Miscellaneous Ramblings

Apologies to friends in the UK who recognize the title as coming from older pages of Autocar.

First on the agenda: Presidential politics are in Hiatus until Labor Day. There really won't be anything to watch on World Nightly News with Katie Couric for two months except for policy statements that make Zwieback look juicy.

This is stated barring the appearance of undeniable evidence of either candidate in a compromising position with either a young boy or a goat. However, one suspects that nothing of the sort exists, or Senator Clinton would have used it by now. Senator McCain would be well advised to observe the tactics of the Clinton campaign, and not what did not work.

It may be suggested that Hillary's intransigence on the issue of leaving the campaign trail has benefitted the Obama campaign by serving as not only a sparring partner, but a better surrogate than a General Election campaign against McCain.

Hillary, by force of being another non-traditional candidate, was able to sling some stuff at Obama that McCain would never get away with. She could fight dirtier and harder, and being fundamentally on the same side of nearly every issue, get the crappy deal-killer stuff that the 527s might have thrown as a hole card in October on the table in April. Now it's all old news.

Obama had a bit of luck here. He put his bet on the idea that he could hold the lead from the Potomac primaries, and the Clinton campaign would find anything the Republicans could use and get it out in the Sun to dry up by October. It worked. Call it 65% savvy, and 35% luck.

McCain has no such luck. He has the disadvantage of being an Old White Guy, and any question of Obama's associations, or anything that could be reasonably linked Obama's race, and the next thing that happens is McCain becomes Mr. Old White Bigot. It is not fair to McCain, in light of his admirable record of service and dedication to the United States.

McCain supporters should hold Bush accountable. Had Bush not trashed McCain in 2000, it is entirely likely that we may be seeing the potential for a first Bush term in January 2009, and a defunct Democratic party. The following scenario explains how.

September 12, 2001, President McCain, with approval of Congress, Russia, China, the EU, and a few sundry nations with Islamist issues, parks tactical nuke-tipped Tomahawks in the legislative bodies of several Islamist countries. September 14, 2001, Osama Bin Laden is delivered to Washington. September 18, 2001, Osama's trial begins on fifty television channels. October 9, 2001, Osama is beheaded and buried with a ham hock up his tuchas.

Sadly for McCain, Bush walked around with his head firmly placed in the hole which normally accomodates Dick "Duck!" Cheney's arm. The 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th. and 8th Amendments got run through a Veg-A-Matic; the price of fuel quadrupled; 4000 plus American servicepeople are dead to get rid of someone who apparently was about as much of a threat to the US as the Taco Bell Chihuahua; the price of food doubled; the equity in many homes spiraled up, then crashed; the Stock Market is lower today than it was at its peak during the Clinton Administration; and Bush suggests that things are just fine!

It was one thing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt in 2004. Not now. The sad part is that McCain is not equipped to clean up Bush's mistakes, and he was not of a character which would have made those mistakes in the first place. John McCain deserves a better hand than he has gotten. He is a man of admirable character, grit, and integrity, and faces a fate, as he has in the past, not of his making.

A moment may be taken to reflect on that skidmark from a Corvair, Ralph Nader. Everything he has done in forty-plus years of public life has empowered authoritarians everywhere. Between Nader and his allies in the Dobbs-sycophant organization Public Citizen, his has been a systematic campaign against choice, freedom and individualism. The only difference between Ralph Nader and Reverend Donald Wildmon is that Wildmon would take your rights before he takes your stuff, Nader would make sure he liked your stuff, take it, then take your rights.

The fact was, by the time Unsafe at Any Speed was published in 1966, the design flaw in the Chevrolet Corvair which had been the focal point of Nader's argument, had been two years rectified by General Motors. It was a witch hunt against capitalism, a pursuit which reached it's nadir (sorry) by placing Public Citizen-affiliated wonks in the Carter administration, most notably Joan Claybrook at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

85 mph speedometers! Air Bags! My car weighs 600-1000 pounds too much because of those two socialists, and my fuel economy suffers. If I want a 1400-pound, 660cc, Kei-class car from Japan that gets 60 or 70 miles per gallon, Ralph Nader says neither I nor any other American can have one.

Thank you Jimmy Carter! Nader's Raiders symbolized a mindset whose backlash put Ronald Reagan in office in 1980, which really was not that bad, and Nader threw the election to Bush in 2000, which is the proof that Nader is King Midas in Reverse; everything he touches turns to excrement. Bush has been the Republican Jimmy Carter, but one supposes that Bush will not take redemptive steps in the post-presidency.

Libertarian Bob Barr brings some good ideas to the table, but let's face it, he led the impeachment of Bill Clinton. The dude is connected out the wazoo with the same people who elected Bush over McCain in the 2000 primary. Pass.

BIG ENDORSEMENT! The Wandering Gentile is pleased to endorse Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, for President of the United States in 2008. After careful consideration, there is no other choice. Senator Obama's youth and optimism are refreshing after the Republican paranoia-fest of the last couple of years.

Basically, Washington needs a massive laxative. The Republicans will have to purge pretty much any leadership connected with the disaster of Bush's second term. There is a drift away from the Fox News and Rush Limbaugh media by moderates. If and when the economy recovers, Conservative may develop the same stigma Liberal developed in the eighties and nineties.

The party of Reagan has lost the middle. Nixon, Ford, Carter, and both Bushes lost the middle on the economy. Clinton is now a figure of justifiable nostalgia. (Oral sex? That was it? Quaint.) Now the Democrats have sidelined most of the figures tied to the excesses of failed integrity associated with the Clintons, and nominated their most charismatic candidate since John F. Kennedy, and possibly Franklin Roosevelt.

For those who loved Reagan, please note that a vote for Obama is not your departure from the Republican party. Reagan was once a Liberal Democrat whose party left him. Many who feel affinity for the values of small government and individual responsibility fail to see the place where massive security infrastructures and enforcement bureaucracies fulfill a vision of an America where everyone is free to achieve his God-given potential.

The Republicans have left Reagan. Mr. Obama is in the building and worth hearing.

Hope. Some of us had forgotten what it felt like.