Who Do I Support for President?

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An Apology

I apologize to the readers of this blog for not having offered any new postings lately. I had an important deadline to meet on a literary project that has consumed me these past three weeks. I beg your forgiveness.

The Choice in November

The conventional conventions have descended onto the wheat field of American politics, inspiring and haunting us simultaneously. Our emotions ran the gamut as we took in the sounds and images: stadium speeches, video screen presidents, elephant hats, Teddy Kennedy, 99,000 luft balloons, an Arctic Circle running mate, anti-war protesters, and what Glenn Campbell would call “a load of compromisin’/ on the road to my horizon.” As the conventions unfolded, most of us had already chosen a side in the political chess game. I say “chess” because our society decided, way back when, to invite only two players to battle it out in the political arena, Republicans and Democrats. Sure, third party candidates have shown up from time to time, but they are still largely considered an aberration by most voters, a shop of curios on the Main Street of politics.

I get the feeling that this two pronged approach has become largely inadequate for most voters. How does it accommodate the pro-life, anti-war, proponent of universal health care? How does it satisfy the anti-war, anti-big government, supporter of school vouchers? The citizens who hold these combinations of beliefs cannot really fit well in either party. At least one platform orthodoxy is violated. The whole process is further complicated by the fact that presidential candidates don’t always agree with the mainstream of their party. For example, conservative voters, who strongly agree with the platform of the Republican Party, may feel very trepedatious about supporting John McCain because he supported legislation that provided a road map to citizenship for undocumented workers. The frustrated voter has two choices: join a third party movement or weigh their mixed bag of issues on the scales of American politics and see which side comes down, the blue or the red. Alas, I left out a third choice all too poisonous for any democracy and very prevalent in ours: staying home and not voting at all. In the final analysis, most voters end up choosing a candidate who approximates their core values and beliefs.

Where Do I Stand?

The candidate who best approximates my political beliefs has not been in the news much. He is a man of great integrity who continues to run in spite of the impossible odds stacked against him. And yet, despite his virtue, I do not support his candidacy. His name is Ralph Nader.

It pains me to admit it, but my refusal to support Nader derives from practical considerations, the Aristotelian rather than the Platonic side of my brain. He simply cannot win due to the entrenched culture of a body politic that is distrustful of third party candidates. I would not be so cynical to call a vote for Nader as being “wasted” --a mantra often heard in the past. In fact, a vote for Nader is a vote that indicates “fierce integrity.” But, it’s a vote that we cannot afford right now; the stakes are too high. A vote for Nader at this time would jeopardize the election of the only man who offers hope for the future of our country and has a chance to win at the polls! Despite the claims of Ralph Nader and his supporters, his 2000 candidacy played a big part in giving us George W. Bush --the worst president in the history of our nation.

Well, I’m sure you have already figured it out.

I support Barrack Obama!

It is not that I have any Messianic illusions about Barrack Obama. I do not agree with him on many issues and have been discouraged at times when I saw him shift towards the political mainstream when the Democratic Nomination appeared to be in his grasp. But when I placed my core beliefs on the two party scale the Obama side came down in a thunderous crash. Why did Obama outweigh McCain in my judgment?

(1) Obama regards the sad state of our health care system, the gulag healthipelago, as a broken system that needs to be fixed. John McCain is happy with the status quo of nearly 50 million Americans being uninsured and even more being under insured.
(2) At a time when most of the mainstream politicians on both sides of the aisle sharpened their axes and voted to give The Bush Administration carte blanche to conduct their disastrous war in Iraq, Barrack Obama publicly and courageously opposed it. John McCain supported (and continues to support) the war.
(3) Barrack Obama understands the environmental realities of our world. He knows that decisive action needs to be taken to avoid a planetary, ecological catastrophe. McCain prefers to ignore the problem and picked a running mate who holds the medieval view that global warming is not man made.
(4) After 8 years of the worst administration in the history of our country, it is truly refreshing to support a man of vision and intelligence. John McCain simply wants to continue the policies of The Bush Administration.

I do not feel that John McCain is a “bad man.” He has shone vestiges of flare and originality throughout his long, complicated career. But he is out of touch with the problems that face the citizens of this nation. He is the wrong man for these times.