First Principles

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen posted a particularly mind-numbing article today, angry that Obama isn’t angry or mean enough to counter the unforgivable meanness of Sarah Palin.  (Maybe he feels better after Obama’s unfortunate “pig wearing lipstick” comments today.)

Yawn.  Hysterical liberals upset that their emperor is naked is the sun rising in the east.  But there was a part of his frustrated rant that compared Senator McCain’s survival as a POW with Senator Obama’s “brave” career choices that bear inspection.

In the biographies of both presidential candidates are episodes of pure wonderment. No man can read about McCain’s time in a Vietnamese prison and not wonder, “Could I do that?” For most of us, the answer — the truthful answer — is no.

For Obama, that episode has nothing to do with physical courage, but of moral commitment. At the age of 22 — a graduate of Columbia University and already making good money as a financial researcher, he walked away to work with the unemployed and alienated in Chicago. Obama, who later went on to Harvard Law School, knew precisely what a valuable commodity he was and how much money he could have made. He turned away from all that — or, at least postponed it, and not because community organizing was the route to political success. (Just name one.) Once again, ask yourself if you would have done it.

Now, I feel like I can speak with some authority on these two “episodes of pure wonderment.”  I was a Naval officer for 6 years, and I also went to a top tier law school and “turned away” making tons of money for the chance to work with the “unemployed and alienated.”  The two are hardly comparable.  That Mr. Cohen thinks they are speaks to his ignorance and total lack of perspective.

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First, I agree with his being in awe of McCain surviving – and refusing early release – as a POW and wondering if I could do it.  I was trained in the Code of Conduct that McCain successfully clung to like a life raft, but I don’t know if I could endure what he endured with either my life or my honor in tact.  I don’t think anyone does until they’re in that position.

But Cohen also refers to that ordeal as an example of “physical courage,” which completely misses the point and diminishes the importance of the story.  It took physical courage just to get in his airplane, knowing he was likely to be shot at.  Hell, it takes physical courage just to take off and land on a floating, bobbing, moving airstrip.  But it takes a lot more than just physical courage to do what McCain did.

It took a deep sense of honor and “moral commitment” to survive his injuries, to flout his interrogators, to communicate and organize his fellow prisoners, and to say “no” when the VC wanted to send him home early.  McCain was ready and willing to give his life in the service of a code of ethics, and to prevent the despair of his fellow POWs and the propaganda coup of the communists that would have surely been the result of his failure.

It’s telling that Cohen uses the term “moral commitment” to distinguish Obama’s post college career choice from McCain’s actions in Hanoi, as if one required only Conan-esque daring, which the other is an ultimate test of character.  That he honestly equivocates these two things with a straight face is just head-shaking.

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Then Obama gets kudos for turning down oodles of money working as a “financial researcher” to go work with the downtrodden victims of Reaganomics.  Gag.

Now, I graduated from a top 25 law school.  I happen to think such rankings are a bit silly, but lawyers tend to be slaves to such symbols of prestige.  I am confident that, had I chosen to, I could have gone to work for a big firm, making lots of money, and spending lots of time in my office.

But that’s not what I wanted to do.  I’d be bored by that kind of work.  I wanted to be in court every day, working with people directly, being allowed to be independent and have my legal and strategic judgments be respected, and doing as many trials as I could.  I really like criminal law, and I always hated “billing” – keeping track of every 6 minute increment spent on a case so a client can be properly charged.  I stumbled on the county Public Defender’s office through a friend of a relative, and discovered it was an incredible working environment.  It fit my bill exactly (and then some!), so I pounced at the opportunity.

Now, it’s true that I work with the poor, the disaffected, the downtrodden (often by their own feet), etc.  I protect people from mistakes and worse by police officers.  I enjoy advocating on behalf of people, even when my clients aren’t exactly model citizens.  Sometimes I think I even make differences in their lives, and I find that boundlessly satisfying.  I think what I do is important, and I’m proud to be a defender of everyone’s Constitutional rights (not just the rights of the defendants).  It’s safe – I don’t have to drum up my own business, or worry about job security.  And I love the combat of the courtroom.

But then, I also don’t think what I do is any more important or noble than the attorney who represents people in contract disputes, business formation, or estate planning.

I didn’t take this job over another because of some deep and extraordinary “moral commitment.”  It took no great reservoir of courage.  I took it because it was the kind of work I wanted to be doing.  You could even call it selfish.  I’d be bored out of my mind doing most other legal jobs.

I’m certainly not alone.  Hundreds of thousands of other law students make the same decision every year.  It’s not unusual, and it certainly shouldn’t evoke “pure wonderment” in anyone.

I suspect Obama could say the same thing.  I don’t know what a financial researcher is, but just the sound of it makes me want to stab a fork in my eye to distract me from the boredom the very phrase generates.  I suspect it had a lot to do with sitting in a cubicle and poring over reams of data, compiling it into reports, rinse, lather, repeat.  For someone with Barack Obama’s gregarious personality, I can’t imagine anything more horrifying, no matter what the salary looked like.

Me being a public defender is not a personal sacrifice.  And in just the same way, neither was Obama’s decision to give “community organizing” a go.

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But let’s look at that money thing, shall we?

Upon graduation from the Naval Academy in 1958, ENS John McCain’s base pay plus subsistence and housing allowances was $355.68 a month – $4,268.12 per year.  Not the kind of bucks a financial researcher might have made, to be sure, even in 1958.

But let’s move it up.  Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983.  Had McCain graduated from Annapolis that year, his starting pay (again, with allowances) would have been $1,362.80 per month, or $16,353.60 per year.  This Class of ’83 LT(jg) McCain would be making $22,485.60 three years later (flight pay not included).  Not too shabby, but hardly extravagant.  And McCain didn’t have two years on Wall Street to bank up before he went to flight school, although to be fair, he also didn’t have any student loans.

Barack Obama claims to have started out only making $14,000 per year as a community organizer ($12K plus another $2K for a car), but his employer later reported that this was merely a training salary, and that, “After three or four months, he was up to 20,000, and after three years he was probably making $35,000 or so.”

And then there are the intangibles.  Let’s be honest – even on Chicago’s South Side, a community organizer is far less likely to get shot than a combat pilot in Vietnam.

Who’s really making the sacrifice here?  If Obama made a “wonderment inducing” sacrifice because he took a pay cut to be a community organizer, and should be accorded much wow factor, then his opponent gets that and then some.

Sacrifice Points Advantage: McCain.

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And then there’s the little matter of LCDR McCain’s career options when he returned from Hanoi.

Barack Obama again brags that he “turned down lucrative job offers” after law school to return to Chicago to help out the oppressed.  And I’m sure he did.

But when McCain returned home from Vietnam, it made the front page of the New York Times.  He was well connected and could have easily left the Navy then to enter politics, work for a big defense contractor as a consultant, fly commercial, or do anything else a determined, connected, and semi-famous man could think of doing.  He could have sat around the house playing Tiddlywinks collecting disability checks.

Instead, he stayed in the Navy for another eight years.

Now, like my own career decisions, I don’t really consider this a “sacrifice”.  But compared to Barack Obama’s “sacrifice” in becoming a civil rights lawyer with a small firm in Chicago?  This isn’t a comparison Obama should be inviting.

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And yet, in spite of all of this, can you imagine what the reaction would have been had McCain run for president after only 2 years in the Congress?

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Finally, Richard Cohen defies us to “just name one” political success that has arisen from being a community organizer.  Uhhhhh…..  How ’bout the guy you’re writing the article about, Rich?