Sunday, August 24, 2008

Is McCain Another Bush?

Thanks to the wife for the find and for the rallying cry of "Can I get a President that is smarter than me?!"

Read the FULL ARTICLE here, but for those of you who won't click it, here's a highlight:

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.


After listening to Obama twice live, once at the engineering school here in Lancaster and once at the train station for the whistle stop, he's my man. It's not even a comparasion! Barack thinks on his feet and doesn't use teleprompters because he's speaking what he believes, not some ideological crap written by Karl Rove. America deserves better and the fact that McCain is even close to Obama in the polls is disturbing.

People say they're not voting for Obama because he's too popular or isn't ready to lead. The same thing was said of Lincoln and Kennedy by their older opponents. Age-ism works both ways. Older doesn't mean better as this NY Times article proves the sad state of McCain's leadership. Obama is not the Messiah, but he may cast out some demons in November.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

McCain's not another Bush.

One of the things I like about McCain is that unlike most of the Republicans (and Democrats too), he's able to offer compromises. Too often, both parties have dug in their heels and said, "No, things have to be done the way we said and we won't budge an inch."

That's what led to some of the big funding show downs in recent years. But this isn't unique to the Bush administration. During the Clinton administration, one such showdown led to the government being shut down for several days.

None of this is to say that McCain or Obama is my preferred candidate. Frankly, I'm disappointed in both of them. McCain for his negative ads; Obama for his presumption that he's already won the election.

I've been looking forward to hearing a bit more than sound bites from both of them. That doesn't seem to be happening. Do you remember how a few months ago they both welcomed the idea of doing a series of debates/town-hall meetings?

Shortly afterward, both camps distanced themselves from that idea with lots of weasel words about how they'd never exactly promised to do anything of the sort.

Every four years I get my hopes up. And every four years I find my hopes dashed.

Luke said...

i would agree that McCain is not another Bush until he voted with Bush 95% of the time since 2005 when he decided he was going to run for president, thus selling out to the right-wing ideologes.

I'd vote for McCain no problem if it was the 2000 version running... now i want the smartest guy in there and that guy is Obama IMO.

Anonymous said...

Have you ever heard a candidate say, "If I'm elected president..."? Nope. Even in the primaries, they all say, "WHEN I'm elected president." That's Speech 101!

Anonymous said...

I don't fault the speeches about "When I'm President," I'm faulting the "I'm already President stuff." Meeting with heads of State to make plans for working together? I'm trying to figure out where the line is between being prepared and being presumptuous.

As far as McCain voting the party line 95% of the time - that's not a completely useful statistic. I'm curious what the 5% disagreement was about. How often has Obama voted the way the White House wanted things to go? Not everything gets a headline after all. Congress funded highway construction, education, research, and so on. I doubt either of them voted against any of that stuff.

There's been a lot of talk in Congress lately about putting a windfall profits tax on "Big Oil." Because in absolute dollars, Big Oil is setting records. As a percentage of revenue... Lots of other industries do a lot better. (Google fer instance last I knew had a 35% profit margin versus Exxon's 25%.) How much profit is "too much"? (And how the heck does taxing profits make oil cheaper anyhow? Does Congress somehow think companies are just going to eat the extra cost instead of passing it along to consumers?)

Both candidates talk about helping the middle class. So far, nobody's willing to define it.

Eh. Enough ranting for now. I'm gonna do some digging and see if I can find some answers. :-)

Luke said...

when it comes to foreign policy and taxation, McCain is 95%. hope that clarifies.

We've been Obama-ites from the get go... since he made it into the senate. So we've been following his career as any fellow UCCers should.

IMO Obama is a mechanic. he fixes policies before they break and i think that's something washington hasn't seen in a while. McCain and Obama are known for their bi-partisanship but it seems like McCain has sold out the past few years.

go digging for that information! what is presented here will be skewed as kate and i are intellectual snobs. if a candidate was in the top 10% of their class and was president of their law review... then odds are we're voting for them ;-)

happy hunting!