A final look at…..John McCain
With just five more days until Election Day, this will be our last article focusing on John McCain, the Republican candidate for President of the United States. Overall, he ran an honorable campaign and did the best he could. For purposes of disclosure, we here at this site did not favor the idea of having a sitting United States Senator be the party’s candidate and would have very much preferred a candidate with actual executive experience such as being a Governor and there were several former governors in the running, yet John McCain beat them fair and square in the primaries and deserved the nomination of his party.
Until he announced his Vice-Presidential running mate in Alaska’s current Governor Sarah Palin, the base of the Republican party membership were at best lukewarm towards McCain but that all changed almost overnight. The level of enthusiasm among Republicans appeared to skyrocket and it all resulted in a very successful Republican Party convention in early September. The first reaction to putting Sarah Palin on the national stage was a mad rush by the liberal media to investigate her, her family and her background in greatest detail in search of negatives to ruin her reputation and to diminish her sudden effectiveness on the Republican side. It was shameful what was done to her but the media found out that she was tougher than they had expected and they did not truly diminish her even though they tried as hard as they could. Wherever she is even now, she is drawing record crowds in attendance. She connects with people in such a strong and natural way; she is truly a star in this election cycle. The momentum from the convention seemed to carry the campaign for several weeks until the current financial disaster hit America and the rest of the world in the latter part of September.
For whatever reasons, it was George W. Bush’s fault and the attempt to link John McCain with the President succeeded. It did not matter that McCain had called for stronger regulations for mortgage lenders FreddyMac and FannieMae nearly three years earlier in the U.S. Senate. The people of America needed someone to blame for the financial crisis and it was the President and by way of ‘guilt by association’, so was John McCain. There were three televised debates between the two Presidential contenders and while McCain did not impress in the first two, he gave a somewhat more spirited performance during the last one on October 15 but it was not overwhelmingly strong or campaign altering. A major player during this debate was a resident of Ohio by the name of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher who then became known as “Joe, the Plumber” throughout the country after he had had an opportunity a few days earlier to ask Barack Obama a question about taxing people making $250,000 or more a year to which Obama replied among other things that he “wanted to spread the wealth around“. McCain used this statement during the debate repeatedly and he asked Obama directly what he meant by that but never received an answer from Obama.
The immediate reaction in the days following was that the liberal media did a ‘hit-job’ on Joe the Plumber. Instead of trying to find out what Mr. Obama had meant by his response to Joe, they tried as hard as they could to discredit and demonize this man who was guilty of nothing more than asking Obama a question when he (Obama) walked one day into his (Joe’s) neighborhood. Yet John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin keep using their opponents comment again and again wherever they give speeches and it appears to have resonance.
We will not visit in any detail John McCain’s agenda and plans for the future of America should he be elected President, we recommend instead for you to visit McCain’s official campaign website http://www.johnmccain.com/. The one major element of concern in America called national security has taken a backseat to the economic crisis in the past month and maybe understandably so. When someone has to worry about possibly losing his or her job and has witnessed a severe turn down in the stock markets affecting their 401k plans very negatively, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and national security are not equally important any longer. And national security and the war on terror were areas representing an advantage for McCain, where he was considered stronger and more experienced than his opponent yet the economic crisis has removed these areas from the campaign.
Yet John McCain keeps on ‘trucking’ if you will, he shows tremendous energy and strengths (not bad for a ‘man too old to be President’ as some have referred to him), his campaign speeches are focused and even show him using humor and some ridicule when talking about his opponents. He has repeatedly claimed that he likes his role as an underdog in this race and he does not let the polls bother him that have him nationwide and in individual States trailing by significant margins. It appears as if he has grown to like campaigning non-stop during the last few months until Election Day. If nothing else, this in itself should be a reflection on his strong general physical and mental health.
Which brings us to the final few questions that deserve answers:
- Does John McCain have the experience to be President? The answer should be: YES!
- Does John McCain have good judgment and the right temperament to be President? Again: YES!
- Is John McCain therefore qualified to be President? The answer should also be a resounding YES!
- Will John McCain be a strong Commander-in-Chief? The answer is undoubtedly: YES!
- Will John McCain be ready for this job on Day One? Again, we think the answer is: YES!
- Will John McCain be able to deal effectively with a crisis, domestic or international: Again: YES!
- Does John McCain have substance or style or both? He is definitely substance over style!
- Does John McCain have the integrity and character to be President: Absolutely!
- Would you trust John McCain as President to think ‘Country first’? Again, absolutely!
In a few days, we will post here an article about Barack Obama wherein we shall take a final look at him.
We can only hope that the majority of voters asked themselves the above and similar questions for both candidates before they enter the voting booths on November 4, 2008.
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