I received an email this morning. It's a letter, apparently written by a gentleman in Illinois named Joe Porter. (My aunt and uncle also live in Illinois. Hi, Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Gene!) It begins as follows:
> Dear Friends:
> My name is Joe Porter. I live in Champaign, Illinois. I'm 46 years old, a
> born-again Christian, a husband, a father, a small business owner, a
> veteran, and a homeowner. I don't consider myself to be either conservative
> or liberal, and I vote for the person, not Republican or Democrat.
My name is Chris Colvin. I live in San Francisco, California. I'm 34 years old. I'm a political moderate. I love our country, I love our flag, and I love the Declaration of Independence. My loyalty as a citizen is to the United States Constitution.
It's an honor to read what Mr. Porter wrote.
I've been to Champaign. However, I've never met Mr. Porter. I wish him and his family well, but I disagree with many of the things he says in his letter. I'll explain why.
> I don't believe there are 'two Americas' - but that every person in this country can
> be whomever and whatever they want to be if they'll just work to get there -
> and nowhere else on earth can they find such opportunities. I believe our
> government should help those who are legitimately downtrodden, and should
> always put the interests of America first.
I agree completely.
> We are in the unique position in this country of electing our leaders.
> It's a privilege to do so.
I agree with Mr. Porter's patriotism, but not his exact words. Instead, I agree with the Declaration of Independence, which says:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
We are all privileged to live in the United States, but it's not a privilege to elect our leaders. It's one of our basic rights as Americans. It's been that way since 1776. We elect our leaders because governments derive their power from the consent of the governed, so long as they govern justly.
> I've never found a candidate in any election with
> whom I agreed on everything. I'll wager that most of us don't even agree
> with our families or spouses 100% of the time. So when I step into that
> voting booth, I always try to look at the big picture and cast my vote for
> the man or woman who is best qualified for the job. I've hired a lot of
> people in my lifetime, and essentially that's what an election is - a hiring
> process. Who has the credentials? Whom do I want working for me? Whom can I
> trust to do the job right?
Absolutely. Everyone should consider these things and use their best judgment when voting. As the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, so the governed have a responsibility to elect the best people possible to that government.
> I'm concerned that a growing number of voters in this country simply don't
> get it. They are caught up in a fervor they can't explain, and calling it 'change'.
> 'Change what?', I ask.
> 'Well, we're going to change America', they say.
> 'In what way?', I query.
> 'We want someone new and fresh in the White House', they exclaim.
> 'So, someone who's not a politician?', I say.
> 'Uh, well, no, we just want a lot of stuff changed, so we're
> voting for Obama', they state.
> 'So the current system, the system of freedom and democracy that has
> enabled a man to grow up in this great country, get a fine education, raise
> incredible amounts of money and dominate the news and win his party's
> nomination for the White House - that system's all wrong?'
> 'No, no, that part of the system's okay - we just need a lot of change.'
> And so it goes. 'Change we can believe in.'
In that case, Mr. Porter needs to talk to some Obama supporters who know what they're talking about. Better yet, he could listen to what Senator Obama himself has to say.
Here's a video where Obama explains himself and what he thinks we need to do differently. It's 2 minutes long.
http://www.democrats.com/obamas-agenda-in-2-minutes
John McCain also calls for change. In his speech at the Republican convention, he said:
"We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington."
He goes on to say: "I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us."
McCain is right about those things. We need to rebuild our infrastructure. Remember the bridge in Minnesota that collapsed? We have free public education in this country, as well we should. We have some great schools and fantastic teachers, and some that aren't so good. We need to make sure every child gets the best education in the world. We're the richest country in the world, and we can do it.
What McCain didn't say is that he himself has been one of the Republicans that were changed by Washington. He opposed Bush in the primaries of 2000, and Bush smeared him disgracefully. McCain then turned around and became Bush's greatest supporter, even as Bush created the largest government bureaucracy in history and betrayed every principle of the Republican party.
In 2003, Bush said we should attack Iraq because they were allied with al-Qaeda. Anyone who knew anything about the Middle East knew this was not true. But McCain strongly supported the invasion of Iraq anyway. Bush also said that Iraq had illegal weapons of mass destruction. After the invasion, not only did it turn out that Iraq had no such weapons, but Bush had cited intelligence he knew to be suspect and unreliable. Some of that "intelligence" included obvious forgeries! McCain has supported the war in Iraq throughout the last six years, and has said nothing about Bush's blatant use of propaganda to justify that war.
Bush also ordered the National Security Agency to spy on ordinary Americans without getting a search warrant, as the law requires. (Some of the phone calls the NSA has been listening to are calls from our soldiers abroad to their spouses at home, where they discuss, well, private marital stuff.) If McCain has a problem with this, he never objected to my knowledge.
