A Repug Sees The Light Of Day For Obama

This McClatchy story tells us that the “Republicans for Obama” just picked up a new member…

"This is simply not a time for politics as usual," said Jim Leach, a former congressman from Iowa who endorsed Obama on Tuesday.

Leach…said he thought that Obama would return the presidency to a less partisan style that looked to more international cooperation and was "rooted in very old American values."

The group's strategy will focus on winning support for Obama in states that have tended to favor Republican presidential candidates, such as North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa and Colorado, as well as Ohio and Florida. The group will launch a Web site this week and plans campaign appearances on Obama's behalf.

Jim Leach has kind of an interesting story; as noted here, he is currently the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University.

He served in an Iowa district that trended Democratic more and more over his time in the U.S. Congress. His career in public life began when he entered the United States Foreign Service and served as a delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the U.N. General Assembly. He also resigned his commission when President Richard Nixon fired Watergate independent counsel Archibald Cox and Attorney General Eliot Richardson over Watergate in 1973, according to Wikipedia.

(Actually, that’s not 100 percent correct; Nixon told Richardson to fire Cox and Richardson refused and resigned; the same occurred with William Ruckelshaus, Richardson’s deputy AG, who, coincidentally, has also endorsed Obama. The person who ended up finally firing Cox was, as noted here, the former U.S. Solicitor General, a fellow named Robert Bork.)

I would argue that Leach embodied what a Republican typically represented in this country for a long time, and that would be someone who was fiscally conservative, socially moderate, and somewhat expansionist internationally. Also, though he voted in favor of the first Gulf War resolution in 1991, he voted against the 2002 resolution, only one of six Repugs to do so.

However, I’m not going to tell you that Leach found the perfectly moderate way each time. On the matter of choice, though he supported it into the third trimester (should be unconditional as far as I’m concerned), he opposed public funding. However, he did support stem cell research, considering it (quite rightly, I believe) as a “pro-life” position.

Also, though he expressed surprise at former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr’s sick preoccupation with the matter of how many times Bill Clinton unzipped his pants, he nonetheless voted in favor of the articles of impeachment for what he considered to be Clinton’s lies under oath. Finally, his name is attached to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill that effectively destroyed the Glass-Steagall Act and clouded financial transparency, to the point where we are in the present state of our financial markets trying to dig out from the subprime loan implosion.

So no, if I were looking for someone in public life who I would consider to be worthy of emulation, it would not be Leach (not completely anyway). However, I believe he is a man of principle who wants to do right by this country, correctly surmising that we have lost our way, and Barack Obama represents the best hope for rebuilding our nation and restoring our prestige.

So welcome aboard, Prof. Leach. God willing, we’ll all make history together in November.

And speaking of support for Obama...

Update 8/17/08: Interesting stuff from Cliff Schecter on this...