I’ve started to notice a new trend of “reasoning” in the pro-McCain, anti-Obama (it’s not a redundancy – there are those who don’t like McCain who also don’t like Obama for his skin color, Muslim middle name, etc.) crowd: “Even if liberals perceive McCain as a bad choice for president, what will Obama do to turn this country around? What’s so great about him?” Never mind the aroma of Hillary Didn’t Make It sour grapes emanating from them, the questions warrant some response and mine is that a) McCain’s policies will take us farther into the hole and b) it’s not simply about electing Obama, but a systematic, long-term policy on the part of the electorate to put those in the executive position who will help steer this country away from the rocks and keep us on a sustainable course. Again, whether Obama does good or not is yet to be seen, but why scrutinize him unlike any other president before he has been elected, much less started his first term?
Our choices suck, they almost always have, but we have to make the most of them. Sinfonian (via First Draft):
… I have difficulty completely abandoning the Obama camp, at least just for this one transgression. Yes, it’s a significant one, and it bodes extremely poorly for the future. Will a President Obama be as malleable, as willing to defer to the anti-American “conservative” elements of government, who deplore and dismantle the rule of law at every turn? I fear the answer to that question now. But I’m forced to admit that the only realistic alternative to Barack Obama is a dysfunctional enemy of truth and law with a hair-trigger temper and a propensity to crash and burn … Huggy Bear, of course.
There’s something more to this Obama candidacy than defeating the Sith and that is acknowledging the racial and cultural diversity of this country, instead of patently denying and discouraging the obvious. You don’t vote for someone because he’s black, but not voting for him because he’s black is equally greasy. Ultrabrown’s Manish:
… This presidential campaign has done much to shatter the notion of American political exceptionalism. If a native-born member of America“s largest minority can be smeared as a seekrit Mooslim, what chance does a brown man with a funny religion and an even less WASPy name have? Of necessity, Piyush Jindal grasped this young. An ambitious young up-and-comer in deep red Louisiana knows to which totems he must bow to be clasped to America“s breast as a native, not a Janissary.
The post and its summoning of the Tebbit Test is worth reading in its entirety.
In the final reckoning, even when you have to vote with what brung you, i.e. McCain or Obama, you can still vote with your head. There’s no reason to be dumb about it because you didn’t get your way.
