It is hard to come up with a proper way to describe the vast gulf between McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden. Liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat – they just don’t indicate the real differences. Not in this race, not in 2008.
What we have in this campaign is a fundamental conflict of visions – the vision of those who see America as a means to an end, and those who see America as an end in herself. As in all conflicts, there are similarities and overlaps, but these tend to highlight the crucial differences. To take just one example – in education, both sides, naturally, claim to be in favor of excellent education, but McCain/Palin stands for excellent education at the service of the children and their parents, while Obama/Biden stands for an excellent education to prepare kids to follow the liberal line in a liberal-dominated world. We on our side don’t particularly care what the kids learn so long as they learn it – their side doesn’t care if the kids really learn anything so long as they conform to the worldview of the left. To us a kid turned into a literate communist is at least someone who can eventually read the truth about communism and come to reject it..to them, an illiterate kid is ok if he has absorbed liberal ideology and never thinks to question the liberal elite.
Down the list it goes – apparently similar goals, but goals which have a different, and conflicting meaning. Everyone wants the campaign in Iraq over – we want victory, they are perfectly ok with defeat. Everyone wants energy independence – we want to use all our resources, they only want to use resources pre-approved by environmentalists. Everyone wants high quality health care – we want to empower doctors and patients, they want to empower government. A crucial battle, which will decide what direction we go, and will have ramifications for decades to come.
Right now, all bets are off – anyone who is out there seriously predicting who will win (as differentiated from high spirited, partisan boosterism) is placing a bet more than conducting analysis. The variables are too great in this election, at this point, for anyone to decide with precision how it will come out. This works to McCain’s advantage as the narrative for 2008 was that the GOP was down and out while the Democrats were rising high – and further to McCain’s advantage is the apparent continuance in Obama of a sense of destiny and “its all wrapped up” hubris. I’ve yet to see out of Obama’s camp a realization of just how much of a game-changer Palin and the overall GOP convention have been. Hopefully, this fool’s paradise view will prevail in Obama’s camp until its too late to recover from it. The longer it takes them to grasp the fact that they will have to fight hard for each vote, the better for us.
As for me, I haven’t been this fired up since 1980 – my very jaded political palate is tasting something new in the wind, and it is clear that we’ve got the better people, with the better ideas, with the higher idealism, and with the greater raw courage. This might not be enough to win in 2008, but our time in the wilderness won’t extend any further than January 20th, 2009…and I’ve got a sense in the gut that what happens on that date will be just what we’re hoping for.
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