Neobama Fukuyama

yahoo news c/o Ben Smith, Politico

Francis Fukuyama, neocon-inspiration-turned-apostate, backs Obama in an interview:

ELEANOR HALL: So which president do you think would be the best placed to handle these challenges? Would it be President McCain, President Obama or a President Clinton?

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: Well, it is a little bit difficult. In my own thinking, since I have to vote in this next election, I personally actually don't want to see a Republican reelected because I have a general view of the way democratic processes should work and if your party is responsible for a big policy failure, you shouldn't be rewarded by being re-elected.

I think of all the Republicans, McCain in many ways is the most attractive but he is still is too, you know, he comes from the school that places too much reliance on hard military power as a means of spreading American influence.

I think in many ways, Hillary Clinton represents both the good and the bad things of the 1990s and there is something in the style of the Clintons that never really appealed to me and so I think of all the three, Obama probably has the greatest promise of delivering a different kind of politics.

ELEANOR HALL: That is a big shift for you, isn't it? To go from a registered Republican voter to an Obama supporter.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: Yeah, but I think a number of people are doing that this year because I think the world is different at this juncture and we need a different foreign policy and there is this larger question about in American politics, I do think that we are at the end of a long generational cycle that began with Reagan's election back in 1980 and I think unless you have a degree of competition and alternation in power, certain ideas and habits are going to get too entrenched.

ELEANOR HALL: Barack Obama talks a lot about sort of big change and what sort of revolution do you expect him to deliver in the United States if he does become president?

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: That is an interesting question because I think that one of our problems in the United States is that the existing polarisation has gotten very debilitating, where you cannot talk about certain issues like raising taxes or starting a program in investing in infrastructure without this being cast in this old ideological debate. So I think that he probably has got a better chance at trying to forge a different kind of rhetoric. Different ways of thinking about that.

ELEANOR HALL: Do you expect to see a real shift in America? In 10 years' time will it be a very different place if Barack Obama is elected?

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: I think the shift will happen regardless of who is elected. I think that the politics of the country is going to be different. I think in tone and certainly in terms of the international perception of the United States, if you elected someone like Obama, it is really going to be really quite something I think to witness and I think that is why a lot of people would like to see him as president because it symbolises the ability of the United States really in some way to renew itself in a very unexpected way.

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flashback: 2.28.2006

& Fukuyama on t-bus