[Vision2020] Why I voted Obama/Biden

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Greetings:

I neglected to post my column for last week.  I've already recorded this week's radio commentary on the 10th anniversary of the crucifixion of Matt Shepard and recent attacks on guys and transgendered person on the Palouse.  I'll post it later.

Read all my election columns at www.NickGier.com. 

Nick Gier

WHY I'M VOTING FOR OBAMA/BIDEN

Never has a national ticket [McCain/Palin] been less 
equipped intellectually, temperamentally, and practically
to confront America's problems than this one.
--Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University

An Illinois politician was running for president, and another unsuccessful candidate for that office said that his "experience in elective office consisted of eight years in his state legislature in Springfield, and one term in Congress, during which he showed courage and wisdom to oppose the invasion of another country. 

"He was known chiefly as a clear thinker and a great orator, with a passion for justice and a determination to heal the deep divisions of our land. He insisted on reaching past partisan and regional divides to exalt our common humanity." 

In this speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention, Al Gore was not referring to Barack Obama but to Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the Republican Party. The parallels are not only dramatic and ironic (Lincoln freed the descendants of African slaves) but deeply instructive.  

Both Lincoln and Obama were brilliant attorneys.  For twelve years Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, a law school known for its conservative professors such as current Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia. 

Obama's student evaluations ranged from "positive to superlative," and liberal students were disappointed not to find doctrinaire confirmation of their views. Mary Ellen Callahan, now a Washington, D. C. attorney, remembered Obama as "offending my liberal instincts."

The Chicago law faculty offered Obama a tenure track position, and his wife Michelle, also a graduate of Harvard Law School, was recruited as director of the legal clinic.  They turned down these opportunities and chose to devote themselves to public service instead.

After eight years of sustained assault on our Constitution by an intellectually challenged president and devious advisors, we need a president who knows the Constitution well and who has argued on both sides of the most controversial issues.  

As a bonus, Joe Biden has co-taught a course on constitutional law at Wiedner University School of Law since 1991.  No attorney general will be able to pull a fast one on this executive team.  

After 18 months of debate and close scrutiny, Obama has proved himself as intelligent and calm, and, as conservative commentator George Will observes, much more presidential than McCain.  It was McCain's own military and political associates who first called him erratic and temperamental, and the campaign has drawn out these character flaws.

The Bush administration has destroyed our credibility and moral standing in the world. The U.S. can regain its political leadership in the world only if we have a president that inspires and instills confidence in nations that once admired us.  Barack Obama has the qualities to fulfill this essential task.  

The Economist, known for its firm belief in free markets and free trade, has set up a world vote for U.S. president and they have assigned electoral votes according to each nation's population.  The current count by some of the world's best informed people shows a tsunami of 9,120 electoral votes for Obama and 158 for McCain.  

The McCain campaign is making much of Obama's comments that it is good to spread the wealth around. Because of Bush's tax cuts, economic inequality in the U.S. is now at its widest spread since the Gilded Age of the 1890s.  Instead of paying their employees a decent salary or reinvesting their profits, more and more companies are buying up their own stock.

Independent calculations show that those earning between $38,000 -$65,000 would receive three times more in tax breaks from Obama’s plan than from McCain’s. It’s high time that America’s workers receive some reward for their high productivity.  

The worst result of McCain's Bush-Reagan mantra "no new taxes" is that the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that a McCain/Palin administration would add another $8.5 trillion to the national debt, twice as much as Obama would.

McCain is now calling on voters to choose him because a Congress dominated by Democrats is bad for the country.  I, to the contrary, would like the following bills to become law without a threat of a presidential veto: the Women's Free Choice Act so that abortions are earlier and safer, the Employees Free Choice Act to build up our unions again, tax credits for solar and wind power, and substantial investment in our crumbling infrastructure.