Both Sides against the Middle

Tonight Senator John McCain will accept his party’s nomination and then all of the marbles will be on the table for the last stretch of our country’s presidential election. Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the democrats will challenge the republican ticket of McCain/Palin for control of the Oval Office for the next four year term.

The central issue of the campaign thus far has been “change.” One interesting perspective on the issue was advanced by the republicans when they said that “the democrats see the United States as broken and that Washington should fix it while the republican believe that Washington is broken and that Americans should fix it.” One thing that both sides agree upon is that something is broken and now is the time to fix it.

I chucked at the image that Governor Palin drew in her acceptance speech of a pit bulldog wearing lipstick. I consider myself to be a “yellow dog” democrat, meaning that I would vote for a yellow, lipstick-wearing, bulldog just so long as it was not a republican. The race promises to be quite a dog fight with Biden and Palin going for the jugular while Obama and McCain attempt to look presidential while they attempt stay focused on other issues, like the Iraq War, the economy, taxes, healthcare reform, energy independence, national security and (of course) the issue of which one of them is the true embodiment of the change needed in the White House. Let’s face it, an election campaign that features the candidates “contrasting their opponents from themselves” is much more interesting and has more popular appeal than one based solely on boring issue after issue. We Americans love to watch a good fight and we don’t really respect a candidate unless he or she can scrap with the best of them.

However, if the republicans feel that Americans are the solution to what is broken in our country, then why attack other Americans with campaign rhetoric? In fact, the culture war tactics of the conservative right would seem to more destructive to our country than is the potential threat posed by what they call “radical Islam.” Reckless attacks on the American freedom to worship God as a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew or other can be conveniently hidden behind the indignation of those who feel that to be politically correct is too much to ask of our fellow Americans.

Furthermore, the republican rhetoric indicates that the due process of law is desirable only for American citizens and not for enemy combatants. I wonder how a former prisoner of war, like John McCain really feels stripping any prisoner of war of all human rights, especially of those enjoyed by the regular citizens of the captors. Did Senator McCain really sacrifice all that he did for American freedom in Vietnam so that Miranda Rights would be sarcastically scoffed at by his VP running mate?

And, what ever happened to the experience issue? I agree that motherhood should not be an impediment to executing the duties of the highest office in the land. But, using the very same argument that one former New York City mayor advanced, the only candidate on either side in the race that has ever actually “run” anything from the executive branch of government is Governor Palin. Therefore, perhaps the republican ticket is upside down and Senator McCain should be running in the second spot for the GOP.

The thing that I find most refreshing about this election is the abandonment of the right-wing rhetorical recital of traditional family values as the center piece of their moral code. Long gone are the days when citing statistics of the rise in teen pregnancy among America’s youth as a sign of parents who have lost control of their children and that they are responsible for causing the moral decay of our society. They have also abandoned the tired refrain that marijuana smoking is the gateway to harder drugs and indicative type of moral cancer that is eating away at the very fabric of American culture. It is a good thing that the standard bearers of right-wing, conservative values within the republican ranks have abandoned those trusted, old themes because a Vice Presidential nominee with a pregnant, unmarried 17 year old daughter in her household and one who, herself, gleefully inhaled her legalized Alaskan pot (before allegedly kicking the habit) might find it hard to be as enthusiastically accepted as was Governor Palin during at the republican national convention.

Finally, the record of standing up to the special interest within her home state and toughly facing government corruption are items that Senator McCain says helped to him to decide to tap the young Alaskan governor for his running partner, after their first and only meeting. If they should prevail in November, I hope that she will be as successful in putting her fellow republicans into Washington jails as she was in putting them in Alaskan ones. Moreover, perhaps she will find some new offshore oil reserves in the Potomac River so that she can banish the lobbyist from the Capital hallways and on to more profitable oil drilling platforms, much like she did in the great frozen north … to a rousing chorus of “Drill, baby, drill!” This would be a necessary achievement for Governor Palin because when the United States uses 25% of the world’s oil but only has 3% of the worlds oil reserve, the obvious republican solution would be to make up the other 17% by drilling in our own (or rather Washington, D.C.’s) backyards. Of course, the current republican strategy of supporting a one billion dollar a day victory in Iraq might also be effectively argued before the American public, if it were not for the nasty inconvenience of the loss of the lives of thousands more American servicemen and women than were lost in the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center Towers. I’m sure that if Osama Bin Laden, were a registered republican voting in the upcoming election (and who knows, he might just be … considering the fact no one in the military seems to know where he is hiding), he would be happy to support the McCain/Palin ticket because they will continue the same ineffective policies of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror.”

As my good friends in Louisiana say during the election season, “Vote early and vote often!” This presidential election race needs your energy and involvement if it is going to live up to the early hype.