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A Personal Perspective on Obama
posted Saturday, 5 July 2008
Sherry, an old and trusted friend writes: "I am so torn about this upcoming election."
In an ideal world, we would go back to the beginning of the primary campaign and start all over, with an entirely news set of candidates. Now that we are approaching what appears to be Hobson's Choice, I had to answer Sherry in these words:
Here's how I see it:
1. The next president is going to have to deal with the Iraq war one way or another, and there's a distinct probability of a shooting war between Israel and Iran. Not to mention the down-side possibilities in China, North Korea and Venezuela.
Under the circumstances, how could we possibly benefit from a Commander-in-Chief with absolutely no direct military experience?
2. Senator Obama, as a candidate, has said that certain aspects of his life are "off limits" for discussion--Reverend Wright, Michelle Obama, and more. He even took personal offense at a statement that George W. Bush made before the Knesset, in which the President referred in the most general fashion to the politics of appeasement. It's pretty clear that Bush's comment referred equally to Obama, Senator Clinton, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy and at least a dozen other Democrat legislators. But Obama took PERSONAL offense, and made a huge fuss about how he had been--in the modern parlance--disrespected.
Given that reaction, can we assume that the shit will REALLY hit the fan if Ahmadinejad or Chavez refer to President Obama as a "nigger?" Don't think it's beyond possibility; between the two of them these guys have called Bush "Satan" and "Hitler."
3. Senator Obama has laid all the problems of the USA at the feet of the Baby Boom generation, in his zeal to defeat Hillary. Now, the two of them are attempting to forge party unity. How can he possibly un-say what he has said on this subject, and given what he has said, how can any boomer (especially as we approach retirement age) trust this guy not to act against the interests of this entire generation?
4. Senator Obama's voting record shows that he vociferously supported every gun control measure that came in front of him. When a huge majority of the House and Senate co-signed an amicus brief in the Heller v. D.C. case, Obama was one of a very small minority who refused to sign it. Yet, less than a week after the Heller decision was announced, that same Senator Obama was mugging for the cameras as he said that, yup, he supports the individual-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment.
5. In Grand Rapids, after receiving the endorsement of John Edwards, Obama gave a stem-winder of a speech that hit every one of the liberal Democrat/big-government talking points, in fairly rapid succession. I have not yet found a transcript of the speech, but I heard most of it on radio, live. Obama leapt from one liberal hot-button to another, with absolutely no regard for the contradictions among the numerous things he was enumerating as important values. It was obvious that the speech was meant to create an emotional frenzy, not convey believable information.
By contrast, there was almost zero press coverage of a speech given either that day or the next by Senator McCain, in which he outlined the details of what he expected (not HOPED) to accomplish during his first year as President.
6. By this year's election day, Senator Obama will not quite have completed his first term in the U.S. Senate. He was only three when the 1964 Civil Rights act was passed, and turned seven during 1968, the most tumultuous year in American domestic politics. For nearly his entire life, Obama has been the beneficiary of the civil rights progress that people of his parents' and grandparents' generation fought (and occasionally died) for. Yet he is a self-proclaimed expert on the sufferings of black people.
7. Obama was only twelve years old when we left Vietnam, yet he presumes to say that the generation which largely fought that doomed war is made up of drug-addled losers, who messed up the US. Incidentally, only two Boomers have occupied the White House--each of them equally egregious in his own way. I'm sorry, but I do not think that either George W. or William Jefferson Clinton are representative of our entire generation. Obama does. Never mind the vast progress that boomers have made in the physical sciences, medicine and technology...
8. In the last month or two, the Obama campaign has had "associates" of one stripe or another criticizing McCain, in some ways that seem unfair and on some issues where the facts cannot be proven. When Obama himself is confronted with these statements, he claims they do not represent his own views. Can we expect him to run his Cabinet the same way?
Cute aside: In one neighborhood where I had a small business, there was a neighborhood business association. The president was a man we will call "Freddie," and his wife/business partner a woman named "Marcy." Without fail, at every meeting Freddie would make an impassioned (and occasionally sensible) statement about some problem or another in the neighborhood. This would be followed, almost as if by parliamentary procedure, by Marcy seeking the floor and starting her own speech with the words, "Freddie didn't exactly say what he meant. What Freddie meant to say was..." (at which point she would thoroughly discredit every word of his little speech. Now, at the neighborhood level, it's funny--in a kind of cruel way--to watch a man being regularly emasculated by his wife in public. God knows, the two of them deserved each other, being a couple of pretentious jerks. But in national and international politics, we cannot afford this sort of entertainment.
9. Senator Obama has expressed support for a number of proposed UN treaties (such as the Law of the Sea, and the several Small-Arms Proliferation treaties) that, if signed by the US, would supersede and nullify parts of our own Consitution.
I write this as someone who is no fan of John McCain. Mr. McCain's voting record on gun control has been inconsistent, and his co-sponsorship of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is unforgivable. But I think he is far less likely to do anything so precipitously stupid as Obama. The Democrat party will likely remain in control of both houses of Congress, and I trust the checks-and-balances system to nullify any of McCain's worst possible decisions. In a scenario where one party has control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government, there are no guarantees. This, in my opinion, makes it necessary to vote for ANY Republican presidential candidate over ANY Democratic one, irrespective of the details.
...just one old fart's opinion, but you DID ask.
Stan
comments (1)
musicnotes
1. Mo'thanskin (Roosevelt) left...
Tuesday, 8 July 2008 12:46 am :: http://mothanskin.blog-city.com
Stan, I am not and have never been an "Obama worshipper" but between Obama
and McCain, I consider Obama to be "the lesser of two evils". But you and I
are on the same page when it comes to having Obama with a Republican
majority Congress or McCain with a Democrat majority Congress, to keep the
next President, whether Obama or McCain in check from going to excesses or
extremes. I have now embraced libertarian principles of constitutional
civil liberties and limited government. Ron Paul or Bob Barr won't be
President in '08, but American desperately needs to return to the
Constitution, in my opinion.