More to the point: when Congress passes a law, a President will occasionally issue a "signing statement," which is a directive to the government on how to enforce this law. Not only has Bush issued over 1200 "signing statements" -- more than all previous presidents combined -- he has used these "signing statements" in an unprecedented manner. In some cases, Bush declared himself exempt from the law he'd just signed. In others, he ordered the government not to enforce the law. Notably, when the Bush Administration was caught trying to work around our laws that banned the torture of prisoners, Congress passed a new law to prevent Bush from ordering torture. When he signed the new law, Bush wrote a "signing statement" declaring, infamously, that he would not abide by it.
Bush has been doing this for over seven years, and John McCain's first protest was last week.
We absolutely need change. We need a president who won't lie to start a war. We need a president who will uphold the law, not proclaim himself above it.
Despite his recent calls for change in Washington, John McCain has been Bush's biggest supporter. McCain has stood by Bush and has used his clout in Congress to support him, despite Bush's abuses of power.
> 'What qualifies this man to be
> my president? That he's a brilliant orator and talks about change?' CHANGE WHAT?
At present, 70% of Americans want our troops to come home. The Iraqi parliament and the Iraqi prime minister want this too. In fact, in every survey since 2003, 90% of the Iraqi people want the Americans to leave.
McCain disagrees. He wants to continue the occupation "for a hundred years." Here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFknKVjuyNk
We need that changed. Obama wants to slowly withdraw troops over the next year and a half, scaling down our presence so the occupation will be over by the middle of 2010. The Iraqi Prime Minister has said he agrees with Obama.
Obama believes in democracy. He's right.
McCain disagrees with 70% of the American public and 90% of the Iraqi public. He wants to occupy Iraq forever. He's wrong.
I have spent the last several years staring at the television screen gaping at John McCain. The guy I wanted to be President in 2000 has told the Iraqi prime minister, the Iraqi parliament, the Iraqi people and the vast majority of Americans to go screw themselves. McCain has changed. He's not the same man I voted for.
> Friends, I'll be forthright with you - I believe the American voters who
> are supporting Barack Obama don't have a clue what they're doing, as
> evidenced by the fact that not one of them - NOT ONE of them I've spoken to
> can spell out his qualifications.
In that case, Mr. Porter has been talking to the wrong people. Barack Obama has one qualification that would make him a better president than McCain would be: sound judgment.
Back when Obama was in the Illinois state legislature, he gave a speech saying that we should not go to war with Iraq. Instead, he said, we should hunt down al-Qaeda to the last man.
McCain disagreed. He bought into the whole Bush-Cheney lie that Iraq was allied with al-Qaeda. McCain supported the invasion. He supported everything Bush has done in Iraq. McCain even praised the unpopular Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. He has said that he wants Dick Cheney to continue on as a member of the McCain Administration. The thing we need to do differently, said McCain, was send more troops.
Sending more troops addressed the symptom -- the violence in Iraq -- but did not address the root cause. The underlying problem is this: the three major factions in Iraq -- the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds -- all despise each other. But there is one thing most of them agree on: the Americans should leave Iraq.
> Not even the most liberal media can explain why he should be elected.
I can. Obama said we should destroy al-Qaeda and bring Osama Bin Laden to justice before embarking on any more wars. Bush has indicated we should use the war on terror as an excuse to attack any country we don't like, whether they have anything to do with terrorism or not. McCain has said he strongly supports Bush's foreign policy.
Obama has better judgment than Bush or McCain. That's why Obama should be elected.
> Political experience? Negligible.
John McCain agrees that political experience isn't necessary. He chose Governor Palin of Alaska to be the next Vice President. Obama's been in the Senate for four years. Palin's been governor of Alaska for two years. But as I mentioned above, great experience does not equal great judgment. The war in Iraq was the brainchild of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Cheney and Rumsfeld have been working in Republican administrations since Nixon's time. Their extensive "political experience" has been a disaster for our country.
> Foreign relations? Non-existent.
That's why Obama chose Senator Biden of Delaware to be the next Vice President. Biden has been in the senate for thirty-five years and is a foreign policy expert.
By the way, Obama's late father was a graduate student from Kenya. Obama has a lot of foreign relations.
> Achievements? Name one.... The only
> thing I can glean from Obama's constant harping about change is that we're
> in for a lot of new taxes.
Mr. Porter needs to do a little more research. When Bush came to power, he pushed several tax cuts through Congress -- tax cuts that heavily favored millionaires, the people who needed tax cuts the least. The result? We now have the largest deficit of any government in human history. Obama wants to reinstate the tax laws of the Clinton years, where millionaires had to pay their fair share.
