WHY I MUST VOTE FOR OBAMA...even if I didn't want to at first

This is the inaugural post for this blog. You can read the creedo to see why the blog's here in the first place.

On October 2, 2008, on Real Clear Politics, http://comments.realclearpolitics.com/read/1/215127.html, Charles Krauthammer wrote in "Obama Passing the Reagan Threshold" that Obama's first-class intellect and temperament should get him elected.

But there's much more to it. It's McCain's apparent compromise in values that have kept me in a state of simmering outrage for a few weeks...inspired by Mr. Krauthammer, here's what I wrote:

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOHN McCAIN?

A few years back, watching John McCain on a late-night talk show, my wife and I got excited. He had a sense of humor, talked straight, and made a whole lot of sense. He ducked questions about switching parties, running for president. Both of us, lefties, nevertheless turned to each other and said in jinx-style synchronicity, “I’d vote for him.”

What happened to that man?

We all know what happened. To get this job, he sold out. No—worse. He sold his soul. A few weeks ago, BP—before Palin—I thought, okay: I get it…he HAD to smudge the boundaries of the real McCain to get the nomination. To get elected, he HAS to hide the boundaries, at least for now. The real McCain, the straight-shooting reformer we saw back then, and the one we keep hearing about, has simply gone into suspended animation while in outer space. Once he gets elected and beats the inexperienced and inscrutable Obama-come-lately, then the real McCain will be revived and save the country, the world, the planet.

This is what we’re being sold. Then came Palin.

McCain asks us to believe that Obama is too inexperienced to lead, but Palin’s callowness is a breath of DC fresh air—a masterstroke for the madcap maverick.

Palin is what she is, and that’s fine. But here’s what went wrong: McCain had made inexperience a central issue. Now, he had to grow another mouth overnight: Obama is too inexperienced to lead, but Palin’s callowness is a breath of DC fresh air—a masterstroke for the madcap maverick.

I really wanted to like McCain. I really wanted to want to like Palin—not as the charming home-spun hockey mom who heeded the call to public service only to do what’s right—but as potential Presidential timber.

McCain has noted that the Republicans are the party of Lincoln, of Reagan. Well, it’s also the party of Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. The same guy McCain (as the maverick reformer) is pedaling away from, furiously. McCain is saying, in effect, “The party was great, the party now sucks, so vote for the party.” Huh?

There are other messages, equally strange and strained. On foreign policy, and by all sensible measures, McCain has been in ideological lockstep with the now-disowned Bush gang over Iraq. McCain gets points for recognizing that the surge would “work.” But the fundamental point is that it’s not a just war; motivation aside, skewed and deadly decisions were made. Decisions that changed the global game, opening the door for Iran, neglecting Afghanistan (the just war in this tableau, if there is one), straining our resources, putting us into inextricable debt, costing us credibility in the world community, and gelding our protest over Russia’s adventures in Georgia. We’ve lost the high road.

McCain, deploying the Republican penchant for winning the labeling game, says his policy will lead to victory in Iraq, Obama’s to defeat. Last night, Palin said that McCain knows how to win a war. How is this so? Because McCain supported the surge? Or because he was a POW in Vietnam?

What would McCain’s victory look like? Likely not a banner on an aircraft carrier, but surely not a signature on articles of surrender or a treaty. How would we know it when we saw it? Did we win in Vietnam?

What would Obama’s surrender look like?

They would look about the same. An inglorious and untidy draw-down over time, with fingers crossed that the factions who have hated each other for centuries don’t start dismembering each other the second we leave. And there’s Iran to deal with; unless they cave in, we’ll have to shoot them up too.

On foreign policy, McCain's approach to the new globe is not just old school. It's the unlit one-room schoolhouse.

McCain, the reformer, says we can’t talk to our enemies. Why? Because you can’t. This is not just the old school approach to the new globe, it’s the unlit one-room schoolhouse. These days, don’t we teach our children that when we have problems, we should talk about them? That communication is the key to learning, to understanding?

If there’s truth cowering in a dark corner, how can we suffer by exposing it to the light?

McCain's no tax and spend liberal...these guys don't tax—they just spend, baby. They’ve run a system that encourages consumers to buy on credit to drive the economy, then talk about fiscal responsibility, then mortgage our children to the Chinese.

On the domestic side, I’m happy to know that McCain will fight, fight, fight the special interests and lobbyists. It must be hard to ask them to leave your office, turn down lunch. But then hire one to run your campaign while apparently still a principal of the firm? Enlist them to get the bailout passed? A mixed signal.

On economic policy, there’s an unbroken conservative cable from Regan to Bush to McCain. They’re triplets joined at the brain. The free market eventually resolves everything: you feed the capital.

These guys don’t want government intruding everywhere, like the tax and spend liberals do. These guys don’t tax—they just spend, baby. They’ve run a system that encourages consumers to buy on credit to drive the economy, then talk about fiscal responsibility, then mortgage our children to the Chinese.

These guys don’t want government intruding everywhere. But they’d unravel the Fourth Amendment. They’d legislate a moral compass in our libraries, schools, and bedrooms—but not in our boardrooms. They talk about faith in God, but have helped crown money as our one true God.

McCain suspends his campaign. He expects us to suspend our disbelief.

The best candidate for President is not on the ballot. That’s the candidate who can galvanize enough momentum to throw all the truth-shaving cowardly bums out and devise a zero tolerance policy for any more bums. Until then, we can’t bank on McCain, who is complicit in this gargantuan cascading mess, to regain consciousness. He suspends his campaign, he expects us to suspend our disbelief.

I have to vote for Obama, even if by default.