Why I Support John McCain

Why I Support John McCain

… and why you should too.

Barrack Obama is a face. He is riding a wave of popularity based on novelty, youth, and racial leverage. He is eloquent, educated, and handsome. He is young and energetic, and wants America to believe that these talents eminently qualify him to lead the world.

Let’s be honest, every one of us wants the top job. We all would love to somehow vault into the upper echelons of our organizations, social strata, industries, and peers groups. If the United States Army offered me an instant leap over ranks of senior officers to be one of the youngest generals in history I would be hard pressed to decline. Every human craves power and prestige. But does that qualify us for our pretensions? The case could be made that the very desire, and the actions based upon it, is inversely related to the true qualities of a great leader.

Obama has made some remarkable speeches. But by that metric perhaps George Clooney would be a far wiser choice. Obama has speechwriters " like all politicians " wizards with words who write works that will play to their candidate’s strengths, and who are infinitely assisted by the young politician’s power of delivery. Substance is proven through actions, and Obama’s actions are sparse at best. George Clooney has extraordinary powers of delivery, and his resume could be compared to Obama’s in the areas of life experience and philanthropy. Perhaps he would be the better President? His musings on health care, command of the military, social security, and economic policy may be equally valid (perhaps even rousing when combined with a clever speechwriter).

Obama has decried mention of race as a matter of his rise to stardom, but in honesty denuded of PC sensitivities, would a young white politician with less than two years in the senate have enjoyed the same success? John Edwards is an excellent, recent example, one who had even more time in the senate than Obama when he announced his candidacy. Edwards didn’t even come close to securing his party’s nomination. But race is no factor and to mention it is racism. John Tester had the same chance of securing the nomination as Obama did (if you don’t know who John Tester is that should tell you something).

John McCain learned about service to his country the hard way. McCain proved is character beyond what any speechwriter could ever contrive when he refused early release from Vietnamese torture and incarceration in honor of the seniority system. He refused to break faith with his fellow POW’s. Such a difficult decision proves McCain’s strength of character and his resistance of the EASY WAY OUT. A contrast can be made when a 20-year old, intimate association with a church and pastor was disowned by Obama only the moment it became a threat to his candidacy.

McCain doesn’t just sprinkle the words “change” and “hope” through his books and speeches, and then never deviate from the party line. He championed McCain-Feingold when it earned him the heated enmity of his own party. He supports a more liberal immigration policy than the mainstream of his party. He voted to allow stem cell research in 2007 even though most in his party oppose it and he himself found it a very difficult decision. He vigorously supported the surge when many in his own party were against it. And he spearheaded the “Gang of 14” that kept Congressional Democrats the power to filibuster because he believed that going against his own party would protect our democratic system from the tyranny of the majority.

The surge is a telling issue one that puts the differences of the candidates into sharp focus. Obama strongly opposed the surge and as recently as June 2008 declared on his website that it was a “problem” and “was not working”. He has recently declared that it has been a tremendous success and has scrubbed his earlier positions from his websites and positions. McCain has always supported more troops on the ground. As early as 2003 when Republicans called his position paranoid and unnecessary McCain led the call for more troops. He did this knowing it was a severely unpopular sentiment. Recently McCain poignantly explained why he supported it when he said “I'd rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.”