The Midnight Hour

I’m very interested in the American political process. I like to read/watch/participate in politics if for no other reason than mental exercise. That being the case, I will take this opportunity to opine on several facets of this presidential race that have caught my attention, aggravated, amused, or puzzled me.

1. Ever since Senators Obama and McCain secured their parties’ nominations each has run a strikingly similar campaign: talk about Obama. I think this has been extremely effective…for Senator Obama. Yes, he’s gotten dirty and slung some mud along with Senator McCain, but the overall theme of his campaign has been about what he plans to do as president. McCain’s theme has roughly been, “You really don’t want ‘that one’ as your president.” This has been contagious and has infiltrated almost every outspoken McCain supporter in the media (and especially talk radio).

Last week I listened to conservative talk radio as I worked doing some tedious manual labor. I don’t have transcripts to do a keyword search, but I’ll put a solid 95% confidence that between Neal Bortz, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity I heard the following words repeated at least this many times during a single day of programming:

Obama: 164
Socialism/-ist: 75
Ayers: 67
Wright: 59
Spread the wealth: 61

Compare that to

McCain: 24
Palin: 53
Joe the Plumber: 44

and

Liberty: 5
Freedom: 7
Conservative: 12

I really don’t think you can scare undecided voters into voting for McCain in this way. Then again, the mind of a voter undecided between McCain and Obama this late in the game is a quagmire that Freud himself couldn’t navigate. Perhaps scare tactics like this can penetrate the mushy labyrinth atop the shoulders of the 11 remaining undecided voters, but I hesitate to call this strategy widely useful.

2. Those sneaky liberals. They’ve already penetrated the media, Hollywood, and every Toyota Prius. Now they’ve infiltrated the polls. While polls were extremely credible, reliable, and fair game to quote as fact just a few months ago, conservative commentators everywhere have now turned to exposing the liberal bias in polls rather than examining the polls’ implications. If there’s one thing I despise it’s an apologist that won’t concede even one tiny flaw in his argument, even when it is staring everyone straight in the face. However, today we see that many conservatives are simply unwilling to fathom the idea that the majority of voters may actually intend to vote for Obama. Hey, I’m a conservative. I don’t like it either. But much like death, taxes, and morning lipcrust, it simply is. I’m sure this strategy boils down to, “People tend to vote for the more popular candidate, so you can’t concede that your candidate is less popular.” However, it’s disgusting because I thought conservative idealism is supposed to be above that. I thought that when you have principles to stand on like limited government, low taxes, individual liberty, individual responsibility, and fiscal discipline that you shouldn’t need to attract the mental comatose that decides his president based on popularity. Perhaps I’m wrong. It’s happened before.

3. Is it just me, or has the McCain camp’s rhetoric started to sound like a weird self-fulfilling prophecy? It seems like all I hear from McCain is, “When Barack Obama is president, he is going to raise your taxes.” It almost seems like he’s decided to move into full “I told you so” mode a week before the election.

4. In Germany it is illegal to depict Hitler in art positively. In Austria it is illegal to deny the holocaust. In Russia political pundits that are not informally “approved” by the government to be shown on TV are digitally removed from broadcasts. In France it is illegal to photograph police, even in public places. In China the government requires you to live and work in the geographic area of your birth. Sure, you knew that third-world crapholes often oppressed their citizens and denied them basic rights, but did you realize exactly how different we are–even from some of our NATO allies and economic competitors?

In January 2009 the most powerful leader in the world will voluntarily abdicate his power and peaceably transfer it to someone else. This is also not something to take lightly, but we’ve been doing it successfully for over 200 years. No matter who wins on Tuesday, our government has as its foundation the most powerful, peculiar, and liberating document in modern history: The U.S. Constitution. Regardless of who wins, it won’t be as bad as the other half claims, and we will still hold claim to the title of “freest country on God’s earth.”