Okay, I voted early in the primary…. for McCain
I’ve already explained why I decided to re-register as a Republican for this primary election. Now I’ll tell you why I decided to vote for John McCain.
First of all, I never forget that our President is also Commander in Chief of our armed forces. This means I automatically give a strong “veterans preference” to candidates like McCain who have military experience. When the shit hits the fan, I want a person in the White House who can call the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff into the Oval Office and say, “Handle this!” and get a firm salute and instant compliance in return.
Think of the New Orleans Katrina disaster. We can all stand around — and lots of people did stand around — blathering about whether taking care of the people stranded in the Superdome was the city’s, state’s or country’s responsibility. When you have a strong President who is used to taking charge, you take care of your people. Period. You don’t whine or point fingers at a Mayor or Governor or worry about using federal troops in a domestic solution. Uh-uh. You handle things. Later, everyone can cry and argue. But first you get help to your people.
Second, McCain may be playing the suck-up-to-the-conservacrazies line right now, but over the years, when it came time to actually do things, he has acted like a traditional Arizona conservative. This means he tends to let people go to hell in their own way as long as they don’t bother others while doing so, and realizes that if you spend money (i.e. the federal budget) you must collect money (taxes) to pay your bills. I suspect that, deep in his heart, McCain believes an ancient credo of the Arizona libertarian-tinged conservatives: that if you’re making so much money that you are complaining about the amount of taxes you pay, you should suck it up and be glad you’re making that much instead of bitching.
As old-line Tucson Republican (and devout Goldwater supporter) Mike Karp told me many years ago, “It is one hell of a lot easier to pay $30,000 in taxes on a $100,000 income than to pay $10 on a $10,000 income.” Mike and other old-liners out there in the desert knew that their fortunes were gained in large part because of the opportunities given to them by American society, and believed it was their duty to help keep American “the land of opportunity” by paying large tax bills when they had the means to do so.
I often suspect that if you mentioned “duty” to Giuliani, Thompson or Romney you’d get a puzzled look followed by one of those answers politicians give that has nothing to do with the question. And Huckabee would go into a sermon about duty to Christ, which would be fine if he was running for Bishop but has nothing to do with being Chief Executive of a country whose Constitution doesn’t have the words “Jesus” or “Christ” anywhere in it. (Do a word search on the Constitution if you don’t believe me. Despite all the recent “Christian nation” yammer, our Constitution is totally non-sectarian.)
And Ron Paul…. his trolls would cry if I left him out, so here’s his name again: RuPaul. Oops! I meant Lyndon LaRouche. Whatever. They all have approximately the same chance of becoming President, and RuPaul would be lot more amusing and would hold better White House parties than Ron Paul, so….
Anyway, Giuliani has been plastering ads all over my local TV stations claiming he was going to save us “trillions” in taxes. Not billions. Trillions. And at the same time he’s going to feed the American public’s increased appetite for government services (including some sort of universal or near-universal health care) and pay back Bush’s existing (and increasing) tax cut and Iraq war debts. Uh huh. That’ll be some trick, won’t it?
On the Iraq war: I think it was a miserable mistake, but that Colin Powell was right when he warned that if we took over Iraq, we would then be responsible for making it into a workable country. We went in, we overthrew Saddam’s crappy dictatorship, and we promised to make the country whole. Except, whoops! Suddenly we seem to have noticed that it is going to take a lot of effort, lives, and money to actually turn Iraq into a viable nation, so now a whole lot of Americans believe we should turn our backs on the whole mess.
It doesn’t work like that. I’m sorry, but we have a duty (there’s that obsolete word again) to fix what we broke. McCain understands this. So do I. This doesn’t mean either of us thinks fixing Iraq will be fun, but duty is often unpleasant. The whole notion of “responsibility” seems to be going away in America. I’d like to see it come back.
