Closing arguments Presidential Politics, Republicans

The election will not be close, and while the West will contribute many electoral votes to an Obama victory, so will all sections of the country. This will be a watershed election.

The economic headwinds facing the incumbent party have reached gale force. Even Alan Greenspan’s faith in “self-regulating markets” has been shaken. Eight years of Republican control of the White House, six of them with Republican control of Congress, have not been a happy affair. War, economic crisis, and arrogance in governing, including a cavalier attitude towards Constitutional balance, have taken their toll on the country. The economy and our economic prospects for the next several years are much worse than we thought just a few months ago. The policies of the past eight years, which in some ways go back two or even three decades, wedded as they were to an ideological demand for deregulated markets and tax cuts for our richest citizens, are now discredited. The phrase “worst since the Great Depression” has become commonplace. Try as they might the McCain-Palin ticket cannot run away from the Republican brand and has failed to articulate how Republican “mavericks” differ from regular Republicans. They have not been able to reach out simultaneously to the GOP base and the centrist independents. Senator McCain’s campaign suggests an erratic Republican response to our economic crisis and a continuation of our current foreign policy in the Middle East.

Senator Obama has an opportunity not only to change the direction to our politics, but by virtue of his intelligence, his personal history, and his temperament he has the opportunity to be a president who can inspire the nation as few presidents have done. Kennedy, FDR, and even Lincoln come to mind in this regard. Given our current predicament, he will need to employ his considerable talents to their fullest extent. Rebuilding our banking system, restoring confidence in our markets, remaking our energy policy, reforming our health care policy, and rethinking our educational policies are all now urgent tasks. At the same time, we need to extricate ourselves as best we can from costly foreign wars that have alienated our traditional allies. All these tasks will no doubt be done imperfectly, but we must attempt them as best we can, and the architects of the new policies should not be the architects of the policies of last eight years or even the last twenty years. Senator Obama was prescient enough to see that this year’s election would be about change. Nine out of ten Americans now believe the country is on the wrong track. Indeed, the question is whether our economic engine has fallen quite off the tracks. Senator Obama was also able to see that the election will also be about hope, because hope will be in short supply for many in the next few years. Senator Obama is the candidate most capable of articulating America’s hopes and uniting the country in the pursuit of those hopes through some very tough times.

Leo Brown | November 1, 2008 | Comment on This Post (1 so far) Permalink: Closing arguments Presidential Politics, Republicans

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