Grinnell's Adelman for Obama

Another conservative endorsement for Barack Obama. This time from Ken Adelman, who was President Reagan's Ambassador to the U.N. and then Director of the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and accompanied Reagan on his superpower summits with Mikhail Gorbachev.

And, Adelman has an Iowa connection.... he was a philosophy major at Grinnell College before attending Georgetown University, where he received a Masters in Foreign Service Studies and Doctorate in Political Theory.

Last Friday in a Huffington Post op-ed, "Why a Staunch Conservative Like Me Endorsed Obama," Adelman explains why he decided for the first time in his life to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate.

This paragraph about sums it up, "McCain's temperament -- leading him to bizarre behavior during the week the economic crisis broke -- and his judgment -- leading him to Wasilla -- depressed me into thinking that "our guy" would be a(nother) lousy conservative president. Been there, done that."

Adelman rejects the Bush-McCain brand of conservatism... he labels himself as a "staunch conservative" but not a "neo con."

Adelman explains: "I was never liberal along the way (having campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, when at that hotbed of lefty politics, Grinnell College). I'm really a con-con.

"And not a staunch Republican, as I've never been to a Republican rally or convention. So I've considered myself less of a partisan than an ideologue. I cared about conservative principles, and still do, instead of caring about the GOP....

"Granted, McCain's views are closer to mine than Obama's. But I've learned over this Bush era to value competence along with ideology. Otherwise, our ideology gets discredited, as it has so disastrously over the past eight years."

So... as we've seen time and time again these past few months, conservatives of character and conscience disavow the Bush-McCain failed faux-conservative ideology.

Adelman's final thought, "...I concluded that McCain would not -- could not -- be a good president. Obama just might be."