A one-term President
Between the Iraq nonsense, the economic harm Bush has done to our country, and general changes in the world over the last few decades, I believe there is little chance that our next President will last more than one term. Like it or not, with or without a lot of posturing, taxes are either going to go up or government services are going to be cut back drastically over the next five years — or both. In other words, a lot of Americans are going to be disappointed in our next President, no matter what his or name turns out to be, because there is no way any of the candidates, from either major party, can keep anywhere near all of their campaign promises.
So I voted for McCain, in a way, as the best of a so-so lot — and because my favorite high school teacher, Charles Herner (back at Canyon del Oro, north of Tucson, in the late 60s) seems to like him.
My vote in the general election is still up for grabs, and I can’t say which candidate (or even which party) will get it.
A lot can happen between now and then. 
January 20th, 2008 at 5:18 am
“Think of the New Orleans Katrina disaster. We can all stand around — and lots of people did stand around — blathering bout whether taking care of the people stranded in the Superdome was the city’s, state’s or country’s responsibility. When you have a strong President who is used to taking charge, you take care of your people. Period. You don’t whine or point fingers at a Mayor or Governor or worry about using federal troops in a domestic solution. Uh-uh. You handle things. Later, everyone can cry and argue. But first you get help to your people.”
You don’t help people by taking away rights, which is what you are saying the President should have done.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:29 am
Oh, and another thing: you say it is good that McCain tends to “let people go to hell in their own way as long as they don’t bother others while doing so,” but then say Bush should have prevented people from going to hell in their own way.
Also, McCain is not sucking up to anyone. Come on. Was Obama sucking up to Evangelicals when he hung with Rick Warren? No, he was being a mature adult who can look to build bridges. That is all McCain did with Falwell. And McCain has not changed his views on anything at all to “suck up.” All he’s done is shake a few hands he didn’t shake before, which is merely a sign of maturity.
You’re also wrong about McCain on taxes. You make it sound like he didn’t want to cut taxes. He clearly did. He just wanted spending cuts too. He does not, AT ALL, believe “if you’re making so much money that you are complaining about the amount of taxes you pay, you should suck it up and be glad you’re making that much instead of bitching.” On the contrary, he wants to cut government so much that no one really notices their taxes.
Even Club for Growth, which hates McCain, gives him the highest praise on that. Which means you’re required to disagree with McCain on it.
One more thing: “It is one hell of a lot easier to pay $30,000 in taxes on a $100,000 income than to pay $10 on a $10,000 income.” That’s pure bullshit. It is the ultimate in socialism. The state telling me what I can, and can’t, pay them. The government deciding FOR ME whether I can afford $30,000. It’s none of the government’s damned business whether I can afford $30,000. It’s mine. But you and this so-called “Republican” Mike Karp don’t see it that way. You see it as the government’s money. You are socialists. You don’t believe in liberty, at all. Not real liberty. You believe that liberty is something the people get if the government doesn’t happen to need it at the time.
It’s completely backward.
But then, you think Bush has done serious economic harm to the country, so your perspective is obviously warped anyway. There’s no evidence of that, whatsoever. Yes, there’s the increased debt, and it sucks. But it is fixable. And it is nothing compared to the other economic problems we face, which have been building for decades: weakening dollar, trade deficit, outsourcing, housing problems, unfunded liabilities in Medicare and Social Security and guaranteed pensions, and so on. None of those has a damned thing to do with Bush.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Note to the rest of the world: Pudge (Chris Nandor) and I work together, and this is an extension of the discussions we have in private. We obviously disagree on many issues. However, we still manage to remain friends. This civility — and the ability to disagree without hate — has become sadly rare in this country.
Note, too, that we are debating a fundamental issue here, namely the amount of power (and funding) a government should have. Our disagreement on this matter doesn’t mean that one of us is a patriot while the other is a traitor, just that we disagree on how to make this country a better place for all of us.
We do *not* disagree on that goal: to make this country better, just on the means. This is important — and I wish more of our political debate could be conducted in this manner.