I got into blogging by answering a forum post on O-Live back in 2004. Kevin “Velveeta” Cosgrove originally brought two of us in to give our insights into the election and blog our thoughts in what turned out to be near real time. My partner was David B. Wright. He’s now writing at TwoPennies.
David made up his mind fairly early on that he would be voting for Kerry. I still had a lot of post-Limbaugh baggage to overcome and didn’t make up my mind until late-October that things had to change.
He doesn’t post much these days, given the fact he’s now got a big boy job down in Las Vegas which allows him to have both a mortgage and a nice sled. But every now and then he’ll pop-up with some thoughts on what’s going on in politics. He’s made no secret he’s voting for McCain this time around, partly out of dislike for Obama, but mostly because he prefers the idea of divided government. Fine.
I asked him yesterday whether Palin changed his calculus at all. The answer?
McCain could have picked a ham sandwich (to paraphrase) as his running mate, and I still would have to vote for him for the good of the country. That I happen to like him, and distrust Obama, makes that choice easier. That he made a questionable pick for VP is a bit troublesome, but I understand entirely why he made that choice. I’d have chosen differently, myself, but that’s OK.
Gulp.
McCain’s choice, his first true executive decision, shows an impulsive, risk taking side that I don’t think this country can handle during this time of both domestic and worldwide uncertainty. In my mind it truly is more of the same. And while I sympathize with Wright’s idea that government is at its best when its divided, I don’t think we can allow a religious zealot to be this close to the seat of power. Especially post-Bush/Cheney. This was the argument against Huckabee, you’ll recall. Two years, or even four, of one-party rule will not bring this country down. The Dems are particularly afraid of their own shadows and will not stray too far from the middle, no matter their rhetoric.
The question on everyone’s minds now is how many Davids are out there? We’ll know sooner rather than later.
4 responses so far ↓
1 C-Ho // Sep 3, 2008 at 7:10 am
Some people won’t vote for Barack no matter what. I think I have a pretty good idea of what that”what” is.
2 Chris Snethen // Sep 3, 2008 at 8:10 am
You’re right in a lot of cases, but I don’t think that’s David’s issue. He’s got a legit concern, and I think if Trent Lott and the boys were still in charge of Congress, he would probably vote the other way.
3 David Wright // Sep 3, 2008 at 10:03 am
Hey Chris, thanks for the notice.
And yeah, you’re right — as much as I do genuinely like McCain, and as much as I do genuinely distrust Obama (I honestly just don’t “get” the whole cult of personality around him), if we still had a solidly Republican Congress after 8 years of all-Republican rule you can bet that I’d be voting Obama this time around.
It’s true that one term of one-party rule won’t bring the country down — any more than one term of McCain/Palin won’t bring the country down — but my larger concern is the long-term cycle of payback & retribution. When the R’s got all the power after so long, they abused that power. After 6 years of that abuse, followed by 2 years of a do-nothing D Congress that now has something to prove, you really think that the Dems won’t go nuts when they don’t have to work with R’s at all?
Which, as I said in my post, will lead inevitably to the Republicans again abusing power in retribution once they regain control, whenever that might be.
Also, that whole divided government thing is precisely why it’s *not* a problem for a religious zealot to be that close to the seat of power, because that power isn’t absolute, and the system of checks and balances can operate not only on the branches of government, but on the parties that control that government.
But, ultimately, I fear that there really aren’t a lot of “Davids” out there after all. And I do think that the Palin choice may end up turning off more independent voters than McCain can attract, much to my chagrin.
By the way, I love that this post is tagged with “ham sandwich”… wonder how many hits you’ll get for that?
4 Trent // Sep 3, 2008 at 11:49 am
I love how you throw the religious zealot tag around. Interesting that the Obama faith based initiatives don’t really seem to bother you.
With a 5-4 liberal Supreme Court and a Democrat controlled Congress, there won’t be alot of zealoting (hey, a new word!) being thrown around.
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