By Stephen C. Rose
I don't believe this election will be a nail-biter. It will be closer to a landslide. Barack will win. If not Barack, McCain. I believe the American people are poised to make a decision after a season of having decisions made for them.
The reason I believe Barack will win is because I credit the electorate with enough wisdom to understand that this year the issue is not the economy primarily. The issue is McCain. If it did not come clear this past week, I am wrong. But I believe it did come clear and that it will become even more clear in the weeks to come.
And on November 4, the American people will understand that he too great a risk just now.
They will vote in unprecedented numbers for a cool head, an energetic guy open to hearing all sides, who will have a gridlock-breaking majority in Congress and is open to a genuinely bipartisan march through the minefield created during the Bush years.
Yesterday I posted what this President will do:
Create a green future -- based on renewable sources of energy.
Create millions of new jobs and help the middle class with tax cuts, college subsidies and increased pay for teachers.
Create a foreign policy that's safe and secure. Repair frayed relationships, initiate tough diplomacy, save billions by ending the war in Iraq.
Create a smart, cooperative campaign to eliminate the terror threat and control nuclear materials.
Create schools that serve all children from birth.
Create a health care system for all Americans at costs all can afford.
Create a good, honest, transparent administration. Accountable to all. Led by one who has thought deeply about our needs and acted for two decades to put his goals into practice. SOURCE
McCain has fought this agenda for almost three decades. He has championed a thoughtless, pandering militarism and a domestic agenda that disrespects women, favors the wealthy and displays only ignorance when it comes to the economy.
He has distinguished himself as a near-compulsive gambler who operates on the false premise that he can bob and weave in all directions and somehow win -- when the inexorable odds favor his inability to fool all of the people all of the time.
This inability is what is happening daily on TV.
To vote for McCain, you have to factor in substantial mortality odds and ask yourself if you want to risk our future on a woman Chuck Hagel says is demonstrably ill-prepared. This doubles the reasons why McCain is the issue. And why he will lose.
McCain has shown himself to be not a leader, but a doer of whatever he is told to do. This is not new. McCain did the bidding of Charlie Keating for a long time, until he had to pay back the contributions he had received.
Now McCain follows Steve Schmidt. Perhaps he will fire Schmidt when it appears that the die is cast in Obama's favor and he must morph once again.
By November 4, I fully expect McCain to be having Fireside Chats with us -- with an FDR stogie in his mouth.
But by then it will be too late.
Barack will have done with all Americans what he did with Democrats in Denver. He will have convinced them, with accuracy, that he is a uniter who has carefully considered the options and arrived at an agenda which can indeed capture our imagination and carry us away from the nightmare of the last eight years.
The issue in this election is McCain. His dual nature as McSame and McFlop. And underneath it all, the little boy gambler a mite too dotty now to risk in the White House. The American people can take only so much. The circus is ending.
McCain is the man who crashed five jets, mistreated his wife, opposed Dr. King and would overturn Rowe v. Wade. He favors bombing anyone who does not fit in to the neocon agenda of forcing freedom everywhere while squelching it apace.
To the extent voters see the cool hand, over against this fading relic of a sick Republican era, the election will go to Obama.
The issue is not the economy, or foreign policy, or security -- the issue is whether we want to take a chance on another Republican after losing the farm with George Bush.