Thoughts about the election

My wife and I have just voted for Barack Obama, and for the first time since 1996 we think we have voted for a winner in a Presidential election. We voted on an absentee ballot in New Jersey, our legal residence, because we plan to be in Florida on Election Day.

Just a few months ago, I was not very optimistic that Obama would be the victor. I feared that John McCain would win because he was much better known and experienced. I was worried that Obama was handicapped by both his limited record of political achievement and his race.

But Obama has clearly demonstrated that he possesses the credentials to be President. He has campaigned with dignity and has shown himself to be a man of superior intelligence and integrity. He appears to be far more suitable than McCain to cope with the current economic crisis and with the national security and foreign policy issues facing the nation. He is far more impressive as a force for the political change that both candidates claim is needed.

McCain is still ideologically linked to the disastrous policies of George W. Bush. Moreover, McCain has displayed extraordinarily poor judgment. The most obvious example was his selection of Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

McCain has failed to explain how he would meaningfully bring change to government. For instance,he talks about economic reforms, but sticks obsessively to the idea that the free market, unfettered by government intervention, will solve basic economic problems. In his many years in Congress, he has been a consistent champion of deregulation of business and the financial markets, a philosophy that helped produce our current economic plight.

McCain has behaved so erratically that I am concerned that his temperament makes him ill-equipped to handle the very serious and complex problems that the next President must handle. In particular, I worry that his macho-aggressive approach to foreign affairs could revive the cold war with Russia.

In contrast to Obama's well-mannered style, McCain and Palin have conducted a disgraceful election campaign, employing gutter tactics with slanderous personal attacks on their opponent. This is the kind of campaigning that twice brought Bush to the White House.

Obama still faces a serious obstacle. As they see Obama gaining in the polls, the McCain-Palin team seems to be turning even more aggressively to hate-filled personal attacks on Obama. Example: Palin's absurd argument about Obama "palling around with terrorists."

The big question is whether white voters' fears about the financial crisis will overcome any unwarranted concern that some of them may still have about Obama's race and patriotism.

A tutorial for Sarah Palin

I think that one of the most comical events of the Presidential campaign so far is the official announcement yesterday by a McCain campaign aide that McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is about to meet with Henry Kissinger.

In short, the most unqualified vice-presidential candidate in American history is to get a "tutorial" on world affairs from a formidable expert on the subject. That the meeting with Kissinger rates a formal announcement (and a headline in the New York Times) shows how desperate the McCain campaign is to create "credentials" for Palin.

Not only will she get the Kissinger tutorial, but she will be introduced to a couple of heads of state and probably be accorded a first-class tour of the United Nations headquarters in New York.

No longer will critics be able to complain that Palin lacks foreign affairs expertise.

Guns, God, gays and abortion

I've been trying to think of something profound and original to say about the tendency of many low- and middle-income voters to embrace such issues as guns, God, gays and abortion, and to vote against their own best personal interests.

Having failed to come up with new thoughts of my own, I will take the liberty of quoting two extremely insightful letters-to-the-editor in the Sept. 8 issue of the New York Times.

The first one, written by Kathy Roberson of Middlesex, N.J., has this to say:

"One thing President Bush has done well has been to get so many people, often at an unconscious level, feeling that smart or educated or intellectual equals un-American.

"The result has been that the less educated you sound, the more of a patriotic American you are perceived to be.

"In this way, Mr. Bush and other wealthy elites have been able to install policies that hurt poor working- and middle-class Americans, while casting as snobbish elites those who think in nuanced ways about how to solve the real problems of ordinary Americans.

"We live in a world of staggering complexity. As the last eight years have shown, we ignore that at our own peril."

This is the other letter, which was written by David Rawson of New York City:

"The Republicans are blowing the usual smoke to get working-class people to vote against their economic interest.

"Can you imagine Americans voting for John McCain to strike a blow against the wine-drinking, brie-eating coastal elites and denying themselves a decent health care system, a better economy and competent leadership? Believe it. It could happen."

End of quotes.

Of course, what Mr. Rawson describes did happen eight years ago when George W. Bush was elected.

I fear that it is now more likely to happen again because of Sarah Palin's selection as the Republican nominee for the Vice-Presidency and the enthusiasm it has evidently stirred up in the Republicans' "conservative base."

From what we can glean about the Alaska governor, who is being sheltered from public scrutiny until she is well primed, her political and social opinions can best be described as primitive.

Once again, as in the past two Presidential elections, this election is likely to degenerate into a Republican campaign on "family values" and those old election standbys--guns, God, gays, and abortion. The Democrats will have to struggle to put the focus on the far more vital issues of the economy, health care and the war on terrorism.

The Democrats must also stress the threat that the cold war with Russia will be revived because of the Bush Administration's hard-edged foreign policies. Like Bush, McCain is provoking Russia with the campaign to gain admission of former Soviet bloc countries into NATO. (I have always felt that the Soviet Union's collapse made NATO redundant.)

But not to worry. McCain is acquiring expertise on Russian affairs from his new running mate, Alaska's Governor Palin. After all, as McCain's wife Cindy has pointed out, Palin is very knowledgeable about Russia because Alaska is so geographically close to that country, separated only by the narrow Bering Strait.