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McCain
and Obama - the winner may be the loser in the end In late 1974, the Republican party was in shambles. Nixon had resigned in disgrace, leaving the ineffectual Gerald Ford as the heir apparent. The country was saddled with seemingly endless war, inflation, energy crisis and a shrinking gross domestic product due to our inability to compete in a global market. Sound familiar? Two newcomers to the national political scene were inspired by the lack of leadership that had plagued America. They were Ronald Regan and Jimmy Carter. Both men were touted as outsiders coming to shake up Washington and save us from the malaise that had infected our body politic. So on came the primaries and we all know what happened next. By some fluke, the bland peanut farmer Carter beat the dynamic heir to the Kennedy dynasty and the feckless Ford beat the "Great Communicator" Reagan. Not so fast, there was more here than just an angry electorate hungry for change. Edward Kennedy and Ronald Regan were no lightweights, how could they be so easily upended by the likes of Carter and Ford, unless perhaps they lets say "took a dive". With the economic cycle in the beginning of what was by all accounting a precipitous long term downward trend along with the realization that we were going to have to admit defeat in Vietnam, neither Republicans nor Democrats, both equally to blame for the mess, were anxious to captain this sinking ship. Like the rats they were, they were happy to flee said ship and leave the dirty work to some less fortunate creatures to deal with. They instead chose to lay the groundwork for the 1980 election, hoping for better sailing conditions and a sturdier ship. So Reagan hit the base hard launching his famous southern strategy in a little town known only by it's famous offspring, the Ku Klux Klan. With stories of the "welfare queen" and her Cadillac, he quickly shed his Hollywood liberal, union actor background and cemented himself in the racist hearts of the white southern Dixie-crats. This did not endear him to minorities and any fair-minded white voter and pretty much torpedoed his chances for 1976.(can we say George "Macaca" Allen Jr). With the infamous short memory of the public, old Ronnie would tone the race baiting down when he reemerged in 1978. As the kindly elder statesmen, he was endearing enough to sucker a few trusting minorities into voting for him, but be assured the racists had remembered, he really was one of them. Carter is wrongly blamed for all the woes of the seventies and Reagan is wrongly credited with the overrated successes of the eighties. So here we have McCain and Obama, the sacrificial lambs of their perspective parties. Neither party wanting to win all that much, with the headwinds of our tanking economy. At the core of this economic turmoil, is a crisis in confidence that has frozen the global credit markets in a way that no one seems to understand, much less knows how to fix. Add to the mix uncertainty of two, maybe three wars and how all this turmoil will effect the energy supply and economic growth. I actually feel sorry for the ever loyal soldier, McCain. Once again was sent into a losing battle, only to be left for dead by his cowardly leaders. McCain was saddled with the dismal Bush legacy and the feckless Sarah Palin as his running mates. Obama has won this dubious prize, hopefully he will fair better than Carter did against the Republican slime machine and the twists of fate that await us. Good luck President Obama, hoping for the best but not forgetting history, we must stand by our new president and continue the fight against the true evil doers in our midst. Rush, OReilly and the others will never quit, so we must all be ever vigilant and forceful in our struggle for justice. This is what Jesus would do. |