Deciding the Opposite

I think I’m tired of defending why I will vote for Barrack Obama. It doesn’t need defense. Sure, I am open about the decision and on occasion I will outline some of the reasons I think he is a better candidate than John McCain. Truth told, if we drop this argument down to a separation between the lesser of two evils, I believe (and yes, the connotation of belief as a religious element is intentional) that Obama is the lesser of the two evils and that John McCain is the greater of the two evils. Do I actually like either candidate? No. Nor do I think we are better off in the long run having one over the other. However, I am going in a different direction in my opinion than outlining why Obama is better than McCain.

Late at night a couple of times a week I’ve taken to driving codename: CAMPER around. There are two reasons behind this. First, he sleeps. Second, Erin sleeps. And since I need Erin to sleep so she can feel as though she has the ability to take care of codename: CAMPER, it is appropriate and necessary for me to make sure that the urgency Erin feels with codename: CAMPER is crying is removed. He falls asleep relatively quickly when in the car and I get to drive all over the place. Since I like driving and I don’t necessarily get to do it as often as I like, or for the kinds of distances I enjoy, this is a win-win: Erin gets rest and I get to feel as though I am psuedo road tripping. With that said, this is where I started to think about this and this is not an element to the argument.

John McCain is a bad choice as president. He has repeatedly shown that he makes rash and poor decisions. When it came time to decide on his running mate, instead of picking someone with any experience he decided on someone he could market as a “maverick” and who has no experience. What he did was choose someone that had no experience, brought net-zero to his ticket, and is anything but a maverick. In fact, McCain marketing himself as a “maverick” is a rather large joke as his record in Washington D.C. is pretty much what one would expect of a politician who represents his constituents in a relatively liberal state with a history (since McCain) of voting for the Democratic party. You could say that Representative Jim Matheson, Democrat, is a maverick because he rightly represents his conservative leaning constituents and votes (often) with the Republican party or the conservative line.

To sell oneself as a beacon of change or as a man who bucks the system, you actually have to buck the system. John McCain works perfectly within the system. He does just enough to stand out from his party. But he does not stand out sufficiently or in ways that indicate he is actually a maverick and working against his party and constituents. McCain is definitely not the poster child of the Republican Party, but he’s not been a defector (even though there has been serious talk about the possibility of his leaving the party) and has remained pretty steadfast within the party.

One problem that has never been addressed, for me, is the notion of advertising. Obama doesn’t hide who or what he is. I like that. I don’t necessarily like much of the Obama platform; but when compared against McCain, the notion of Truth in Advertising is important to me. When McCain speaks, whenever he has spoken, I don’t feel as though what is being shared is on the level. In my opinion, McCain shared what he thinks people want to hear and little else. The only time he has spoken when I didn’t immediately feel that the B.S. was piling up was when he spoke (Republican National Convention) about his military experience. There he was honest.

McCain’s honesty isn’t the only element at play. I don’t like the policy he promotes. While listening to an NPR interview with one of McCain’s policy advisers, the adviser stated that McCain’s policies are the current White House policy. That means that if you like what the current president is doing, and you want a continuation of the current foreign, military, economic, energy, and domestic policies then you should vote for McCain. With that said, Wiley, writer and illustrator of Non Sequitur, had this comic strip (October 6, 2008):

This illustrates one of my problems with McCain. He represents the current party and he is trying to represent the candidate that will mark change for the country. My problem is that if McCain’s policy book is the same policy book as the current President Bush (G.W.) and he claims he is the candidate for change, what are we really supposed to expect? Can we expect a different economic policy? A different foreign policy? A different any policy? These are trick questions because he’s already on record as using the current president and administrations policies as his own.

Either McCain is going to change things, and if so he will have proposed policies that will lead to change; or he is a part of the current administration and establishment. Since he has twenty-some years of experience in the senate, and he’s not making up any new policy, one cannot expect to have change from someone who has solidly established himself as for the current president and the current policies including the current war policy.

