for Barack Obama

Disclosure: The author is a former intern for Obama for America.
Conor Friedersdorf recently wrote in The Atlantic that, unlike in 2008, he would not vote for Barack Obama this year. Citing the administration’s escalated use of drone strikes as the centerpiece of its anti-terrorism strategy in the Middle East, Obama’s “kill list” of Americans and foreigners the administration has targeted to kill without due process, and entrance into the Libyan conflict without congressional approval, Friedersdorf claims Obama broke his promise to rein in the post-9/11 executive excesses of the Bush era. “Sometimes a policy is so reckless or immoral,” he says, “that supporting its backer as ‘the lesser of two evils’ is unacceptable.”
And like any good moral argument, Friedersdorf’s invokes Immanuel Kant’s famous formulation, the categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” Asserting this moral standard, Friedersdorf challenges liberals to refute his argument not as a faulty tactical calculation, but an erroneous moral one.
To do so, we need look no further than Kant himself.
While the categorical imperative runs throughout Kant’s work, his entire philosophy cannot and should not be boiled down to this phrase alone. Yes, morality for Kant plays a central role in forming the ideal human society. But in politics, Kant argues, we cannot expect our rulers to be unfailingly moral. And when they are not, the moral thing to do is not to depose them, but to persuade them to alter their laws. Indeed, politics for Kant involves a practical pursuit of morality, not an abstention from the political process to preserve moral rectitude. Likewise, I refuse not to vote for Barack Obama because, despite my disagreements, Obama’s candidacy presents a much more moral option than the alternative.
And politics, democracy even, is a question of alternatives.
Kant’s essay “On the Relationship of Theory to Practice in Political Right”, presents the ideal government as one that gives its citizens maximum leeway to behave morally. Still, he claims that the people do not have a right to rebel against the government, and must obey the laws even when they are unjust. Kant defends the “freedom of the pen”, the right to free speech, as the utmost necessity of a just state, and says we should try to convince our leaders to change their ways through constructive criticism rather than removing them from rule.
I should add the caveat that Kant does not address democratic government directly, and is instead talking about something closer to totalitarian rule. And in a democracy, voting, or abstaining from voting, can be a form of speech. Even so, the relationship Kant constructs between morality and politics holds. It says that the ideal leader is one that best protects morality, both in enacting moral laws and in being receptive to criticism by his or her constituents when these laws infringe morality.
By that standard, Barack Obama is the better option. Can anyone say that drone strikes would be less prevalent in a Romney administration than in Obama’s? Would the kill list be abandoned in favor of greater due process? Would a man advised by Bush-era relics such as John Bolton and Dan Senor be less likely to start a war without congressional approval? And, crucially, would a Romney administration be more receptive to pressure from civil libertarians like Friedersdorf to alter these “immoral” policies than Obama’s? I challenge the reader to answer any one of these question in the affirmative.
These questions are not merely “tactical”, as Friedersdorf might reply. They are inimitably moral. Because, as Kant suggests, we cannot separate our moral ideals from the political vehicle best suited to further them. Voting for the candidate who most closely aligns with our morals, while speaking out against injustices where they occur, is an active decision to advance morality through the political process where it counts. Abstaining from voting, and thus potentially allowing a candidate less sympathetic to our ideals to prevail, is the real abdication of moral duty.
So, Mr. Friedersdorf, please continue to rebuke Obama when you disagree with him, and feel free not to vote if you must. But don’t assert moral superiority by encouraging liberals to stay home, paving the way for an administration that would be decidedly less moral by your own standards.