Such measures may ultimately be necessary, but they will not help Georgia survive as an independent democracy. Moreover, even after the outrage in Georgia, there are issues of common interest — such as energy, climate change, and Iran — on which the West and the Kremlin must cooperate. This was true even during the Cold War, and remains true today, yet McCain seems not to recognize it.
In the end, all presidential elections come down to the intangibles of leadership. The vote for a president is a sort of private contract directly between each voter and his or her preferred choice. Who do you want to see on your television screen for the next four years? To whom do you wish to entrust the nation’s fate?
Here again, the contrasting styles of Obama and McCain offer a clear choice between a calm and confident man and a highly emotional one, between a major change in the nation’s direction and a minor one, between a conciliatory style and a more combative one.
Finally, in a year in which the Democrats are certain to increase their majority in both houses of Congress, an Obama victory would offer the Democrats control of both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since 1994, and with it the possibility of legislative achievement after years of stalemate. After so many years of polarization at home and unilateralism abroad, the choice for president seems clear.
Richard Holbrooke is a former US ambassador to the UN and the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in Bosnia.
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