On Campus

Random thoughts on the USA presidential race

A favourite hobby of mine is to engage in political speculation. I haven’t jump in on the American presidential elections due to concerns that I wasn’t able to think about the race in a manner that was not overly subjective.

I’m a huge John McCain fan. I have a McCain for President lawnsign from his 2000 run for the White House which is displayed as the centrepiece of my political memorabilia collection. As much as I tried to catch Obamania, I am unable to.

Hence, I’m stayed out of offering my take.

Today, I believe I’m seeing clearly enough to speculate.

The events of the past couple of days have definitely been to McCain’s benefit. The rollout of the veep selection Sarah Palin quickly quashed positive media coverage of Obama’s speech and garnered more than a few front pages on Saturday.

The questions swirling around Palin are not helpful to McCain’s campaign but the suddenly active hurricane season is burying these questions.

Most importantly, Hurricane Gustav has cancelled most of the earlier speeches at the Republican National Convention. This means no images of President George W. Bush or Darth Cheney. There is nothing more damaging to McCain’s bid for the presidency than images of Bush/Cheney showing up in America’s living rooms.

Who is the big winner of today’s events? I believe it’s Barack Obama. Not because of the questions raised with the statement that Palin’s daughter is pregnant, but his response:

“I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories,” Obama said. “And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know, my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics, and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits.”

For the first time of this presidential cycle, I can see myself choosing Obama over McCain.

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