Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Why I Voted Against McCain

Apparently I am now One of the Ones I've Been Waiting For.

Shit.

When you no longer believe in protest votes, the only way to vote against McCain is to vote for Obama. So I did. Mind you, it was completely irrelevant for whom I voted: I live in Texas, in a safe Republican state, in a safe Republican district (21, and Lamar Smith ran with no Democratic opponent). But it's important to go on record for my awe-inspiringly massive readership.

Here are the reasons why I just couldn't pull the trigger on McCain:
  • Would you really want somebody who hired those advisers to run that campaign actually running the country?

  • The campaign suspension during the financial brouhaha, which led to nothing except confusion and a humiliating walk-back on all of McCain's fancy rhetoric. The "fire Chris Cox" thing didn't fill me with warm fuzziness, either.

  • Palin: a good idea with extremely poor execution. Bush had a lot of good ideas, too...

  • All of McCain's policy proposals had the same basic problem as his legislative successes: they sound wonderful at a high level but are riddled with unintended consequences and various impracticalities.

  • The extremely wide dynamic range of both McCain's intellect and temperment. Like the little girl with the curl right in the middle of her forehead, when he was good he was very very good but when he was bad he was horrid.

  • The Republicans need to lose and lose big. As painful as the next four or eight years are going to be (and they're going to be awful), it is simply a requirement that the electorate informs its representatives what kind of government they simply will not accept. It does no good to have a winning philosophy of government on your side when you don't follow it, let alone understand it. Maybe we'll get smarter ones next time.
This is a head vote, not a heart vote. As I've said many times before, my first impulses are almost always conservative and it's impossible not to want to root for McCain, if only for his sheer moxie. It's an odd feeling to cast your vote one way and then be secretly rooting for the other guy, but there it is: Obama will be a less bad President than McCain.

Perhaps I'm repeating myself, but... shit.

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