President John McCain

Better get used to that title. Apologies for the unedited rant, but hopefully you'll get some small sense of beginning, middle, and end.

Around the beginning of the last presidential election campaigns, I knew for a fact that Bush would win reelection. It was obvious. No opponent even had a chance. However, once I began to listen to what each of the Democratic contenders had to say, I began to develop confidence that not only would almost any of them make a better president than Bush, but that a few of them even had a chance to defeat him in the actual election. When Kerry was nominated, I wasn’t sure what to think. I certainly did not think he was the strongest Democratic contender, but I did place John Edwards in my top two (along with Howard Dean), and I thought his Southern heritage could play a big role in helping to change the hands of power. For the most part, however, I still believed that Bush would win reelection. He was simply too popular at the time. When Kerry performed magnificently in the first debate against Bush, my attitude changed entirely. I thought here is a man who could actually save us! After the second debate, his momentum only took a minor hit, as most believed Kerry won again, but not as terrifically as before. After the third debate, the national polls were showing that the two candidates were evening out, and Kerry’s support began to slide, and the rest is history.

I’m not sure when I first realized it, but I think I have known since about the time of the 2004 election cycle that John McCain would be our 44^th president. The only thing is that I somehow managed to forget this fact over the course of the past few months of campaigns. Once again, I have seen the promise of several Democratic contenders, and have been encouraged by the support they have garnered. Once again, I am as disappointed with the prospect of a Republican president—not because of partisan favoritism, but because of the lack of quality candidates on that side. Where am I going with this? Though I cannot remember well enough the details of the presidential elections of 1996 and earlier, I can say that the constant in the elections since 2000 (and I suspect probably every election back to the birth of the union) has been the importance of one key factor: not positions, not values, not even likeability, but trust. Whomever the people trust most, wins. It seems to me that throughout history, one party over the other has always managed to collectively build a level of confidence in the people that it ceases to matter what the candidates say at some point. For the past eight years, that trust has been placed in the Republican Party, and there is no indication of change in sight. McCain is the ultimate nurturer of this trust right now, and that is why he will win. How do I know it is the Republican Party which will win, and further that it will be McCain to lead them to victory? Nothing he does is wrong. Not even supporting President Bush (which he continues to do in his campaign speeches), despite Bush’s dismal level of support, or popularity among the people. There is an unshakable trust which Americans have placed in McCain, which I think would be impossible to break, short of a homicidal rampage carried out by McCain himself against his own supporters at a campaign rally, and caught on film. That is why Republicans will vote for him; it is also partially why most independents and even some Democrats will vote for him. The other half of the story is that as I said before, one party has always dominated the nation in the category of trust. While McCain’s is unbreakable, the Democratic contenders seem very unable to even garner the trust of their own party. Whereas McCain might not be every Republican voter’s first choice, every Republican voter trusts him, and would happily vote for him. On the Democratic side, Obama supporters don’t trust Clinton; Clinton supporters don’t trust Obama; and no one really trusts any of the others. She’s a woman. He’s black. She’s unemotional. He was raised in a Muslim country. She’s a phony. He’s a robot. She’s too similar to Bush. He’s too different. In order to get elected, the people need to believe in you, and no Democrat will be able to compete with that type of support which McCain will rely on to win the presidency.

During the 2004 cycle, I got wrapped up in the excitement of the possibility of a new president, a Democratic, and more importantly sane, president. No doubt I will forget this rant, and nurture the false hope once again that we may have a sane, Democratic president come 2009. My only wish is that McCain will turn out to be more level-headed than we now think, because really the only thing standing between him and the presidency is that same old false hope for change.