The Question for Election 08:
What Kind of Country Do You Want?

- © Peggy Whiteneck

I like Barack Obama's manifest integrity. We could use a little of that in a White House that has become a place of smoke and mirrors. The Imperial Presidency created by George "Dubya" Bush has given us - in the very name of fighting terrorism - terror by torture and the Big Brother of citizen surveillance. Even though an ounce of healthy ethical intuition should tell us that you can't get to a good end through tainted means, ends have justified any means whatsoever in the moral universe of Bushism. (Or should I say Cheneyism?...Who the hell cares? The hell is the same, as is the road to it...)

I like the fact that Obama genuinely cares about what happens to the poor - which is to say, working-class Americans. I like that his beliefs are so clearly opposed to those of George W. Bush, whose classism and preppy bigotry against struggling Americans bulge out of him like tumors. Give me a President like Obama - someone who actually means what he says and says what he means and whose rhetoric I don't have to deconstruct for its hidden hate speech against everyone from the unemployed to single moms to Mexican farmworkers.

I like Obama's thoughtful approach to global affairs - after eight years of a "Commander in Chief" who's never fought a genuine battle in his life, for whom bombast passes for bravery, and whose war games are entirely too free with other people's children. I like that Obama seems inclined to stiffen America's moral spine after eight years of our craven slinking around to avoid ratifying every good global impulse from constructive response to climate change to banning the use of land mines.

Ah, but what of Obama's alleged Achilles Heel - his "lack of experience?" It seems to me "experience" is what prevents your average politician from thinking creatively and outside the box of conventional "wisdom." Therein lies the path of John McCain, the self-styled rogue elephant of the Grand Old Party who now seeks to be its darling. Like Bush, McCain can't help himself; the man's so steeped in the bias that now passes for "Conservatism" in this country that he's practically parboiled in it. Listen carefully, and you'll hear it bubbling up like so much acid reflux, as when McCain was recently caught on tape parodying an old Beach Boys hit with a chorus of "Bomb, bomb, bomb - bomb, bomb Iran," following up that riff with a creepy chuckle worthy of Dubya himself.

Seldom has an election presented us with so stark a choice. We can elect a President who exploits our fears - of terrorism, of rogue regimes, of being attacked again - to sell us further into the slavery of adopting poison means to our national ends. Or we can elect a President who calls to the better angels of our country's nature.

 · Finding a Voice in an Age of Intolerance · 
 · "On Proudly Wearing the Scarlet 'L'"  · 
 · "Average Americans Need Lessons in Basic Civics" · 
 · "Affirmative Action Discriminates
Against White Men? Give Me a Break"  ·