One of my chief complaints against G.W. is his war policy. The United States should never have gone into Iraq. We should’ve focused on Afghanistan and finding Osama bin Laden. Instead, G.W. found and made up excuses to attack Iraq. The country and the world was fed a pile of lies outlining why we should return to Iraq. As a result, what started (and allegedly ended) in 1991 was restarted in 2003 and is still going on. At this point, in my opinion, the Iraq War is a complete failure and it does not matter what surges or increased troop fighting and security is established because there is not sufficient evidence that it is independent of an Iraq ready to move beyond war. More, G.W. insists that the United States could have a never-ending presence in Iraq and McCain has echoed that.

If I am opposed to one of the defining wars of my lifetime, and the choice in candidates states that I pick between the candidate that is going to maintain the current policy and a candidate that is serious about bringing the troops home, what choice do I have? Especially if the Iraq War is a major issue for me.

Because McCain walks the walk and talks the talk of the current administration, I cannot in good conscience vote for him because he does not represent what I believe.

Along with policy, age is an issue. I think that we, as a nation, are focusing to much on the wrong candidate when it comes to age. McCain, if elected, would be the oldest man to swear the oath of office. Because statistics are not in his favor, especially factoring in anger issues and war related injuries (I heard today that almost every bone in his body has been broken), we cannot expect that McCain will last even the first four years of office let alone up to eight years. Because his running mate is Sarah Palin and because she, effectively, has zero experience at the national level and next to zero experience as an administrator that is sufficient to even begin an argument about how she is prepared or ready or should even be trusted as a potential president, we have to expect that either Sarah Palin or a replacement will be the president and since I do not trust Sarah Palin and I believe, based on interviews, her use of the Bridge to Nowhere as an example of how’s she bucked the system, and, pretty much, the lack of independent or prepared media interaction, I do not trust that she would, in effect, be a better president than Obama. In fact, of all the individuals who’ve thrown their hat into the presidential ring (to include Hillary Clinton), I think Palin is the worst possible person for the job, and I don’t have a positive opinion of any candidate (and yes, Mitt, that includes you). More, since McCain attacks Obama’s age we cannot trust his opinion of Obama based off of his equally unreliable opinion that Sarah Palin is a good choice to replace him.

However, the case for age actually should work against McCain. His experience in Washington D.C. is not a sufficient factor to indicate (at least to me) that he is prepared for the office. The well-documented anger problem he has suggests that he would be a poor administrator along the lines of Richard Nixon (who also had anger problems) and I would not vote for Nixon (even if he was alive and could run for president again). What makes McCain’s age a bigger factor, though, is less health problems (those are important), but more the theory that the requirement for president requires an individual who is flexible enough to be able to handle stress, changes, dealing with international leaders, and a whole host of other problems and issues and responsibilities. I don’t know a lot about McCain’s personal life, but I do know that with anger issues and other problems as well as age and his health, McCain is not a flexible person and by extension not a flexible leader.

We know now that Ronald Reagan was a rather absent minded president. He allowed a lot of people to make decisions around him and asked for abbreviated reports (one page) about the proposals. There is evidence that because of his age and past he literally didn’t hear a lot of what was going on. This would’ve affected his ability to lead and probably led to other people making decisions in his name. I know that McCain is not Reagan and he’s not Nixon, but he does have similarities to both. Because Reagan was an actor he could put on the appearance of someone who cared and he did it well. His being on camera and his being in the public eye led to being a beloved president. As for Nixon, he was popular (a lot like G.W.) but lost that when he failed to do what he said he would do. The outcome is that he is one of the more notorious presidents.

I ask: Does it make sense to vote for someone who embodies, publicly, all of the negative qualities of the past fifty years?

My answer is, “No.”

Age is a factor. There are reasons why we don’t elect men who are McCain’s age to be president. There is also a reason why the Constitution states that you cannot be president under age 35. Guess what? We know, instinctively, that people under a certain age and people over a certain age are less capable of doing a job. Yes, there are age ranges that, when mapped, CEO’s, governors, and presidents (realizing there will be outliers), governors and religious leaders are generally between their mid-30’s and topping out somewhere in their mid-60’s (and younger). Yes, there are examples of older and younger individuals, but the rule states that in order to be the most effective you can neither be too young or too old. Experience plays a part in this and helps describe where that range should fall. McCain falls outside of the range and as a result of that, if elected, will prove to be a very poor and costly choice as president. Plus, there are reasons why, traditionally, the retirement age is about 65.

