Saturday, October 25, 2008

Now It's Getting Personal




As the Presidential Campaign shuffles towards its conclusion, the 'heat' as they say in journalistic circles is being turned up, in fact if this were the political equivalent of Spinal Tap I'd say the heat had just gone all the way up to eleven. My personal philosophy in politics is that you should attack the politics and not the politician, except in the case of corruption. That's why I posted a link to the Conservative website recently because I think some of their policies should be looked at on their own rather than as some sort of David Cameron is Margaret Thatcher crusade.

Over in America the last week of campaigning has seen the pendulum swing so far in Obama's favour that American journalists are openly talking about a whitewash - that's a 15 per cent lead in the final polls - with Sarah Palin being the one largely responsible for the collapse of the Republican vote. Interesting to observe how quickly the name of Barack Obama's potential VP has disappeared from public view as moose woman has appeared on stage. Of course when the going gets tough, the potential losers get nasty as can be seen here . John McCain has risen above of the nonsense so far, at least when the nonsense has been conducted in the public eye and has sought to allay fears about any potential un-American side to his opponent. Instead John McCain has been casting doubts over his opponents politics which is how it should be.


The big question, and I suppose it's the biggest question, is, is Barack Obama the real deal? Certainly his lack of experience in a position of any responsibility is something that would have British voters worrying should a similar scenario present itself over here - the Conservative party may not have won a General Election in nearly twenty years by the time the next one comes around but at least they do possess some strength in depth, to use a football analogy. The real scary thing about a McCain win comes from something I heard an American journalist say a couple of weeks ago, he said that McCain had the potential to be the greatest Republican leader since Ronald Reagan who, in the opinion of the journalist concerned, was the greatest American of the twentieth century - all well and good you might say, the problem comes as I see it if John McCain's John Hinckley Junior doesn't miss his potential assassination victims heart by an inch and we are left with the real prospect of Governor Sarah Palin in charge of the largest democracy in the world. Now that is scary.

3 comments:

Name Witheld said...

My impression is that the selection of Sarah Palin for the Vice Presidency was the beginning of the end for Republican hopes.

Paul said...

I have to agree with you, Justin Webb wrote something similar on his blog about the feeling on the ground.

Span Ows said...

He's wrong (Webb)...I'll copy this reply in your above post to...

Everwhere she's spoken there is good feeling about what she says: the bad stuff comes from the press (see my reply to you on my blog re the networks) and now it seems she is being lined up to take the blame NOT by McCain but by the party shadows...all that crap re her wardrobe etc is coming from the Republicans!

She wa sactaully such a spark in the McCain campaign that it upset everyone - look at how they compared HER to Obama instead of McCain. Have you heard Biden's name mentioned? Has he been "really" questioned? Has Obama been questioned AT ALL expect by Bill O'Reilly on Fox?...no he hasn't.