Sunday, October 19, 2008
Et tu, Colin Powell
Some political observers were stunned by the long-rumored announcement that Colin Powell is supporting Barack Obama's bid to become president.
It's not about race, Powell claims. Instead, he blames John McCain for running a dishonorable campaign and promoting the "Obama the Muslim" rumor (which actually pre-dates the primary battle with Hillary Clinton.) He is uncomfortable with the prospect of two more conservatives on the Supreme Court and claims that Obama will be better for the economy.
Let's get this straight here: Colin Powell, who purports to be a Republican, thinks that Barack Obama will provide economic leadership. For starters, Barack Obama puts the "O" back in "socialism." He openly supports "speading the wealth." Such beliefs should be anathema to Republican economic thought. Judicial constraint and strict constructionism are also core tenets of Republican philosophy. Powell's lukewarm commitment to free-market principles and judicial restraint should bring his party affiliation into question; his limited experience into both fields should bring his judgement on these issues into doubt.
As a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would think that Colin Powell would know about the qualities of a good leader. Which makes it all the more surprising that he thinks Barack Obama is ready tro be commander-in-chief. Powell rightly says that Sarah Palin is not ready to be president on day one, as have many newspaper editorial boards in their endorsements of Sen. Obama. But Americans are not asking Sarah Palin to be commander-in-chief on day one. They will be asking John McCain or Barack Obama to be commander-in-chief. Is Colin Powell naive enough to think that Barack Obama, who has served in the federal government for less than four years and possesses no executive experience worth noting, will be ready to roll into the White House and take charge? Again, I think that his better judgement is being clouded.
Other commentators have suggested that the Obama endorsement is an act of revenge for the shameful way in which Powell was treated by the Bush administration. While I agree that Powell's exclusion from key decisions leading up to the Iraq invasion were downright scandalous, it doesn't make sense to me that Powell would endanger his long-running friendship with John McCain just to get back at George Bush.
The fatal flaw in the revenge argument is whether Powell would have endorsed Hillary Clinton if it was she who captured the Democratic nomination. It's hard to guess hypotheticals of this nature, but I have a hard time envisioning it happening.
I used to think that Colin Powell was a man of principle and integrity, but today I am proven wrong by his back-stabbing of Senator McCain. He's either lying by claiming that race didn't play a factor in his judgement, or he's lying by calling himself a Republican when he's endorsing a candidate who has no common ideology with the Republican party. I think that Colin Powell's endorsement is based purely on identity politics, and my estimation of his character has suffered greatly as a result.
It's not about race, Powell claims. Instead, he blames John McCain for running a dishonorable campaign and promoting the "Obama the Muslim" rumor (which actually pre-dates the primary battle with Hillary Clinton.) He is uncomfortable with the prospect of two more conservatives on the Supreme Court and claims that Obama will be better for the economy.
Let's get this straight here: Colin Powell, who purports to be a Republican, thinks that Barack Obama will provide economic leadership. For starters, Barack Obama puts the "O" back in "socialism." He openly supports "speading the wealth." Such beliefs should be anathema to Republican economic thought. Judicial constraint and strict constructionism are also core tenets of Republican philosophy. Powell's lukewarm commitment to free-market principles and judicial restraint should bring his party affiliation into question; his limited experience into both fields should bring his judgement on these issues into doubt.
As a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I would think that Colin Powell would know about the qualities of a good leader. Which makes it all the more surprising that he thinks Barack Obama is ready tro be commander-in-chief. Powell rightly says that Sarah Palin is not ready to be president on day one, as have many newspaper editorial boards in their endorsements of Sen. Obama. But Americans are not asking Sarah Palin to be commander-in-chief on day one. They will be asking John McCain or Barack Obama to be commander-in-chief. Is Colin Powell naive enough to think that Barack Obama, who has served in the federal government for less than four years and possesses no executive experience worth noting, will be ready to roll into the White House and take charge? Again, I think that his better judgement is being clouded.
Other commentators have suggested that the Obama endorsement is an act of revenge for the shameful way in which Powell was treated by the Bush administration. While I agree that Powell's exclusion from key decisions leading up to the Iraq invasion were downright scandalous, it doesn't make sense to me that Powell would endanger his long-running friendship with John McCain just to get back at George Bush.
The fatal flaw in the revenge argument is whether Powell would have endorsed Hillary Clinton if it was she who captured the Democratic nomination. It's hard to guess hypotheticals of this nature, but I have a hard time envisioning it happening.
I used to think that Colin Powell was a man of principle and integrity, but today I am proven wrong by his back-stabbing of Senator McCain. He's either lying by claiming that race didn't play a factor in his judgement, or he's lying by calling himself a Republican when he's endorsing a candidate who has no common ideology with the Republican party. I think that Colin Powell's endorsement is based purely on identity politics, and my estimation of his character has suffered greatly as a result.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Throwing it all Away
I'm currently consigning myself to the growing likelihood that Barack Hussein Obama will be the 44th president of the United States. While I don't know if he will be more like Jimmy Carter or FDR, I don't think that either archetype is what America needs right now.
