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I watched the McCain RNC acceptance speech on YouTube. It was a masterful and moving speech. McCain has my vote for distinguished American of the year. It was a moving speech and it cast somewhat of a spell over me. But next morning the spell dissipated. This is what is wrong with McCain as President.

• McCain is too conservative, too far right on social issues I care about
• McCain (according to his book) makes decisions faster than others, sometimes makes mistakes and is willing to live with the consequences. (That is, he’s impulsive.) That’s fine for a Senator, but when a President makes mistakes EVERYBODY has to live with the consequences. I would prefer someone more careful.
• I don’t know who wrote McCain’s speech (certainly not him), but McCain delivered it. In that speech he lied about Obama’s position on taxes (check out factcheck.org). So just like President Bush, he’s willing to lie and distort the facts for gain. Palin also said some intentionally misleading things about Obama.
• McCain lacks the honesty and integrity to come out and deal with the evils of the Bush Administration. In his acceptance speech, you wouldn’t know who the president even is. If McCain is unwilling to repudiate Bush, and willing to use the same campaign tactics, what are we to think? Certainly not that change is in the wind.

They say McCain is a “maverick”. What is a maverick?

One definition says: “someone who exhibits great independence in thought and action.” But it’s also

• An unbranded range animal.
• One who creates or uses unconventional and/or controversial ideas or practices.

Do we want someone with an unpredictable streak as the leader of the free world? It’s one thing to think out of the box; it’s entirely different to be independent of good advice or impulsive, or even unwilling to recognize the rule of law.

I watched Palin’s speech on YouTube. Parallels to George Bush come to mind.  They both are from oil states with ties to the oil industry (both ideological and family). Their primary political experience comes from being state governors (Bush 4 years, Palin 2 plus mayoral experience). They both shamelessly pander to the far right of their party when running for office. They both seem to have little use for science whether it’s global warming denial or in Palin’s case the view that Creationism belongs in public schools (AP story).

The glee with which Palin delivered the line making fun of Barak Obama because of some stage props at the DNC tells me that she is right at home with the politics of spin that unfortunately characterizes the current Republican leadership. McCain/Palin show early warning signs of embracing the “permanent campaign” (Scott McClellan’s discussion) that was a major flaw in the of Bush administration.

It says something to me that Barak Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate; it says that Obama is not afraid of working with people who have more experience in politics than he, people with independent stature.

McCain’s choice of a hockey mom who stumbled into politics from the PTA and served as governor for a couple of years in a small state, makes me wonder if McCain is perhaps uncomfortable around well-qualified people, the kind of people he would have to rely on as advisers running a very complex federal government.

This tells me Obama is comfortable with who he is, and perhaps McCain is not. Having a president with personal doubts that play out in poor choices is downright scary.

In the 2008 presidential election, I’m sure experience is going to be a big issue. Does putting an inexperienced person in the White House (like for example George W. Bush) automatically lead to an abysmal administration?

It’s my opinion, largely based on Scott McClellan’s insider book (What Happened) on the Bush administration, that it was not Bush’s political inexperience that lead to all the problems we’ve seen with the war in Iraq and the economy. Bush’s fault was that he governed from his gut reactions rather than from evidence and analysis.

Reading the politically more-experienced Barak Obama’s book (The Audacity of Hope) it is immediately obvious that Obama will not surround himself with yes-men and ignore the facts. Obama is an intensely collaborative individual.

No, Barak Obama will not be another George W. Bush.

As for John McCain, I could care less about him after that message he left on my answering machine a few years back.