BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE

Everyone has an opinion of this Presidential election and we are no exception. After a lifetime of supporting Democrats, we are reluctantly supporting John McCain. We arrived at this unfortunate position based on one simple factor. We know where John McCain has been for the last 70 years. We know who his daddy was and we know who his granddaddy was. We know everything there is to know about him and his ancestors. He has no surprises in store for us. We know all the bad things he has done and is likely to do. We know where we agree with him and where we disagree with him.

On the other hand we don’t know who Barack Obama is. By his own design he is the embodiment of the protagonist of Woody Allen’s 1983 film, Zelig, a fictional documentary about the life of a human chameleon who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whomever is around him. Obama is a 21st century shape shifter who tries to be all things to all people. A charismatic persona dwarfs his thin resume and overshadows his extreme views and unsavory associations.

Despite our uneasiness with Obama’s background, we do have solid objections to his qualifications for President.

• He is inexperienced. No yammering crowd of talking heads and true believers can controvert this fact. The most junior head hunter would reject his resume were he applying for a CEO position, much less for eight years in the oval office. We would not hire a sixteen year old with a learner’s permit to drive our children’s school bus nor would we submit to surgery by a pre-med student, no matter how charming.
• He has not paid his dues. It isn’t just that he is inexperienced, but that he claims an empathy with other African Americans while living a life normally associated with the most privileged Americans. He was born to college educated parents, lived an upper class existence in Indonesia, attended exclusive private schools, studied at the country’s most elite universities, and graduated from the top US law school. He was hired to teach law before he had any practical experience as an attorney. He filled an elected position without having to defeat any opponent. Never has so unworthy a man risen so far, so quickly.
• He has fomented more hatred between the races than we have seen since the 1960s. He falsely branded as racist a former President revered for his advancement of race relations and singlehandedly undid decades of good will between black and white Americans.
• He has kept the company of subversives, racists, anti-Semites, and criminals. He pretends that he is ignorant of his associates’ antisocial behavior and when confronted with evidence of same, he dismisses it all as ancient history. Would you hire a pedophile as a babysitter if it had been 30 years since he last molested a child, especially if he had recently said he wished he had molested more children?

Is this the best we can do? We fear our choices are bad and worse. Perhaps it is necessary that we suffer through a disastrous administration in order to learn to choose wisely. What’s that you say? What did we learn from the last eight years?