It didn't have to be that way. In John McCain, Americans have a fiscally-responsible, socially-centrist candidate who is ready to be commander-in-chief on day one. But McCain's missteps are those of a man who seems to be prying defeat out of the jaws of victory.
All of the pundits look at McCain's time after wrapping up the primaries as wasted, and they're right. John McCain spent that time talking about his "League of Democracies" and prizes for an electric car battery. While I didn't have any big disagreements with any of those ideas, none of them had much traction with the electorate, and they were quietly dropped. In the meantime, Barack Obama didn't need to wait until Hillary's departure to start branding the Bush presidency as a total failure, and branding John McCain as an aging clone of George Bush. It doesn't matter that the Bush-McCain link falls apart after a cursory examination of McCain's clashes with Bush and his record prior to the Bush presidency. If a lie is repeated often enough and goes unchallenged long enough, it becomes "conventional wisdom."
John McCain has only hit a winning message with his speech at the Republican National Convention. The failures of the Bush presidency didn't occur because Bush was too conservative. Instead, they occurred when Bush and congressional Republicans betrayed traditional conservative approaches to fiscal discipline and limited government.
In spite of McCain's sluggish, off-message start to the campaign, he shouldn't have been counted out. I think he was exceptionally ballsy when he decided to postpone campaigning and decline the first debate so Congress could react to the credit crisis. It showed that McCain was a leader, rather than a blathering and indecisive intellectual. It showed that he could put the nation's interests above his desire to be president.
Most importantly, it put McCain and Obama into a stare-down. Would Obama go into the first debate against an empty podium? Would he follow McCain's lead and go back to the capitol to get the bailout bill passed? In the end, it was Obama standing his ground and McCain blinking. He would attend the debate and decline to work through the weekend. He conceded to Obama that the credit crisis really wasn't worthy of immediate action by Congress, and relegated his "ballsy decision" to the category of political stunts and spectacle.
The pundits would say that this year is a bad one for the Republican brand. But with a Democrat-controlled Congress that's even more unpopular than the president, and an extremely liberal, extremely inexperienced candidate who has ridden a chariot of strawman arguments up to this point in the campaign, the odds should have been leveled for John McCain.
If America becomes an Obama nation, it will be the result of John McCain and his advisors failing to craft a coherent message and a vision for America. They have never once enunciated a clear means for greater prosperity through less government, less taxes and free markets. Instead, they have yielded the floor to the vapid rhetoric of "hope and change" at the expense of a growing nanny-state, a tax system built on class-warfare, and trickle-down misery.
It didn't have to be that way. In John McCain, Americans have a fiscally-responsible, socially-centrist candidate who is ready to be commander-in-chief on day one. But McCain's missteps are those of a man who seems to be prying defeat out of the jaws of victory.
All of the pundits look at McCain's time after wrapping up the primaries as wasted, and they're right. John McCain spent that time talking about his "League of Democracies" and prizes for an electric car battery. While I didn't have any big disagreements with any of those ideas, none of them had much traction with the electorate, and they were quietly dropped. In the meantime, Barack Obama didn't need to wait until Hillary's departure to start branding the Bush presidency as a total failure, and branding John McCain as an aging clone of George Bush. It doesn't matter that the Bush-McCain link falls apart after a cursory examination of McCain's clashes with Bush and his record prior to the Bush presidency. If a lie is repeated often enough and goes unchallenged long enough, it becomes "conventional wisdom."
John McCain has only hit a winning message with his speech at the Republican National Convention. The failures of the Bush presidency didn't occur because Bush was too conservative. Instead, they occurred when Bush and congressional Republicans betrayed traditional conservative approaches to fiscal discipline and limited government.
In spite of McCain's sluggish, off-message start to the campaign, he shouldn't have been counted out. I think he was exceptionally ballsy when he decided to postpone campaigning and decline the first debate so Congress could react to the credit crisis. It showed that McCain was a leader, rather than a blathering and indecisive intellectual. It showed that he could put the nation's interests above his desire to be president.
Most importantly, it put McCain and Obama into a stare-down. Would Obama go into the first debate against an empty podium? Would he follow McCain's lead and go back to the capitol to get the bailout bill passed? In the end, it was Obama standing his ground and McCain blinking. He would attend the debate and decline to work through the weekend. He conceded to Obama that the credit crisis really wasn't worthy of immediate action by Congress, and relegated his "ballsy decision" to the category of political stunts and spectacle.
The pundits would say that this year is a bad one for the Republican brand. But with a Democrat-controlled Congress that's even more unpopular than the president, and an extremely liberal, extremely inexperienced candidate who has ridden a chariot of strawman arguments up to this point in the campaign, the odds should have been leveled for John McCain.
If America becomes an Obama nation, it will be the result of John McCain and his advisors failing to craft a coherent message and a vision for America. They have never once enunciated a clear means for greater prosperity through less government, less taxes and free markets. Instead, they have yielded the floor to the vapid rhetoric of "hope and change" at the expense of a growing nanny-state, a tax system built on class-warfare, and trickle-down misery.
