The Rough Drafts Writing Blog

The 2008 Presidential Election campaign has been long and difficult on both the candidates and the American public. I’m writing this to announce that I have taken the long way around the lake and come to the finish line; I’ve officially decided who I will be supporting.

Early in the primary process, I was a Giuliani supporter. While I don’t agree with everything that Rudy stands for, I admire him and he inspires me. It’s easy to see how a man like Giuliani, who served New York City and the country as a whole so well on September 11^th, would handle our nation in a crisis. Sadly, Giuliani was knocked out of the race fairly early thanks in large part to incredibly poor campaign strategy. This development really left me in a bind. The candidate that I loved, not liked but loved, had left the race.

So the question became: who could I support? The options at the time were Clinton, Obama, McCain, Huckabee, Romney, and Paul. Some of these people, as you’ll see, were immediately disqualified. Overall though, this wasn’t an easy decision for me.

Mike Huckabee turns me off in almost every way that a candidate possibly could. He’s an evangelical. He used to be a preacher. He likes to compare himself to Jesus. He’s made remarks about women, Jewish people, Mormons, homosexuals, Smurfs, Ligers, and party clowns that I find offensive. Is it really necessary to go any further? Probably not, but I will. He’s a hick. He doesn’t look presidential. He actually believes in creationism. Yes, that’s right kids, he thinks the entire world was created 6,000 years or so ago. Sounds like a guy I’d vote for right? Not a chance.

What about Ron Paul? Ron Paul is a Libertarian running as a Republican. I most closely identify with Libertarian positions. I don’t line up perfectly, but their party seems traditionally to have the closest positions to my own. Socially, I’m incredibly liberal. I like to joke that I’m to the left of lesbian Swedish hippies who actually live on a commune. I’m a little bit more right of center on economics, the role of government, and national defense. So, Paul would seem to be a fairly inspired choice right? Well, the answer is no and I’ll tell you why: Ron Paul is a racist. There, I said it. I know, I know, I know. The easiest way to get shit from a bunch of people is to say something negative about Ron Paul on the internet. Honestly though? I don’t give a fuck because it’s true. Ron Paul has made a series of comments about Martin Luther King Jr. and the city of New York that I consider to be patently offensive. As a matter of fact, I’m unwilling to quote them here because I don’t want to provide another place to find vitriol like that through a search engine.

Mitt Romney may in fact be a robot. I think that’s the simplest way to put it. It has nothing to do with his religion; he can frankly wear three pairs of magic underwear for all I care. It has to do with the fact that he’s so incredibly corporate. He’s ‘CEO-guy’. He’s very rehearsed and planned and it’s all about image. He seems to have entirely stripped all of the humanity away from himself and that turns me off.

So that effectively brings me to the three candidates still in the race. Paul was never really a serious contender (though he did beat Giuliani in a few of the early primaries – GAHHH). Romney dropped out shortly after Giuliani and Huckabee followed him a few weeks later.

I’ve considered each of the remaining three very closely.

Hillary Clinton makes it into this section of my essay frankly because she hasn’t conceded the nomination yet despite all of the evidence to the contrary. The rumors of her political death are indeed well founded even though she refuses to acknowledge it. I’ve spent a long time, most of my life it seems, becoming familiar with Hillary Clinton, and the fact of the matter is that I genuinely despise her. She is representative of every single thing that is wrong with politics and the power structure at the moment in this country. She sickens me.

Clinton is an opportunist of the worst magnitude. She isn’t interested in helping people; she’s not serving the public interest. She doesn’t care about me or you, she cares about power. I truly believe that she would behead her daughter Chelsea on the fifty-yard-line at the Super Bowl if Mark Penn or someone of his ilk told her that it would win her more votes than it would lose her. She moved to my home state of New York nearly a decade ago when it suited her political purposes. She has spent nearly eight years now as the junior carpet-bagger from New York, and it embarrasses the shit out of me.

She’s a liar. Now I know that all politicians lie. I’m not naïve. However, Clinton stands out among them. Clinton has made a career out of lying, whether about being shot at in Bosnia, or brokering the Good Friday Accords, or her role in Whitewater, TravelGate, FileGate, StolenShitGate …. I think you get the point. She’s full of shit. It’s “admit it, deny it, whatever it takes to get elected or out of trouble” with her.

Clinton brings a level of rancor and vitriol with her that I just can’t deal with anymore. Honestly, it’s emotionally draining to watch first Billary and now Hill draw ever-deeper lines in the sand with a dare to their opponents to cross it. How is Hillary more qualified to answer that “3 AM phone call” than Obama or McCain? She’s not, and she knows it. The problem is that she doesn’t know any way other than destruction. I’m tired of it.

In case you haven’t guessed yet, I’m not supporting Clinton. She’s dark and evil while I’m looking for uplifting, competent, and true. We would all be well served if she went away.

Whew! I feel a bit better now that I’ve gotten that off my chest.

I supported John McCain when he ran in 2000. You may remember that he was doing pretty well until someone spread the rumor that he had a black baby in South Carolina. I wonder who that was. Hmmm. Anyway … right … McCain. He’s a courageous man. He’s a great man. He has dedicated his life to the service of his country. For this, I am grateful and he has my undying respect. He no longer has my support though.

In 2000, McCain was a maverick. McCain believed in the things that he believed in regardless of whether or not he was supposed to. It was special, magic in a way. This man stood up and said the things he said and believed what he believed. If you didn’t like it or him, well that was just too bad. I didn’t agree with everything that he said or did, but he had to balls to do it and own it and I loved that.

Something happened though. McCain has changed in the intervening eight years. He’s not the maverick anymore. He’s become the establishment, and the establishment sucks. McCain has the spent the last eight years, and particularly the last four, moving further and further to the right. He’s paying attention to the religious right. He’s saying things that I’m not excited about. He’s not the guy anymore. He no longer gives me hope that the government can be run by people that rely on their integrity rather than their focus group testing.

You know who does give me hope? Barack Obama gives me hope. I haven’t always believed. I’ve been slowly moving towards him since Giuliani’s departure. There was a major bump in the road though. I’m not going to lie; the Reverend Jeremiah Wright thing freaked me out. It really did. The bitterness and anger espoused by Wright is not something that sat or sits well with me. I do not endorse it in any way. I do (now) understand it though in light of the remarks made by Obama in response to it. I still don’t endorse it (yes, I felt I had to say it twice), but I get it.

Obama’s Philadelphia speech entitled “A More Perfect Union” (in response to the Wright controversy) was one of the finest that I’ve ever had the privilege of hearing. It was moving, insightful, and inspiring. I truly believe that we can be a better country. I truly believe that we can all be better people. Obama inspires that in me. Nobody else does and no one ever has to this level. It’s refreshing and moving to have this experience with a politician. I’ve already spent nearly fifteen hundred words detailing the ways in which the word ‘politician’ had more or less become a dirty word. I don’t feel that way anymore. Politicians are people; some good, some bad. Obama gave that to me.

Now, I don’t agree with Obama on everything. I think that it’s critically important that we not allow the situation in Iraq to entirely collapse by withdrawing immediately. I also think that the government has a long history of demonstrating to us that they can’t be trusted to run something as large as Healthcare. You know what though? I believe again. I have hope again. The promise of America is new and refreshed in my mind. Obama gave that to me.

In return, I give him my support. I urge you to vote for Barack Obama.