CNN compared the Obama plan and the McCain plan in this video. Both have good points and bad points. Which do you think is better?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fbxpMw4mco
> Here's a question - 'Where were you five and a half years ago? Around
> Christmas, 2002. You've had five or six birthdays in that time. My son has
> grown from a sixth grade child to a high school graduate. Five and a half
> years is a good chunk of time. About 2,000 days. 2,000 nights of sleep. 6,
> 000 meals, give or take.'
> John McCain spent that amount of time, from 1967 to 1973, in a North
> Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp.
> When offered early release, he refused it. He considered this offer to be
> a public relations stunt by his captors, and insisted that those held longer
> than he should be released first. Did you get that part? He was offered his
> freedom, and he turned it down. A regimen of beatings and torture began.
> Do you possess such strength of character? Locked in a filthy cell in a
> foreign country, would you turn down your own freedom in favor of your
> fellow man? I submit that's a quality of character that is rarely found, and
> for me, this singular act defines John McCain.
John McCain was a POW, and is a hero. No doubt about it.
I voted for McCain in the primaries of 2000 for precisely those reasons. But John McCain changed. He is no longer the man I voted for. He has spent the last seven years being Bush's top cheerleader.
One example: McCain has strongly opposed torture, but when Bush nominated Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney General, McCain voted for him. Gonzales is infamous for writing some of the "torture memos," in which Bush's lawyers tried to find loopholes in our anti-torture laws. Gonzales tried to find a way to make torture legal.
McCain knew this. Even though Gonzales was at the heart of a conspiracy to commit torture, McCain voted for him to be the man in charge of preventing torture.
McCain is a hero, but I can't trust him as President.
> Unlike several presidential candidates in recent years whose military
> service is questionable or non-existent, you will not find anyone to
> denigrate the integrity and moral courage of this man. A graduate of
> Annapolis, during his Naval service he received the Silver Star, Bronze
> Star, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross. His own son is now
> serving in the Marine Corps in Iraq. Barack Obama is fond of saying 'We
> honor John McCain's service ...BUT...', which to me is condescending and
> offensive - because what I hear is, 'Let's forget this man's sacrifice for
> his country and his proven leadership abilities, and talk some more about
> change.'
I see. So, because John McCain is an hero, one cannot honestly disagree with him?
I've heard that one before. In 2002, Senator Daschle pointed out that, in order to work, some of Bush's education proposals would need a lot more money than Bush was willing to give them. Senator Lott replied: "How dare Senator Daschle criticize President Bush while we are fighting our war on terrorism?"
Uh, okay. I guess Senator Lott believes that disagreeing with the President is unpatriotic in a time of war, even when we're not discussing the war.
That's not the America I believe in. America fights for freedom of speech, not against it. McCain fought for freedom in Vietnam, and I hope he would agree with me.
> I don't agree with John McCain on everything - but I am utterly convinced
> that he is qualified to be our next President, and I trust him to do what's
> right.
I agree with McCain on some things, and disagree with him on others. I also agree with Obama on some things, and disagree with him on others. McCain certainly has the experience to be president. If experience is all you need, he's certainly qualified.
But John McCain did not show good judgment when it counted. For instance, by 2004, the September 11th Commission had concluded that Iraq and al-Qaeda were enemies, and had never worked together. (In other words, the experts who warned of this in 2002 were right all along.) The Commission found that Iraq had nothing to do with international terrorism for over a decade. All the government reports concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld insisted they did. What did John McCain say about that?
"I commend to my country the re-election of President Bush, and the steady, experienced, public-spirited man who serves as our Vice-President, Dick Cheney... I believe as strongly today as ever, the mission was necessary, achievable and noble... For his determination to undertake it, and for his unflagging resolve to see it through to a just end, President Bush deserves not only our support, but our admiration."
So: McCain thought it was noble to attack a country that was no threat to the United States. He thought it was admirable to invade another country under false pretenses.
McCain is a hero, but he dead wrong about the war in Iraq. We're not talking about differences in policy here, like campaign finance reform or who should sit on the Supreme Court. We're talking about more than 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq. These are men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters who won't be coming home because Bush lied about Iraq being a threat. We're talking about tens of thousands of American soldiers who have come home missing limbs. We're talking about three million Iraqis who have died, been wounded, or have been forced to flee their homes. The war in Iraq is a big deal! We're talking about decisions that make huge differences in millions of lives.
Bush chose to lie. The obvious lie: Iraq was allied with al-Qaeda. The subtle lie: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Millions of lives have been ruined because Bush used those lies to start a war.
