McCain is more dangerous than people realise
Dear John McCain,
The race is on. At long last you know who your opponent is in the battle for the White House. For months you have failed to wrestle the spotlight from the Obama-Clinton media circus, but now your chance has come to stamp your authority on the Presidency. Like both the Democratic candidates, you have your supporters and your doubters inside and outside of America, and I would like to take this opportunity to reserve my place in the ‘doubters’ camp.
On the domestic policy front, you have offered precious little to convince voters that you have the necessary solutions to America’s woes. Making Bush’s tax cuts permanent (which benefit the rich more than the poor) while cutting corporation tax sounds wonderful, but the effect of shrinking government revenues by around 25% over 10 years (while raising spending, I might add) would be catastrophic. How you expect to achieve anything of this magnitude in a time of economic uncertainty is beyond me. Furthermore, your healthcare policies will hurt employers badly without addressing the fundamental problems facing many households and businesses. Seeing as your domestic policies are a joke then you might be rescued by a raft of sensible foreign policy measures – alas, this is about as far from the truth as you could possibly get. You want to kick Russia out of the G8 at a time when Russia is exerting more influence over Middle Eastern nations than the West could ever dream of, you believe North Korea should be threatened with “extinction” and you’re happy for US troops to remain in Iraq for 100 years (so long as it’s only Iraqi soldiers dying, because “that’s okay”). A couple of months back, you were also caught on camera singing ”Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ hit “Barbara Ann”. Yes, you might not hate immigrants as much as other Republicans and you oppose torture, but that’s hardly going to make the world feel much safer with such an overtly hawkish attitude to international affairs.
I think we will all learn a lot more about you and Barack Obama over the coming weeks and months. Even so, at this moment in time the prospect of you sitting in the White House with such a notoriously itchy trigger finger terrifies far more than Obama ever could – especially when his foreign policy revolves more around talking to people (what a pleasant change that would be) instead of blowing them into tiny pieces. That’s not to say there aren’t question marks about Obama as well, but America’s relationship with Europe and the rest of the world needs some serious repair work and it is quite clear to me that you are not the man to do it.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
During my intelligent, progressive reading of Steve Richards’ column in The Independent, it occured to me to at least try to read McCain’s and Obama’s printed works. Admittedly such books are often spun, but they’re still very worthwhile, & I neglected to do so with Boris. In particular, I’ll see if I can get my hands on “The Audacity Of Hope”. I do think it’s rather important to know what the people who might be running America are all about…
PS-
Excellent post
First of all, I’d like to point to you the excellent video from The Onion regarding John McCain’s itchy trigger finger.
Secondly, I think Obama is teetering on a knife-edge and in a very dangerous position. I wrote a blog post on the subject, but it boils down to my assertion that if he loses the presidential election it will tear the democrats apart.
http://sic.phantom-rouge.co.uk/2008/06/05/barack-obama-holds-the-future-in-his-hands/
I think it really is time for a change like Obama says it is, though. It seems to me that his ideas are sound for the most part, and he’s a decent and genuine man. Funnily enough, I think there are plenty of parallels with David Cameron, but Obama is undoubtedly the more confident and inspirational of the two.
asquith, I’m reading The Audacity of Hope at the moment. It’s an interesting read, and he’s an excellent writer. It sort of sets out a general approach, though, without ever getting bogged down in the specifics of policies. I take issue with his chapter on faith, though – particularly he implies that his mother must have been Christian despite her professed atheism, because she was kind and compassionate. He seems to believe that people capable of being nice to each other must be intrinsically religious by definition. A very strange point of view, if you ask me.
Obama’s ability to inspire people is something that Western politics hasn’t seen for a long time. He gives people genuine hope that things can get better and empowers voters in a way that British politicians can only dream of.
Yes, by “genuine hope” it seems that he actually knows what it’s all about, rather than offering vapid rhetoric as his detractors claim. Steve Richards opened my eyes to that possibility.
I see that Stu is finding this out now. The comparison with Cameron is interesting. I’ve read quite a bit about Cameron and I respect him more than you might think, though I remain a sceptic about what he actually will do.
“if he loses the presidential election it will tear the democrats apart”
Did you mean ‘further apart’…?
As opposed to those paragons of unity, the GOP.
JuliaM: well, quite.
Again this is another problem that David Cameron is facing. Imagine the fallout for the Tories is, by some extraordinary chance, they managed to lose the election. Cameron would be unceremoniously ousted, since government had been his for the taking, and cue another 10 years of Conservatives-as-outcasts. The Lib Dems might even win after that.
I’m not sure where it was that I read the assertion that Labour and the Conservatives have both been falling completely to pieces for 30 years (or longer) and it was only the sheer willpower first of Thatcher then of Blair (and now of Cameron) that’s kept UK politics from shattering for so long. I think this is correct, though – the default stat for a political party must be chaos, turmoil and divided in-fighting, kept at bay only when a devoted and inspirational leader takes the helm once a generation.
As for “vapid rhetoric”, this is an accusation which says far more about the accuser than the accused. It only seems like vapid rhetoric because Labour and Blair were so astonishingly poor at following through on their ideas. Now Labour are saying that their own vapidity is somehow inevitable in all political discussion – the triumph of the cynical age.
I agree that ending up with fewer MPs than Labour at the next election would be catastrophic for the Conservatives, but getting a working majority would be almost unprecedented historically.
The parallel I would draw is that Cameron and Obama are both faced with cynical electorates who have grown tired of being lied to, misled and ignored. For them to win an election in spite of this considerable obstacle would represent an amazing achievement.
LFAT.. Obama’s ability to inspire people is something that Western politics hasn’t seen for a long time.
Quite. But IT IS happening here. Look at voter turnout in the London and Local elections. Even a By-Election saw nearly 50%.
So Obama inspires but he is also picking up those Republicans who can’t believe the situation that their leaders have led them too. The same applies here.
People I know, who have never voted and are now 25- 35 years old jumped at the chance to vote in the London Elections. Professional people, with busy schedules took time out to vote because, for once ,they thought it would make a difference.
And they were right.
I disagree. I don’t think UK voters are being ‘inspired’ in the same way that Obama has done in America.
The mayoral election turnout was only up about 8% on 2004, and the Crewe and Nantwich by-election turnout (58%) was LOWER than the 2005 general election (60%). Labour voters are staying at home while Conservatives are voting in larger numbers, but that doesn’t equate to inspiring a nation which Obama is doing quite brilliantly.
“I don’t think UK voters are being ‘inspired’ in the same way that Obama has done in America.”
No, there’s still a huge block of apathetic voters out there. Which is a worry.