A couple weeks ago I made a declaration of myself. I laid out my political and social beliefs and ultimately came to the conclusion that I would vote for John McCain⁽¹⁾. I can no longer honestly say that. I would not claim to be an undecided either because I have come to the conclusion that America is in a toilet and that both presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, are the catalysts for flushing us all away. It is no longer a matter of who is the lesser of two evils because I feel that the selection of either one of these two people is going to destroy us. The nation is in turmoil and we need a leader. This country needs a leader who has had experiences that we, the American people can relate to; someone who has been where we are and feels what we feel.

Do you really think that Obama and McCain, millionaires many times over, know what we are feeling? I don’t. These aren’t people who know about you and me. These aren’t people who are working from paycheck to paycheck wondering if they will be able to pay their mortgage next month or put food on the table for their kids. These aren’t people who have to take care of their parents because their parent’s retirement funds have disappeared in the past 18 months. These aren’t people who are worrying that their retirement funds are going to disappear. These aren’t people who are worrying about paying for health care because these are people who can afford to buy a hospital. They both speak a lot about knowing what we are going through, neither one of them knows what we are going through. They both speak of change; yet offer more of the same old politics, politics that have gotten us into this mess to begin with.

Obama supporters are going to claim that he is change. How is he change? Change from what? Change from the last eight years? The popular belief, spread by Senator Obama, is that this country has fallen apart over the last eight years. The truth of the matter is that this country has been falling apart for the last 45 years. The government has been putting band aids on problems, both domestic and foreign, for a long time and the little fixes were just masking bigger problems which have all finally come to a head in the last eight years. Please don’t take this as a vote of support for President Bush, he has made more than his fair share of mistakes but blaming him for all this countries problems and using him as a jumping on point is the same old game of dirty politics. A game that Senator Obama said he would not partake in ⁽²⁾, yet he is. Do I understand why Senator Obama is playing dirty politics? Sure I do, because John McCain is also playing dirty and no one wants to vote for a candidate that is going to allow themselves to get punched in the face. But to run on a campaign based on change, to make promises that you are going to do things differently and then not even abide by your own promises during your campaign, what makes you think things are going to be different when and if he gets into office?

McCain supporters are going to claim that he is change. They are going to spout off the rhetoric that he is a maverick and a fighter and that his experience makes him more than equipped to take on Washington. How exactly is a politician who has been in Washington for 26 years going to change anything? I am certainly not going to say that it can’t happen but there are no signs to indicate that he is going to turn Washington on its head and make government work for people like you and me again. In fact everything points to government staying pretty much exactly the same. Take McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” for an example. It was initially set up so that McCain could talk straight with everyone, no holds barred. However that aspect of it has been shut down and now its hard to say McCain even talks straight at all anymore. Every question posed to him is answered in a round about way, ultimately taking you right back to where you began. Talking in circles isn’t change, it is the status quo. Of course Obama supporters are going to jump to his defense and say, well at least Obama talks straight. But to borrow the man’s own words, “It’s simply not true”. Obama is a master linguist, he is able to bullet point nothing and make it sound like something. I’m sure given enough time he could sell you on allowing people to dump toxic waste into your back yard and make you feel like you are the one to blame. It’s what lawyers do, it is their job and if you haven’t figured it out by now it is what politicians do to get elected; they tell you what you want to hear.

Based on the polls, the economy seems to be Obama’s strongest point and by self admission McCain’s weakest one. This country is undeniably in an economic crisis the markets have fallen over 1500 points in the last ten days or so. What are the two candidates plans for our economy? McCain wants to stand firm ⁽³⁾, which I take as holding the line but certainly not advancing. It seems to me like McCain wants to play goal-line defense and run out the clock, hoping that things get better. Obama wants to give us all a $1000 tax credit ⁽⁴⁾, which sounds nice but it is the equivalent of putting a band aid on a severed aorta. To be fair I am short changing both candidates on their economic plans to be brief, and both candidates actually do have pieces of their plans that are good but neither plan as a whole is good enough for the struggling American worker and that is just not good enough.