Obama thought invading Iraq was a rash move. McCain has supported Bush 100%, every step of the way.
Who do you think has the judgment to be President of the United States?
Even though I disagree with John McCain, I respect him. I think he should continue fighting for what he thinks is right. I think he should continue to serve in the U.S. Senate. McCain is a hero, but that doesn't mean he's right about everything.
> I know in my heart that he has the best interests of our country in
> mind. He doesn't simply want to be President - he wants to lead America, and
> there's a huge difference. Factually, there is simply no comparison between
> the two candidates. A man of questionable background and motives who
> prattles on about change can't hold a candle to a man who has devoted his
> life in public service to this nation, retiring from the Navy in 1981 and
> elected to the Senate in 1982.
Why does the writer think Obama's motives are suspect? What is questionable about Obama's background? Why are his motives questionable, but others' are not?
Let's take Governor Palin as an example. At her first nationally televised speech at the Republican convention, she said:
"Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he [Obama]'s worried that someone won't read them their rights?"
Apparently, Governor Palin thinks we should throw out the law in order to fight terrorists. That's what Hitler said, too. This is the person that McCain thinks should become President if something happens to him.
Barack Obama has spent his life helping others, too. He was a civil rights lawyer, then served in the Illinois state legislature, then in the U.S. Senate.
> Perhaps Obama's supporters are taking a stance between old and new. Maybe
> they don't care about McCain's service or his strength of character, or his
> unblemished qualifications to be President.
I certainly care about McCain's service. To his credit, he did stand up for our veterans when Bush tried to cut their benefits. But McCain is not the same man today that he was when I voted for him in 2000. There have just been too many times when he was Bush's top cheerleader, even when Bush was wrong.
McCain is qualified to be President, but he is a human being. Neither he nor Obama are unblemished. No one is.
> Maybe 'likeability' is a higher priority for them than 'trust'.
Obama thought going to war in Iraq would cause more harm than good. He said:
"I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."
What did McCain say at the time?
"The government of Saddam Hussein is a clear and present danger to the United States of America."
McCain was completely wrong.
"He [Saddam] develops nuclear weapons with which he would hold his neighbors and us hostage."
Also completely wrong. Saddam was trying to build a nuclear weapon to use against Iran in the 1980's, but he never succeeded.
"Saddam Hussein unquestionably has strong incentives to cooperate with al Qaeda."
Again, McCain was completely wrong. McCain obviously missed what dozens of experts on the Middle East were saying: al-Qaeda was actively supporting anti-Saddam rebels. If Saddam had given any weapons to al-Qaeda, they would have been used against him!
I'm not an expert in the Middle East. I'm just a normal guy. But if I knew this, how could Senator McCain not have known it? He's a member of the U.S. government. He has staff members whose job it is to research these things. Did McCain and everyone on his staff all choose to believe George W. Bush's propaganda without checking the facts?
> Being a prisoner of war is not what
> qualifies John McCain to be President of the United States of America - but
> his demonstrated leadership certainly DOES.
I don't question McCain's leadership or his patriotism. I question his judgment. Despite this, I think McCain should stay where he can do the most good -- in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Porter does question Obama's leadership and his patriotism, but I haven't seen an argument against any of Obama's proposals.
> There's a lot of evil in this world. That should be readily apparent to
> all of us by now. And when faced with that evil as we are now, I want a man
> who knows the cost of war on his troops and on his citizens. I want a man
> who puts my family's interests before any foreign country.
> I want a President who is qualified to lead.
> I want my country back, and I'm voting for John McCain.
There is evil in this world, and each of us -- as people, as citizens, as Americans -- must do everything in our power to oppose it. But war is not always the best option. If we'd focused on hunting down al-Qaeda down to the last man -- as Obama called for -- we would have captured or killed Osama Bin Laden by now. Instead, Bush started a war with Iraq, a country that was not involved in terrorism and had not attacked us. While we've been occupying Iraq, al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- the enemy that actually attacked us -- have reconquered half of Afghanistan.
John McCain thought attacking Iraq was a wonderful idea. He has staked his career and his presidential run on his support for the worst foreign policy disaster in American history.
I want a man who will put the interests of our country before party loyalty. McCain did not do so when it really mattered, when the lives of our soldiers depended on it. McCain supported President Bush even when the experts were saying that Bush was lying. The primaries of 2000 showed McCain what kind of man Bush is -- a crooked politician who used smears and dirty tricks to derail McCain's presidential campaign. McCain knows exactly who Bush is, and has supported him 100% in the eight years since.
I want my country back, and I'm voting for Barack Obama.