“Now just remember, if you hang around with some Commie pinko now it might come back to haunt you if you run for president many, many years down the line,” Gov. Palin tells the crowd of young admirers over tea and cookies.
It hurts to lose a friend. Even if that friend isn’t really a friend — a pseudo-friend if you will — it is disappointing to find that someone you admire turns out to be much, much less a decent human being than you can imagine.
And that pretty much sums up how I feel now about Sen. John McCain.
I still admire McCain for what he went through during his captivity during the Vietnam War. And he had some good ideas during his time as a U.S. Senator. But he caught the Presidential Fever so badly that he doesn’t care how sickingly he smears his own name or reputation or that of others.
The problems I have with McCain right now don’t even arise from anything he has particularly said but instead comes from his running mate, the annoying Alaska Gov. Mrs. Palin. She is using that attack on Obama “palling around” with former 60s radical William Ayers. And she is using the smear as if Obama was dancing around in a dashiki while sporting a 10-foot-tall Afro and brandishing an AK-47 when he was eight years old — that being the time Ayers was involved in his hijinx with the Weather Underground.
Burn baby burn. Drill baby drill. Indeed baby indeed.
Of course, we have long ago been asked to forget the association between McCain and the Keating Five.
Apparently, the McCainiacs have decided that the campaign has turned so irrevocably south that the only course of action is to Swift Boat Obama. It worked against Kerry and ol’ Gee Dubya ended up with another term. The problem this time though is that the Gee Dubyaites’ tricks worn way too thin so very long ago. Our national security is in shambles. Our economy appears to have been eaten by a wolf and s**t (hey, remember the past tense) over a cliff. And I don’t know if I can remain polite for too much longer.
So there.
Having been born in Jasper, Texas, where that horrible example of horrors took place in 1998, and raised in a nearby burg, even a few months ago I wouldn’t have imagined that I would have ever voted for a black person, man or woman, for president. It’s not that I don’t like black folks, it’s just I grew up in a place that made you feel like you would never, ever vote for a black person for president.
But unless between now and election day, I find out that Barack Obama did something unspeakable like sell secrets to Al-Quida or he is actually a serial murderer in disguise or else he is really, secretly, the son of Dick Cheney, then it looks as if I might actually have to vote for him.
I have been and remain reluctant in voting for Obama. It has nothing to do with his color. I don’t see what color has to do with his campaign anyway. He is part-black African and part-white American. He is a true African-American, much closer to the African than many black Americans. He is also a lot less seasoned as a leader than I would prefer and that is my major problem with him.
But Obama seems less eager to sell his soul to become president than his Senate colleague McCain.
John McCain was a good American. What he went through ensures he will always be an exemplary countryman. He always will remain such in my mind. I just hope he never becomes president. And who knows, maybe this time people will get fed up with the Swift Boating so that McCain does not become our president.