Tuesday, April 22, 2008

None of The Above in 2008

By Alan Caruba

“I don’t want to vote for any one of them,” is something I keep hearing over and over again from friends and acquaintances. In my memory, I frankly cannot recall when people seemed so indifferent to the outcome of a national election.

Usually elections are viewed as critical turning points and moments on which the entire future depends, but this year people (and I am speaking in a broad generalization here) seem to have concluded that no matter who gets elected, they will screw up a bad situation and make it worse.

Pennsylvania will, by the time you have read this, likely have decided the outcome of that party’s convention in Denver. For my part, I would love to watch the party tear itself apart in August, but my guess is that, if Obama is the choice, it will be McGovern, Dukakis, and Kerry all over again, a political déjà vu.

Even then, it doesn’t matter. In November, those who do vote will not likely do so with a happy heart. Many of the current Clinton supporters may stay home having rightly concluded they were robbed of yet another glorious Clintonian term with Hillary at the helm this time.

Anyone who thinks Obama has a chance is dreaming. Few WHITE MEN will pull the level for a candidate who is as racist as any dues-paying member of the KKK.

That leaves John McCain and, yes, it is Bush 2.0 because he has no intention of slowing down any of the Mexicans and “others” coming across the southern border and, since he is likely to be dealing with a Democrat Congress, he will be signing off on a host of horrid “environmental” laws to save us all from a global warming that is not happening and which, in fact, stopped around 1998. The Earth has been cooling since then.

As for the war, McCain will leave enough troops in Iraq to keep that debacle from looking like another Vietnam. If he tries to put more troops in, he will be impeached. We have members of state National Guards that haven’t seen their families in months, if not years.

And what the hell is the National Guard doing in Iraq anyway? Aren’t they supposed to guard the homeland? Just asking. Now that the volunteer military is accepting convicted felons, you get the creepy feeling that the Draft wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Back then it was considered a patriotic duty. It still is.

The voters don’t have much to vote for this year. None of the nation’s real problems are about to go away and most are going to get worse. The financial sector is in deep, deep trouble. When Americans begin to discover the horrid mess involving public and private pensions, it will make today’s mortgage and credit crunch seem like a picnic.

The only good news I can think of is that America has survived more bad presidents than the few good ones we’ve had. I like to be hopeful. It helps.

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