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As the 2008 presidential race enters its final phase, I find myself increasingly convinced that the choice facing voters this year is not merely a choice between liberal and conservative, nor certainly a choice between change and experience, but rather a choice between between smart and stupid. I'm not suggesting that everyone who votes for McCain/Palin is stupid, but even smart people make stupid choices sometimes, and I have become firmly convinced that a vote for McCain/Palin would be, not merely a conservative choice, nor certainly a choice for greater experience over change, but a stupid choice.
Until "Black Monday" this week on Wall Street brought Americans back to reality, the McCain/Palin campaign almost appeared to have succeeded in turning the 2008 presidential race from one all about the economy, foreign policy, and national security to one all about lipstick, mooseburgers, and small-town family values pitted against the arugula-eating urban elite. With an economy in chaos, millions of Americans without health care, and war still raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Republicans almost seemed to have succeeded in swinging it all back to the "culture war" that has always served them so well. To the extent that it has reminded Americans what is truly at stake in this election, and perhaps even prevented some voters being duped into making a truly stupid choice, I say thank God for Black Monday.
There is no intelligent reason to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin. John McCain is a bitter, befuddled old war-horse with an infamous anger management problem and demonstrated hostility toward peoples of the world whom he considers enemies: Recall that McCain once admitted to a deeply-felt hatred of "gooks," that in a meeting once he physically assaulted a Nicaraguan representative, that on multiple occasions he has joked about killing innocent Iranian civilians, and that on multiple occasions he has blown up and cursed colleagues on the floor of the US Senate. As diplomat-in-chief of the United States, representing us at summit meetings with top leaders from around the world, McCain would be not only an embarrassment but a disaster. He has admitted that he knows little about economics, and offers nothing on the economy beyond the same anti-tax gibberish we have heard from Republicans for decades. He can't even remember how many houses he owns. McCain's qualifications for the presidency were perhpas best summarized by his Republican colleague Thad Cochran of Mississippi: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.... He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
Sarah Palin, meanwhile, is a brassy, overconfident religious nut from Alaska who thinks she's ready to be not only Vice-President but indeed President of the United States. Besides the fact of having seved as mayor of tiny Wasilla and briefly as governor of Alaska, Palin's entire record is a sham: Her history on spending and earmarks flies in the face of her claims to be a reformer, she has used her official powers to pursue personal vendettas and appointed unqualified high-school friends to important government positions, and she claims that being able to see Russia from Alaska counts as foreign policy experience. As Palin attempts to ride her "hockey mom" shtick into the vice-president's office, even McCain supporters like Richard Cohen and David Brooks have been forced to concede that she is unqualified for the office she seeks, and that McCain's choice of Palin does not reflect well on his own judgment. The Palin persona was best described by John Seery as "the personification of small-minded smugness, an utter lack of humility, a kind of self-righteous entitlement based on little more than puffed-up narrowness.... a sanctified, self-satisfied presumptuousness that flows from sheer naivete about oneself and the world and manifests itself in giddy ambition."
The McCain/Palin ticket has LOSER written all over it. Trouble is, so did Bush/Cheney.
Mark C. Eades http://www.mceades.com
