Well, it’s the last day of the Republican convention. The following is my impression of the speeches I watched, a long with a few other observations from today’s news and ‘da webs:
- From the “Quote of the Day:” Department:
“…maybe someone needs to remind Sarah Palin that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
[“goodnewsfortheinsane” on this site, discovered by patgund].Related to this is a wonderful site that provides a direct comparison of Palin’s experience and Obama’s experience (although I wish it presented the information in a more neutral fashion).
- From the “Read My Lips” Department: The Republican speechmakers have been going on and on about how Obama wants to raise your taxes. cieldumort, in ljdemocrats, had an interesting link that made things clearer: A site using numbers from the Tax Policy Center showing how the Obama Tax Plan will affect you. I’ll see a tax cut of $2,432.40, m’self, perhaps a bit less. What about McCain’s purported tax relief? CNN has a nice article about the tax claims made by McCain. It shows that McCain’s tax relief really doesn’t cover all (it increases the dependent exemption). More significantly, it will hurt middle class workers because it taxes you for what your employer spends on your health insurance. So it helps, in some sense, those who buy insurance on their own. But it hurts those who have employer-provided health insurance.
- From the “On My Honor…” Department: Robin Abcarian of the LA Times has an interesting piece, “The Imperfect Hero”, that discusses John McCain’s honor code… and how often he breaks it. It notes how he championed many bipartisan positions in the early 2000, and was even considered for Kerry’s running mate. It also talks about how he has made calculated changes in his position to move back into the R fold (a maverick? hmmmm?). It talks about his temper, how he was a jerk, etc. The translation being: the maverick they are touting is not the McCain of today, and there are aspects of McCain that are not so nice.
Now, turning to the convention… I just spent the last two hours listening to Cindy McCain and John McCain. There were some interesting omissions in their histories, but that’s neither here nor there. Senator McCain gave an excellent speech*. Although at times he misrepresented what Obama positions are, I think Obama made an equal number of misrepresentations in his speech.
So what was my overall impression? We have two excellent Presidential candidates (although I’m not that impressed with McCain’s VP pick). Broadly, they both seem to have the same stated goals: Making America safe, being post-partisan, making Washington work again, cutting government spending appropriately, pulling us out of the recession, using energy independence to refocus and rebuild the economy, cutting earmarks, making government transparent, improving education. They differ on the ways of achieving those goals. They also differ on where government should be a “nanny”.
We need to acknowledge that the goals are similar, and that both teams are patriotic and love America. I think both of the Presidential candidates did that, although their sycophants have not. Would that they could be truly post-partisan, and find a way to work together as a team (and as such, McCain has much more value in the Senate than does Obama, having more seniority). I do hope that whomever wins, they can find the way to work together and acknowledge the common goals.
So who did this leave me supporting? I still support Obama, because I believe his approach towards the goals is the better process. I sincerely hope as we move into the general election that we can move to an area of mutual respect for the candidates and each one’s unique stories, and make our focus one of debating ideas and the way to achieve our goals. We must change the devisiveness that is currently present in Government and in the electorate.
* ETA, two days later: Although looking back, I don’t think it was as good as I thought initially. There were lots of areas that weren’t addressed, and it was more goals then specifics.
