One reason I voted for McCain is that he has been the least nasty of the Republican campaigners. Obama is less nasty — by a wide margin — than the Clintons on the Democratic side. Believe it or not, this endless election spectacle is going to end one day, and we’ll need to go back to all being Americans, all trying to improve this country together.

Obama and McCain represent different political points of view and different generations. But both of them seem to be willing to put public service and the good of the country as a whole above their personal ambitions, which I believe is an important quality in a president — and one we haven’t seen for several decades.

A general election contest between McCain and Obama would be a true referendum on where we want our country to go and how we want its affairs to be handled. Big government or little government? Try to fix our mess in Iraq or bring the troops home and let the Iraqis solve their own problems? And so on. The two men are very different from each other when it comes to how they would make our country better.

I don’t personally think either one can keep anywhere near all of his campaign promises or fail to compromise many of his beliefs once in office. For one thing, Congress and the courts still have a lot of power — in many cases more than a president. For another, most components of our economy are beyond a president’s — or, indeed the entire government’s — control. So no matter who ends up as president after November’s general election, a lot of Americans are going to be disappointed.

It is not hard to imagine John McCain as Secretary of Defense in Obama’s cabinet or to imagine Barack Obama as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in McCain’s. Both men have strong records of finding common ground across party and ideological divides.

I don’t see either Hillary Clinton or any of the Republican candidates besides McCain working in a truly bipartisan, non-vituperative, “what’s good for the country” manner.

I would be happy to see either Obama or McCain as president. Either one would be a good choice for all Americans, based on what I have seen of them and read about them.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.