Elections

It is a little past 1am on Tuesday morning, November 4th, 2008. In less than 18 hours we should know the results of one of the most anticipated presidential elections of recent time. The youth of America was supposed to get out and “rock the vote” during the 2004 presidential campaign. They didn’t show. However, I believe South Park got it right about that election year when they parodied the George W. Bush vs. John Kerry elections in an episode where students had to vote between a Giant Douche or a Turd Sandwich.

However, this year, we don’t have the Giant Douche eligable for re-hire, and the Turd Sandwich – well Kerry has remained relatively low-key in the Senate, having only slightly made headlines twice – once in January of 08 to endorse Sen. Obama, and the second a few months later when his helicopter (also carrying Sen. Biden and Sen. Hagel) had to make an emegency landing in Afghanistan.

Early on in the presidential race, when everyone and their mother was trying to make a bid for their party’s nomination (including California Gov. Schwenegger, who thankfully, is not eligable since he was not born in this country), nearly everyone in the country thought that the November election would come down to a hard-fought race between former NYC mayor Rudy Gulliani and former First Lady Sen. Clinton, all while we would be continually amused with home-made “Ron Paul Revolution” signs tied up near our local chain-link fences.

At that point in time, even though I am a registered Democrat, I thought my vote would go for Gulliani. In my ignorance, I was hoping that this big city-dwelling activist who had single-handedly turned one of the most dangerous cities in America into one of the safest, and whom had also succecced President George W. Bush in leading our country after unprecedented terrorist attacks, would come from a fiscally conservative but socially liberal stance. Not a chance. To hear his first couple interviews and debates was astonishing. The leader of one of the most progressive and cosmopolitan cities in the world reverted to someone who acted like they pounded beers every night in a workhorse bar whilst blasting Toby Keith and denouncing fagots. It was somewhat akin to watching my Aunt Sharon transform from a proud Orange County, California citizen to a Southern-twang speaking Bible thumper almost the minute she moved to South Carolina.

Then I began to look at Ron Paul. His ideas seemed interesting, and while I did not get behind him fully, I made the mental note to follow him closely. I was excited and honored when in mid-2007 I had secured a freelance writing contract under Mr. Paul to ghostwrite a collection of essays and stances and notes on his campaign that would be released the following year. Working closely with his office, and occassionally the man himself, I wrote the first three chapters. Just before turning these three chapters in for review, I received a phone call from his office stating that they had “done some vetting” on me and through my blog, Sharoute, learned I was a homosexual. I was bluntly told this was not acceptable because if it came out that I was his ghostwriter, my affiliation with him could do political harm. I was told “not to take it personally, however.” That’s some “revolution.” I was asked to send those chapters in even still, for a greatly reduced percentage of my pay (it would not have even pro-rated three chapters worth of work). I refused. The book was released in April 2008 as “The Revolution: A Manifesto,” and Paul had widely discussed how hard he worked on the book and how much raw emotion went into the work. In September 2008, an independent investigation by The New York Times discovered the book was “almost completely” written by ghostwriter Thomas Woods, a gentleman surrounded in controversy for his overtly-vocal criticism of Vatican II and Pope John Paul II, as he is a strong proponent of traditional Catholicism. This troubled the offices of Ron Paul, since Paul is a devout Catholic and proponent of Vatican II, even though his children were all baptized Episcipalian. Paul has since tried to distance himself from Woods and goes to great lengths to keep their connection from being brought up. But, at least he likes the vi-jay-jay. We all know that most conversative Christian Republicans can overlook religious values even amongst their own to some extend, but even homosexuality is still the black sheep of the land (that, and I guess, casting circles and using black mirrors).

So with Ron Paul out of the picture in my mind, I began to focus on Rudy and Hillary. It wasn’t along before Rudy went plop in the water – and John McCain began competing alongside Mitt on the Republican side, and Hillary was strong on the Democratic side. But – what the hell? – who was this black dude from Illinois coming out of nowhere? Realizing that the Republicans – as much as the last eight years have both blown and sucked – had a chance of winning, I was very glad to see Sen. McCain beat out Mitt on the Republican side. But I grew to love my Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. My initial dislike for Obama wasn’t at all dislike – unlike many Americans, I did not care that he was black, might be Muslim, or that his middle name was “Hussein.” I just liked Hillary because I have always admired her and Bill … and the idea of having Bill Clinton back in The White House in some form just made me giddy. He was, I believe, a strong president who knew how to lead, charm, and network – but again, many Christian Republicans pointed out his sexual indiscretions. Who the fuck cares? We’ve had eight years of George W – and while there has been no scandels of sex – our country is in the worst shitter it’s been in since - well there hasn’t been a worst time that combined fiscal instability with global community hatred. If the worst thing that Bill Clinton did was get a blow job from the intern – seriously, I’ll BUY him the prostitute. Just do what you do best when you’re all done buddy!

But alas – Hillary did not make it. I began to study Obama more. I’m not going to go into all of the strengths and weaknesses of McCain and Obama – there have been far better sites with far better writers than I who do just that. I also studied McCain. See, even though I am a Democrat, I am NOT one of those ignorate, blind, sheepish Americans who vote their party 100% of the time. So whilst I was familierzing myself with Obama, I did the same for McCain. And in all honesty, McCain came VERY VERY close to having my vote and my support. I would see him on various talk shows and he was confident, witty, intelligent, engaging. He knew what the fuck he was doing. But then he began to feel threatened with Obama gaining in popularity, and his own party’s overall ratings began to dwindle. Hell, McCain seemed like even HE wanted to move to Canada when George W. Bush endorsed him. But when he got desperate, he got negative. The hyperbole came out. He got angry, visibly frustrated. Visible uptight and angry. He began the negative attacks and instead of appealing to the logic of the educated, he began appealing to the logic of the uneducated, and tried to scare us. Worst of all he STOPPED talking about what he wanted to do with our country as president. He replaced that with gross negative hyperbole on how untrusting and wrong Obama is. Fuck, I’m not watching you so I can learn about the bad things or scary things about your opponent. I’m watching to learn about you. He couldn’t grasp that concept. And then, he did another horrible and vile thing. He wanted to steal the female vote that Hillary had gained in her run. He thought that having a female VP on the ticket would be enough to undermine Barack. He insulted women everywhere. He thought they were ALL behind her JUST because she was female. No, sir. The females were behind Hillary because she was qualified, intelligent, respected, educated, eloquent, charming, and took stances that they believed in. Not because she, too, had breasts. So McCain selects for his VP a woman who is the exact opposite of Hillary – underqualified (sorry, you’re not going to win on this argument), unintelligent, unrespected, educated but with hardly any grasp on how to apply that to her daily life, stumbly in speeches, insecure, and changed her stances to blend in.

Two things began to worry me about McCain, and these are the two things that kept me, and probably hundreds of thousands of others, for voting for this man: 1) If he cannot control his anger in something as routine as debates, and rely on logic and not emotion on his campaign, what the fuck is he going to do when face-to-face with leaders he disagrees with or a critically-dangerous global issue that he is too emotional on, and 2) God forbid if something happens to the man, but President Palin? Think all of the positive things you want to about her … but she can’t even name a newspaper she reads or admit when a conflict of interest arises, do we really need her in front of The United Nations? 

::Palin waves to Russia from the U.N. platform::

“Hey, there you are! It’s been a few days, how do you go, Joe!”