Three Little Birds

Well, the time for mud-slinging, name calling, blatantly lying, misleading and scaring the public has come to an end. Oh yeah, and the whole running an actual campaign based on issues has come to an end for Obama. Now, it’s time to tally the vote and figure out where we, as a nation are going to go.

I do have a few things to say before the results are in though. There are a lot of people who seem to be under the impression that if McCain wins, it’s a complete disaster for the USA and for the entire world.

To those people, I’d just like to say, that even as a firm supporter of Barack Obama, the only concern I’d have with McCain as President is the fact that if he dies in office, Sarah Palin would take over. Aside from that, John McCain is a good man and loves our country very much. He is not George Bush revisited. He really and truly isn’t.

Allow me to explain a few things that you may not know about McCain and his campaign:

The first thing you should know is that although he ran a lousy campaign where he didn’t speak to the issues, there is a reason for this. Believe it or not, it’s a reason of integrity. Simply put, John McCain couldn’t run a campaign based on the issues because his views on the issues are not those of the hard-core, right wing, Christian conservatives. He also HAD to have that segment of our country turn out en mass in order for him to win the election, so he kept his mouth shut when it came to the issues.

This also is the explanation for his choice of Vice President. He doesn’t like Sarah Palin and he doesn’t agree with her on…just about anything. She is on the ticket because she appeals to the hard core right wing, Christian conservatives and because he hoped to gain Hilary Clinton supporters who were voting on the basis of gender alone. The problem is that if McCain dies in office, she is our President. It’s a big problem, but even if he wins, you can’t just assume he’s going to die. That’s an ageist attitude. We’ll just cross that bridge when it we come to it—if we come to it.

Because he couldn’t run a campaign on the issues, he ran a negative campaign against Obama. It’s a shame because John McCain is better than that. Without the issues though, he had to run a campaign of misdirection so that his core Republican voters could rally around him. Pointing out that Obama has a controversial minister, and served on a committee over 10 years ago with someone who is a blight on our country, linking him with terrorism and with Islamic Fundamentalists because of his name was the way he misdirected his constituency.

This is the first exposure for many people, especially those outside the US to John McCain and it’s been an ugly picture. What you’ve seen is a man who slings mud, what you’ve seen lacks substance, what you’ve seen is the product of the same machine that got George W. Bush elected twice. I know that. But I don’t believe you’ve seen John McCain.

I don’t think he’s going to win. I really hope he doesn’t win, but that hope comes from how strongly I feel about Barack Obama, not from worry about the kind of leader John McCain would be. If the polls are wrong and McCain somehow does win the White House, I think you’ll start to see a completely different man that you’ve seen during the election process.

I was surprised to find that McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time and I wonder if that percentage is somehow skewed because before this all began, I’ve always thought of McCain as someone who was one of the few Republicans who was willing and able to stand up to Bush. I thought of him as more of a moderate than a conservative. I thought of him as a man with a great deal of integrity, an intelligent man and a good leader.

So, if he does win, don’t think that it’s the end of the world. Don’t think that it’s four more years of Bush policies. I think that the John McCain we’ve been watching these past months is a fallacy, created so that he’d have the best chance he could have at winning. I think a post-election McCain will be more of the man that I used to think of him as being.

It’s a sad state of affairs that a candidate has to reinvent himself for an election and be someone he’s not in order to give himself a chance. It’s been sad watching McCain. He’s obviously been very uncomfortable in the skin he’s been wearing these past months. He’s been very unnatural, forced and even phony.

In short, if he wins, I don’t think it’ll be the end of the world. I think John McCain is a lousy actor, but a good man. I think that if he’d ran the campaign he really wanted to run, the right wing Republicans wouldn’t have bothered voting and he would have lost in a landslide. So, he’s done what he needed to do to make it competitive. I think he chose the big picture and chose a strategy that belies who and what he is all about.

I really hope Barack Obama wins tonight. But if he doesn’t, take a deep breath. Better days are ahead even if he isn’t.

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, (this is my message to you-ou-ou:)
Singin: dont worry bout a thing,cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry (dont worry) bout a thing,cause every little thing gonna be all right!
-Bob Marley, Three Little Birds