Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Case for McCain




I like Barack Obama as the Democrat.  The problem though is the longer he has to campaign - the more promises he'll have to make - the more beholden he'll be to the Democrat behemoth - the less likely he'll be the transformative figure we want once elected.

Here is something I did not know about John McCain.  His 18 year old son is a Marine serving in Iraq.  George Bush can't claim that.  Neither can Dick Cheney nor Don Rumsfeld. 

Given his hawkish stance on the war that's quite an ace up his sleeve.  You'd think candidate McCain would blast the news from the rooftops, bring it up at every stump speech, and retort every critic with his son's name.  He doesn't. 

He doesn't hide it, but refuses to talk about him in any detail.

My guess, McCain's like that for 3 reasons.  First, because he is old school enough to keep candidate McCain different from citizen McCain.  Second, he doesn't want to put a target on his boy's head.  Third, it wasn't his decision.  It was his son's.  Perhaps a son raised by a Vietnam war hero wanting to make his old man proud, but a son nonetheless.

I'm not sure what's going to happen.  I predict John McCain will lose in the general election.  It's highly unlikely that he'll get the Republican base going and the Democratic turnout in November will slaughter him.  As a life-long Democrat, I say this with subdued joy.

For as much as I like Barack Obama the fact remains he wasn't there when Congress voted for war.  He didn't see the intelligence.  He claims to be a maverick but saying what you would have done in hindsight doesn't make you as a maverick.  Being a maverick makes you a maverick.  Hillary Clinton will tell you its not easy to oppose a Republican majority in Congress.  Well.... it's even harder when you're a Republican.

People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are FURIOUS that McCain got the nod because of his continued history of defying the party line to do what he feels is right.  North-East liberal that I am, McCain warms my bleeding heart.  More than that, he shows me he won't trade integrity for popularity.

John McCain is a straight shooter who will never get his time.  Sad.  He would have been a good one.