That's It For John...

Stick a fork in John McCain. He’s done. The race, for all intents and purposes, is over. Next month the country will elect Barack Obama President by a comfortable margin and give him a Democratic congress to work with.

This will be followed by a lengthy and cruel recession, which we are already entering.

Being a patriot, I honestly hope that Obama has the chops to handle what’s about to happen because few presidents have been tested in the way that he will be tested. May God bless his leadership and grant our President success.

If the issue this year had been the Iraq war or terrorism, McCain might have won. Those issues are in what baseball players call his “wheelhouse.” Instead, there was a banking collapse and a panic on Wall Street with losses comparable to the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Being the party in power, the Republicans get the sullied end of the stick, and that includes McCain, who does not speak fluent Economics.

It also might have been better if McCain had gone to the character issue on Obama months ago, rather than saving it for now. Normally it might have gained traction in October, but people aren’t listening because the Crash is deflating their life savings and they are rather preoccupied.

It might have helped if McCain’s campaign hadn’t gone chickens**t and hidden Sarah Palin for two weeks after the conventions, just when she was gaining with the voters. It also would have helped if Palin hadn’t choked miserably when interviewed by lightweight anchorwoman Katie Couric.

It might have helped if McCain had been a lot more aggressive on the stump and in personal appearances. Save for a week or so of swagger when he named Palin for the VP nomination, he has looked tired and old. He let Obama get away with murder in the first two debates, not deigning to set the record straight when Obama obfuscated it.

In short, John McCain lost it fair and square. Obama came to play and McCain phoned it in.

So why pile on McCain? Rolling Stone has an article out, the theme of which is that in the past John McCain has been…a jerk. Undoubtedly he has had his moments, but so has Barack Obama. So did Jack Kennedy, FDR, and a dozen other candidates and presidents I can think of off hand.

If it’s all the same to everyone else, I am voting for John McCain anyway. His politics is not a perfect match for mine, but they are closer than Obama’s are. I don’t intend to critique anyone else for the way they vote. We all must follow our own minds and hearts.

I hope, however, that with two wars and a Great Recession in prospect, all of us Americans can put aside stupid partisan bickering and unite behind the President in trying to extricate our country from the worst crisis since World War II.