Two Men

In 1986, Arizona Congressman John McCain announced his candidacy for the Senate seat of retiring Barry Goldwater. McCain, a graduate of the US Naval Academy, had already completed a successful career in the US Navy, retiring with the rank of Captain (one step below Admiral), had been a member of Congress for slightly less than four years, and had been an active member of the Republican Party for less than 10 years. Since that time, and all political rhetoric aside, John McCain has also had a successful twenty plus year career as a US Senator. His self proclaimed hero’s are Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Teddy Roosevelt. (A very good choice in hero’s as far as I’m concerned.)

47 year old Barack Obama is presently the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, a seat he filled in 2005. Educated at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York, where he graduated in 1983 with a degree in political science. He moved to Chicago in 1985 where he worked as a community organizer with low-income families. He entered Harvard Law School in 1988 and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. Returning to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer, he also taught at the University of Chicago Law School. His advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate and he was elected in 1996 from south side Hyde Park. Obama seems to think he’s the rightful inheritor of John F. Kennedy’s mantle of liberal leadership, a claim leaving many people questioning his sanity!

Obama is proclaimed to be the “agent of change” by the Democrats, and in the absence of Hillary is held somewhat in awe by the looney left, almost as if he were the returned messiah. The radical right who abhor both Obama and Hillary are grudging following McCain, who is currently pretty much the leader of the conservative right if only by default, and who is (for a number of good reasons) not fully trusted by any conservative group.

McCain wants to cut taxes or so he claims, while Obama wants increased taxation to pay for even more social programs. Humm… How soon we forget… Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who cut taxes, and the treasury receipts promptly increased? Newt Gingrich and the Republicans had a contract with American that trimmed our taxes somewhat, and revitalized our economy, just in time for Bill Clinton and the Democrats to claim the credit. Generally higher taxes mean less money into the public coffers, lost jobs, more small businesses failures, and of course less money in your pocket. Our current economic woes are the result of massive government overspending, coupled with people wanting bigger homes than they could afford, big gas guzzling cars they couldn't afford, and enormous credit card debts from buying all the things they can't afford to pay cash for. All this to keep up with the "wealthiest one percent" of our population, who they claim don't pay their fair share of the tax burden in this country. I guess the most affluant taxpayers paying 85-90% of the nations taxes isn't their “fair share”? What neither candidate seems to be mentioning at the moment is that we’re going to have a pretty stout tax increase no matter what. It’s going to be a dire necessity to pay off that huge Wall Street bailout that the American people didn’t want, and Congress passed anyhow! However the election turns out, congress is going to have to go along with the presidential proposals before they can take effect. And congress is falling all over themselves in avoiding their responsibilities.

With his military background, John McCain would probably be a bit more “user friendly” to the Defense Department than Barack Obama, who seems to have cut his teeth on a “the military is the great satan” far left liberal mantra. For some reason (probably in considering all the hate and discontent going on in the world) McCain seems to believe in a strong national defense. Generally the far left seems to think we’de be better off with no defense establishment at all, and that we could “defend” ourselves by sharing our wealth (paying Danegeld) with every two-bit dictator in the world. The trouble with that is (as the democrats never seem to realize), that once the dane gets a taste of easy money he gets greedy, and then he’s darn hard to get rid of. A lot of folks (mostly hard core republicans I suspect) question Obama’s patriotism. The “evidence” presented, such as his refusal to salute the flag, is highly suspect but quite compelling as well. One that seems downright silly is his reported desire to change our national anthem to “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, which Coca-Cola Corp. would probably appriciate, but would certainly upset the rest of us! The American Flag lapel pin flap is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot if it’s the only complaint about his patriotism. Heck, I don’t wear one either… but only because I somehow lost mine, and haven’t found a replacement yet. I do however dislike the “show your loyalty” fetish currently running rampant across the nation. Things like that lead to the downright rediculous “Victory Cabbage” instead of sauerkraut campaign during WW I. It also led to Americans of Japanese decent being tossed in concentration camps during WW II.

Another subject that gets a lot of media attention is the question of same sex marriage. It appears to me that most Americans are opposed to the idea, or somewhat neutral, with only a few quite vocal liberal adheriants considering it to be a major talking point. Personally, I’d think that if a couple of people want to play house they can do so without making a big production of it, or later tieing up our courts when they inevitably decide to get divorced. I look at gay marriage as little more than another step in the liberal destruction of our national character.

Heading for the White House is the most far left-wing member of the US Senate according to the National Journal. The current political polls show Obama to be ahead of McCain by two whole points, and the national media makes that out to be the end of the world for the republicans. Two points huh? That sounds a lot more like a neck and neck race to me! Still, consider that most of the polls are taken in east coast urban areas and are hardly indicative of what the rest of the nation thinks, which never seems to bother whoever the media’s fair haired boy is at the moment. As usual, the eastern liberal media is once again loudly touting the numbers in trying to influence how we think and vote, rather on the line of a “McCain’s already lost, so all you knuckle-dragging Republicans might as well stay home” sort of thing. ‘Kinda makes me wonder if perhaps we shouldn’t reconsider Barry Goldwater’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment about sawing off the eastern seaboard and letting it drift out to sea.

Thus we have two men running for election to the highest political office in the land, and representing opposing ends of our political spectrum. They are much alike in many ways, and yet oh-so-different. One of them will be chosen our next president, and over the next four years will have to lead the way through some of the worst problems ever to face our nation. Of the two, I’d prefer having a leader of men out in front.