McCain must be defeated

There are two new wrinkles to the McCain campaign. The first calls for us to vote for McCain in order to assure divided government, something that even I have advocated for many years, and the second actually denounces the **** administration and says that McCain can provide the change needed for us to overcome the damage wrought by ****.

The problem with the call for divided government is that the power of the presidency has grown so great that the constitutional checks and balances cannot be easily overcome with the wrong division of power. By that I mean a change in philosophy is needed in the executive before we can adjust the problem by electing the out party to head up the Congress. If Obama is elected and assumes the many powers grabbed by the presidency since Ronald Reagan, I will almost certainly switch parties and support a Republican, but that means that I would actually have to come to see a pattern of abuse such as that practiced by **** and ^^^^^^. I do not foresee such an outcome at this time.

I was born and raised a Democrat. Over the course of my adult life, I came to examine my support of my party and concluded that I was becoming a moderate with more than a little sympathy for republican positions. I came to see Richard Nixon as a very good president until his character flaws tipped me against him personally but not philosophically, but it was not until Gerry Ford’s run for president that I was able to break my lifelong party affiliation and vote Republican.

Much as I have maligned ****, I will admit to having voted for him in 1980. Frankly, I was quite satisfied with him in the very early days of his presidency and it was not until I was horrified by the prospect of waging a preventive war against Iraq that I turned on him with a vengeance. The folly of the venture and the radical call for massive spending and cuts in taxes turned me back into a Democrat – a moderate one.

Initially I supported Hillary Clinton in this year’s primary campaign. The centrist presidency of Bill Clinton with its moderate approach to governing – even though I had not voted for him – led me to conclude that Hillary was the one. Over the course of the campaign I became attracted to Obama and by the time of the North Carolina primary – and after some very bad campaigning by Clinton – I came to support him.

The McCain proposal to vote for divide government is based in artful but ridiculous logic. McCain clearly supports the hubristic foreign policy of the **** administration and he publicly supports retaining the **** tax cuts even on the wealthiest Americans. He supports deregulation, except in the most exceptional circumstances, and on and on. What he proposes is simply more of the same but with a promise of better management and a better outcome. In reality it is a desperate effort by Republicans to maintain power. In my view **** could not have done this rotten job all by himself or even with the exclusive the support of ^^^^^^.

This fiasco that we are experiencing came about through the concerted efforts of the administration, the Congress and Republican donors and voters. They were wrong and are now all pointing their fingers at ****. Of course, he’s a fool; of course ^^^^^^ is obsessed with imperial power for the country. But the party and its voters and sympathizers forced this mess on us. As **** and ^^^^^^ must be sent away in disgrace, so must their enablers in Congress be turned out of office.

The argument for divided government is just as bad. McCain proposes to maintain all of the powers captured from the Congress and the courts by the ****/^^^^^^ administration, only he says he’ll use them benignly, except of course for the ability to wage war unilaterally and to appoint radically out of step rightists to the courts. It won’t wash; he has to be defeated as a lesson to all enablers that they cannot step away from calamities such as those we face and that he enabled without some adverse consequence.

It’s time for a change. Vote for Barack Obama!

I ain’t b.s.n’ ya.