Based on the polls, foreign affairs is something McCain should be excelling at while Obama should be floundering. Neither is true, although the entire world should be scared if and when one of these two enters the White House. There is no easy way to say this but John McCain is undeniably patriotic, the man served our country in the armed forces and he has spent the last 26 years in Washington serving in the political arena, however John McCain is a nationalistic zealot. Plain and simple zealots are dangerous. They are stubborn and refuse to see that their might be a better way of doing things. My way or the highway, or in McCain’s case America’s way or the highway is not a solution. Obama is incorrect when he says John McCain is a continuation of George Bush’s isolationist policies, in fact the truth is much worse as John McCain threatens (or promises depending upon which side of the coin you are on) that we will be come even more hardened in terms of diplomacy. For the rest of the world, whom arguably follow our elections more closely than we do ourselves, this is a terrifying prospect. Of course if you look away from McCain’s scary ideas long enough to actually listen to what Obama is saying he is quite scary in his own right. Obama has stated ⁽⁵⁾ that he sees nothing wrong with crossing the Pakistani border to carry out military strikes on targets despite Pakistan not giving their approval for us to to do so. You can play with the rhetoric however you want but make no mistake about it, what Senator Obama is condoning is the invasion of an ally country. Not an invasion in the sense of we want to overtake your government with our military but an invasion nonetheless. I understand the idea behind his statements (and for that matter the statements of Governor Palin who has gone against her campaign and supported this tactic) but where exactly does it stop, last I checked the United States of America does not stand for the World Wide Police Force and the world is not our playground so we should stop treating it as such.

Do we need to act tough on terrorism? Yes, but if we also plan on reestablishing our standing throughout the world, which Obama insists is one of the focuses of his foreign policy plan ⁽⁶⁾, then we cannot be treating allies in this manner. Here is a question for you, if we treat our allies with this callous disregard why exactly do you suppose countries like Iran and South Korea would want to negotiate with us in the first place? Or are they to believe that despite us treating our friends like crap that we would treat our enemies better?

We could run around the issues all day long⁽⁷⁾ but in the end it comes back to one thing and one thing only none of this is change at least not for the better. Over the last six weeks I have watched the campaigns with a good deal of interest and what I have seen has disgusted me. Both sides are pouring on the hate and bringing up inconsequential affairs into the mix with both campaigns playing on the fears of the other side. To me it all seems like the same old politics.

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A great man once gave me some very wise advice. He said that I should turn the other cheek, or maybe it was shower my enemies with kindness or maybe it was don’t poop on your neighbors lawn during the day when they are home. Regardless the moral of his story was that we should make friends out of our enemies and keep our friends friendly. Of course then again his father once told me that if things aren’t going the way you want, that you should get your friends on a boat and drown everyone else. While the first bit advice is undeniably great it is a little bit submissive. I for one have always been the type of person who fights back. We need to get everyone in the boat and start fresh. The government is broken and neither one of these candidates is going to fix it despite their promises. The party system is inherently flawed and a major reason we are in the political nightmare we are in today. Yet where does the change come from being as both candidates are part of the flawed party system?

I would like to take this chance to formally announce my candidacy for this nation’s highest office. I understand the position having seen both “The American President” with Michael Douglas and “Air Force One” with Harrison Ford. I am knowledgeable on Foreign Affairs having seen films in French, Russian, Japanese, Thai and Korean in the past year and I’ve visited Canada twice. I know military matters like the back of my hand having played a lot of video games over the past 25 years, serving on the front lines in Medal of Honor and managing vast forces in Warcraft II (and I once even thought about downloading America’s Army). I know about national security and intelligence; I’ve been watching Bond movies for 20+ years so I know how it gets done best. Education is in the bag, I grew up in a household of an educator and then I married one. My weakest point is probably economics but I will appoint my wife to handle all the dollars and cents, she has kept me in line for the past six and a half years and I can tell you that that is a very hard thing to do. You want to know about my plan for health care, I like it, it’s nice, and you would like it to if you had it. Obviously I am highly qualified for this job so I urge you to vote for me on November 4th and help America change. A lot. I mean it.

Seriously though, I don’t know what the answer is but I know it is not these two candidates. We are royally screwed when one of these two take over. This can not be the best America can come up with to lead our country over the next four years. Obama and McCain are part of the system, a system we can see is broken, a system that even they tell us is broken. I urge you to ask yourselves, is this really a change? Politicians who promise us one thing and then do the exact opposite, they haven’t even been elected yet and they are already going back on campaign promises. What do you think is going to happen when they get in office? We need a complete reboot, not a change in direction. It is time for us as Americans to get on the boat and drown the system. Ladies and gentlemen, our hardships are only just beginning. We need to fight back but then again what exactly do I know.

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(1) blog post: the Declaration of me — I also donated $13 for a lawn sign for McCain, it is currently rolled up and sitting on a shelf in my office.

(2) An Obama Flip Flop on Negative ads

(3) www.johnmccain.com/Issues/JobsforAmerica/taxes.htm

(4) www.barackobama.com/issues/economy

(5) ”And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush Al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority” (CNN)

(6) origin.barackobama.com/issues/foreign_policy/#diplomacy

(7) Believe me I could talk about the issues all day long and how neither side is good enough. I actually had fleshed out paragraphs on Education, Government Spending, and Healthcare all done but they were edited out because I felt the post was weaving out of control.