Election Wrap-Up - Part I

Number one: I'm glad it's over.

Number two: My guy didn't win.

Number three: Even though my guy didn't win, we have a new President, and he will be my President, even though I didn't vote for him. So no real bitterness here, but I do have some lingering thoughts:

1. John McCain. I say this without a historian's context, but I'm fairly confident that there has probably never been a candidate more qualified to be President than John McCain. He served valiantly in a very unpopular war, ending up in a POW camp in Vietnam for five long years, where he was repeatedly tortured. He had his arms broken multiple times (which is why to this day he cannot raise his arms above his shoulders). When they tried to force him to divulge the names of other soldiers, he broke down and gave them names -- the names of the starting line of a professional football team. When he was offered the chance to be released from the camp early -- before others who had been there longer than him -- he turned it down and remained captive for another three long years. This is indeed an honorable man, a man with uncommon valour, a man who clearly loves his country and his fellow Americans more than himself.

McCain went on to serve for 30+ years in the U.S. House and Senate. Is he old? Yep. But the man has history under his belt -- he was there during the Reagan years, for God's sake....the Cold War....when the wall fell...and for every administration and every major foreign policy challenge since. He has always served proudly and always stood for something larger than himself.

I'll say it again -- I believe there has probably never been a candidate more qualified to be President than John McCain. Then why didn't he win? Unfortunately, the most qualified of candidates can be poor campaigners; they can often be less exciting and less charismatic than those less qualified (he was) and, in his defense, he had some pretty big hills to climb -- the unpopularity of his party, the timing of the souring economy, the phenomenon of Obamamania everywhere, including the press. There were just too many things working against him. And it's a shame, because nobody deserved the office more than John McCain.

2. Joe Biden. To me, Joe Biden is the forgotten man in this election. Biden has been in the Senate, in the same job for 35 years. He represents the state of Delaware -- a group of nice folks, I'm sure -- but certainly not a major state or impactive constituency. Joe's just been elected and re-elected over and over and over again, and he's been in the same job all this time because he simply can't do anything else. He's a blowhard, a bore and a Beltway joke. When Obama selected him, most of us chuckled (and groaned). And if anything was proven about any of the candidates in this election, it is what a complete idiot Joe Biden really is. Though the press would like for us to believe the dummy VP candidate was Sarah Palin, in reality it was Joe Biden. You just didn't hear about it because he's such a yawner. And for someone who's been around as long as he has, he sure doesn't know much. He gifted us with a gaffe a day on the campaign trail. He had his foot in his mouth more often than he didn't. In fact, in his televised debate with Sarah Palin, he came off as a golden-tongued debator (a master-debator, perhaps?), at least until minutes afterwards, when the pundits pointed out that despite all his eloquence and bravado, most of his answers were wrong. And not just slightly wrong, but ridiculously wrong. Big ones, like foreign policy questions. Even Palin got those right. So if there's anyone to really fear in all this, it's Joe Biden. The man is a walking stooge. He has a huge ego, a massive temper and bad hair plugs. Ugh. Pray very hard that it's never HIS finger on 'the button'.

And ole Joe clearly backs this notion of playing Robin Hood -- taking from the rich to give to the poor -- yet when his own records of charitable contributions are reviewed, it's clear he doesn't buy his own bull -- he's given almost nothing -- nada -- to charity over the past how many years. So not only is he an idiot, he's a hypocrite. He's all for giving YOUR money away, just not HIS. So much for 'change' in Washington. Nice pick, Mr. Obama.

Part II with my thoughts on both Obama and Palin coming soon.....