I haven’t kept it a secret that I supported and voted for John McCain last week. I was genuinely despondent about McCain’s loss, because it was obvious to me that, in spite of his shameful kowtowing to the religious right, he was the responsible choice for president. Of course, I said that about McCain eight years ago, too, but dumb Republicans elected the Texas dufus – a profound mistake that will continue to haunt the GOP for years to come.
Before election season was in full swing this year, I was an Obama fan. If McCain or Giuliani (yeah, I know…) wasn’t going to win the White House, my third choice… well, my third choice was Joe Biden. But my FOURTH choice was Barack Obama. I, like everyone else, was charmed by his good looks and charisma, fascinated by the idea that we could have a president who speaks English with competence, and doesn’t embarrass us at every turn. I liked him – he is, after all, pretty likable. And he has one irrefutably redeeming quality: he’s a White Sox fan.
Then, as is the case with any campaign, the mud started a-slingin’ and both candidates, with each passing day, appeared less and less desirable. We learned that the Great and Honorable John McCain was willing to use the VP position as a cheap marketing gimmick to attract female votes – which backfired, justifiably. We learned that the Mild and Tolerant Barack Obama befriends angry militants with hate-filled racist agendas. We learned that Tough John McCain was unwilling to play hardball when it counted. We learned that the Inclusive Barack Obama has steadfastly toed his party’s line for every single vote in his abbreviated political career, never once breaking from a party that SURELY has been wrong ONCE in the last ten years.
Yeah, bipartisan is his middle name.
I mean, if it wasn’t Hussein.
Needless to say, I became disenchanted with the Charismatic One. I especially didn’t appreciate his willingness to so blatantly ignore reality by suggesting that John McCain has been a George W. Bush lackey, and that the two are politically indistinguishable. With trash like that being tossed around, having been enamored with John McCain all these years certainly made me more susceptible to an opposition to Obama.
Despite my disappointment, Barack Obama’s going to be the 44th President of the United States, and I had better get comfortable with that. While I doubt a time will come that I’ll regret casting my vote for McCain, here are a few realistic things that Obama can do in his presidency to help me get comfortable.
1: Repeal the Patriot Act. Of the seemingly endless string of bad decisions that George W. Bush made during his eight years of foolishness, arrogance and incompetence, perhaps the biggest was enacting the USA PATRIOT Act, which has essentially made it legal for the Executive Branch to surveil any American without a warrant, if they have nothing beyond a hunch that said person has “terrorist ties”. (I haven’t heard defining terms this abstract since Miss Teen South Carolina’s dissertation on the impact of credit derivatives on the world’s financial markets. In retrospect, you have to wonder if she went on to become a White House economic advisor.) If Obama is the smart, freedom-loving patriot his supporters say he is, reversing the Patriot Act should be an obvious move for him.
2: Legalize gay marriage nationwide. I can’t believe we’re still stuck on this issue. Worse yet, I can’t believe the allegedly “progressive” state of California overturned their earlier decision and screwed over (pardon the pun) the gays again! Look, I know we have a boatload of religious nutcases in this country. But who allowed them to become foremost authority on marriage? And just because their Imaginary Guy hates gay people, does that mean we should legislate based on that? If Casper the Friendly Ghost told the KKK to ratchet up the lynching again, would Congress pass a bill??? Seriously, if Obama fixes this problem, I will consider voting for him in four years, instead of blowing my vote on whatever token Libertarian is on the ballot.
3: Legalize marijuana and, if he’s feeling saucy, other narcotics. While there is absolutely no logical reason whatsoever that gay marriage is outlawed, there is a little more gray area here. The theory, of course, is that if narcotics are legalized, people would become hooked more easily… which is insane. We’re allowed to kill ourselves with cheeseburgers and bourbon but not cheech and blow? This one’s going to be more challenging than the gay marriage thing. After all, there isn’t an entire law enforcement agency being employed by a War on Fags… at least, not that I’m aware of. And, let’s face reality, if a black guy pushes hard to legalize drugs, more than a few eyebrows will be raised. If he pulls this one off, I’ll not only vote for him next time, I’ll do a line in his honor on Inauguration Day, 2013. Because, you know, it’ll be legal.
4: Make the rest of the world think we’re not a nation full of Hank Hill’s. The advantage of finally having a suave, attractive, intellectually-appealing president is that the French might actually start liking us again. And that’s important, because what would we be without France? Aside from their assistance about 230 years ago – which we paid back tenfold on the beaches of Normandy – France gives us so much. Wine, cheese, hairy women… (wait! Don’t we have Napa, Wisconsin, and Italy for those things? Okay, enough France-bashing. My fists now smell like body odor.) Anyway, if Obama does make us look better and more well liked worldwide – and how could he not? – you have to acknowledge that as a positive step. Hopefully that goodwill doesn’t, as neo-cons believe, lead to disrespect by terrorist entities. I have a sneaking suspicion that, since neo-cons are wrong about everything else, they’ll probably be wrong about that too.
5: Catch Osama. The capture and execution of America’s most wanted terrorist early in an Obama term would establish two things: the first is that Tard-Nation would no longer be able to claim that Obama’s a terrorist. (Oh, they’d still try – “Look how fast that happened! Because it’s his cousin! I knew it!”) The second thing that a bin Laden capture would establish is that Obama is not the nancy-boy liberal softie that he appears to be. Nab the bad guy, put a garbage can on his head, and you’re no longer in the lace-curtained dog house. It’d be bigger than Reagan’s hostage crisis success.
If Barack Obama accomplishes even half of the things his campaign purported he would if elected, including a functional universal health care system, balancing the budget, getting to work on the deficit, responsibly getting us out of Iraq in short order, etc., all without boosting taxes on most Americans (and on the businesses that employ most Americans – small ones), I’ll stop dismissing him out-of-hand as a fiscal socialist.
Tags: Barack Obama