Reply #6: You ask a very complicated question for me personally MVD [View All]

[RFKHumphreyObama]

I'll try and answer it as best as I can :hi:

I first became interested in politics, history and current affairs in the late 1980s –when I was eight or nine –and I think for the first decade of my life, I was either a conservative Democrat or a liberal-to-moderate Republican by the standards of American terminology. On many social issues, I would have classified myself as leaning toward being progressive –particularly on racial and indigenous affairs –but I still had some quite conservative beliefs on some policy issues. In foreign policy I was very hawkish but at the same time I very much believed in internationalism and multilateralism. In terms of economic policy, I was probably quite liberal

I supported the first Bush Administration but then, during the 1992 presidential election, I became inspired by Clinton and I think that was my first flirtation with being a Democrat in terms of the American political landscape. I soon became disillusioned with Clinton because I disagreed with some of his domestic and foreign policy decisions during his first two years in office but, after the Republican Revolution, it woke me up to how evil and repulsive the right wing Gingrich Republicans were and I switched back to Clinton and became an extremely devoted and steadfast Clinton loyalist. I greatly admired the job that Clinton did as President and his visionary policies in many areas and, up until the 2008 primaries, I was one of his staunchest and most passionate defenders. I was disgusted by Ken Starr and all the impeachment nonsense but, at the same time, I was not solidly in the Democratic camp in the sense that, in the post-Clinton aftermath, a particular type of Republican candidate would have been able to woo me back. At that time someone like John McCain or Lamar Alexander would have appealed to me but at the same time so would someone like Bill Bradley or Paul Wellstone (although I didn’t get to know about Senator Wellstone until much later)

All this coincided with politics in my own country, which also had a deep impact on me. I was initially supportive of the Liberal Party (actually the equivalent to the US Republican Party in my country) because at the time it had a very young and dynamic leader who, while being ultra-conservative in terms of economic policy, was actually quite left-wing or at least moderate in terms of social and foreign policy (he would later go on to oppose the Iraq War and many of the Bush Administration’s policies for instance). Our centre-left Prime Minister at the time was also quite brash and arrogant and his government was deeply unpopular. But things began to change when the Liberal Party went through a leadership transition and elected John Howard as its leader. I had never liked Howard –I had always seen him as the reactionary, racist, sexist, Bush-like snake he was –and it made me re-evaluate my own political beliefs. I subsequently also found that, even though I had some qualms about the leadership style of our center-left Prime Minister, I actually agreed with a lot of his policies. By the 1996 election, I was aligned with our Labor Party. I remember the night that Howard won government. I quite literally had nightmares for about three days afterward because I was so much in despair. And Howard acted just as I had predicted and only got worse as time went on. Due to my strong dislike of the Howard government’s policies and due to some personal reasons as well, I joined the Labor Party that year and became actively involved.

But I think my complete transformation to being a Democrat and a progressive really only came full circle after the 2000 presidential election and also with my entry into university. At university, I encountered a variety of different lifestyles and political beliefs and became a lot more liberal and open-minded in my thinking on some issues where I had previously been conservative. Meanwhile I saw Bush and the Republicans in all their glory once the Republicans took office and I realized I had nothing in common with the GOP and what it represented. Those two factors really shaped my identity as it is today in terms of the American political landscape