McCain and Obama

I got into an email discussion with a moderately liberal friend from Philadelphia named Mike, and ended up writing a lengthy treatise regarding the candidates, so I'm including it here:

There is NO WAY that Wright or Sharpton will have anything to do with an Obama administration. McCain has JUST as many questionable people within his circle, and goodness knows, Bush has had some very odd associations over the years. It's not fair to judge the candidate by the wacky stuff that people they know say and do.

I also don't think it's fair to judge Wright based on 30 seconds worth of rhetoric cherry picked from a long and respected career. He was a major positive force in his (very troubled) community for DECADES, and THAT'S why Obama went to his church. Wright did more good for more people in his lifetime than 50 average people have done. I don't think Obama's association with Wright reflects poorly on him at all - quite the opposite. I think it's a damn shame that a few intemperate remarks can overshadow a person's lifetime of devoted accomplishment.

And McCain has said some pretty, er, interesting stuff over the years - check it out (he called his wife a cunt in public, for one).

Just for the record, I'm not a single issue voter AT ALL, but McCain's position on abortion is a deal breaker for me - he's not even moderate or on the fence. I MIGHT make allowances (like I did for, say, Casey, when he ran for governor), if his positions on other issues were fantastic, but they're not.

Bottom line, I think McCain would be bad for this country. Despite making a show of being moderate, his policy positions are quite conservative - why doesn't he embrace this instead of trying to obscure it? Sure, he's out of step with conservative dogma in a few places, like immigration policy, but otherwise, he is a very run-of-the-mill Republican.

Perhaps more troubling to me - he has a reputation as a hot-headed person who has alienated a lot of his colleagues in the Senate - you can easily read about it. Obama may be "inexperienced" but at least he's unlikely to fly off the handle the first time someone disagrees with him. Which is more important?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/129660

He has made a big show of crusading against soft money, but that was based less on principles than it was a strategic necessity after the Keating Scandal, which almost ended his career. His campaign is suffused with lobbyists, just like every other politician's. SAYING you're against soft money is not the same as actually being against soft money.

I also think he has picked some odd advisors, like Phil Gramm (and check out McCain's own Karl Rove, Charles Black - he's an interesting dude).

He has a strange attitude about war and foreign policy, based on his experiences in Viet Nam - there was a Newsweek piece that covered this in detail.

Look, I grew up in Arizona, my brother was an intern with McCain when he (my brother) was in law school (back in the 1990s), because McCain was on the Native American Affairs Committee (after law school, my brother worked for the Apache tribe in Arizona before becoming a public defender in Tucson). I don't think McCain is a bad person, but I don't think he'd be a great president. I think we've had a tough guy in the office for 8 years, and maybe it's time to let a cooler, more diplomatically-oriented person have a shot. That's my thinking anyway.

And Obama has no less foreign policy experience than Bill Clinton had when he was elected, so I find that argument to be unconvincing and sort of odd.

I may be a knee-jerk liberal, but I like to think that I'm a very well-informed knee-jerk liberal. I read a LOT, from a lot of different sources - I pride myself on knowing a lot more about the people and the issues than what is generally presented on the 11 o'clock news, or even on the average cable news show. I don't make election decisions lightly, in fact, I take it ridiculously seriously, and I find the selection process to be shockingly shallow. If more people knew more about the things that mattered, we have better leaders, period.