Along with age, McCain has suggested that if he becomes president he will try to appropriate an additional $300 billion to purchase bad mortgages and will renegotiate the price of the mortgage at the current value and for a fixed interest rate. He has stated that until the housing market has been fixed we cannot expect the economy to get better and that the cost of houses needs to be stabilized. Unfortunately, McCain and Obama are almost in the same corner (they both voted for the $700 billion bailout) and neither, to include professionals, believe that housing prices should decrease. What makes this important is that housing prices, in general, have gone through serious inflation. Inflation is the process where the purchasing price of an item grows quicker than the actual value of that item. Inflation is an economic principle that allows for the appreciation of value, over lifetime ownership, to be greater than when it was purchased. The reason why this is important for a potential president is that the housing market has experienced rapid inflation and the costs of houses have far outpaced the ability for people to comfortably purchase them. Part of the reason this has happened is because the credit financiers created the subprime mortgage that, in turn, is the cause of the credit problem and the reason the governments in the world have had to bail out banks as well as taking over assets and changing the FDIC minimum insurance rates. The result is that we have experienced a period of growth that outstretched individuals abilities to pay for that growth, the credit economy that professionals claim is essential to the health of the American economy also means that when jobs are lost the ability to repay credit falls and as a result of that people default and the credit economy collapses.

The reason this is important is that to artificially keep housing prices where they are and to essentially give people tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars on the purchase price of their home is irresponsible. More, this form of bailout will result in higher interest rates overall and will make it harder for responsible individuals to get a loan for the mortgage. As a result of all of this, McCain has a shortsighted view of what will fix the economy and forshorten a recession. Truth told, there is little to nothing that can be done to stop the wonton sell off of stocks and the pushing down of housing prices. McCain cannot stop the resetting of housing prices to a reasonable level. It is going to happen. The only immediate outcome will be a short term windfall for those who essentially had their houses re-handed to them. The long-term effect will be a greater than average foreclosure rate and all that will actually happen is that McCain will delay the process and not stop the process. Regardless of what the government does, the outcome is that the markets are going to reset to lower levels. Costs are going to become more reasonable. And the inflation that has been happening for a bunch of years will result in lower house prices with a lot of people losing money and owing more than their house is worth.

Since I am opposed to the financial bailout, and would like to see each person who has voted for it removed from office (and I believe in the next three election cycles you will see a massive turnover in both Houses of Congress), McCain suggesting that he can fix the problem by throwing more money it at is foolish, dangerous, and plain stupid. The reason people make fun of him for not using a computer has nothing to do with the story his campaign is now telling people (McCain had almost all of his bones broken and as a result cannot lift his arms very far over his shoulders that, somehow, means he cannot at a regular desk or table (that does not require his arms to be above his shoulders) cannot use a computer… something doesn’t follow here) and everything to do with his lack of ability to relate to the people whose votes he is trying to woo.

I liked Reagan. I still do. He could relate. I think that Bill Clinton made politics, at least for a while, interesting, though I would never vote for him or Hillary. He related. I think that every successful politician has promoted himself in a way that allows the public to, in some way, relate to him. Even the very wealthy presidents have successfully accomplished this. McCain, married a wealthy woman, suggested that wealth did not start until earning at least $5 million a year. This is out of touch and no matter how his team spins him, he remains out of touch.

The reason I will not vote for McCain is because he does not represent anything that I like or want to see happen in this country. He doesn’t even pretend to. As a result, I can try and defend every little red flag or warning sign that pops up about Obama and makes people a little stressed about him or I can merely state that I believe that between the two candidates Obama represents more of where I think this country should go and is in a better age and experience position than McCain with more flexibility to handle the job. I think that when you look at the candidates, their positions, and compare it to what you want to see with this country, where you want it to go, and what is important picking the candidate either by closest political ideological comparison (that requires actually reviewing platforms and not just trusting that a party indicates a candidates platform) or by seeing which candidate doesn’t match what you believe (again requires review).

In this context, John McCain does not even closely mirror my beliefs and as a result I would be foolish to vote for the man.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

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