This patently unconventional Presidential Race of 2008 is starting to invoke memories of a similar race of the past, but with a twist.
The first Presidential Debate offered the American voting public a deep gaze into the souls of both Republican Candidate John McCain (R-AZ) and Democratic Party Candidate Barack Obama (D-IL). As voters who will select the next U.S President, we were given ringside seats to examine the ideals, temperament, and judgment of two candidates with very different views of what the best course of action is to heal what ails our great nation.
In many respects, this Presidential Election and its options resurrect the 1960 Election between then-Senator John F. Kennedy and then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, like McCain, spent much of his career building foreign policy and national security credentials en route to his party's nomination for president. Like McCain, Nixon had been scrutinized for his less-than-congenial conduct both professionally and personally - including a bit of a narcissistic tendency. Both Nixon and McCain endured scandal during their years in Washington - with Nixon's "Checkers" and Watergate scandals dogging his early and later years politically and McCain's "Keating Five" scandal and Iraq War support still haunting him to this day.
President Kennedy and Senator Obama, respectfully, are also very similar in many respects. Both men were relatively young when they earned the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Both men fought fierce party rivals on the path to those nominations. Both men displayed relaxed, cool demeanors and spoke with confidence and intelligence when debating their tenser and almost angry-looking rivals. Both men spoke of fighting poverty, disease, and misplaced war efforts while promulgating an inclusive approach to public policy that stressed coalitions with our allies.
Indeed, in many respects these candidates remind us of the presidential choices of yesteryear - yet we cannot help but notice the mitigating factors that make the need for another politician in the Kennedy mold imperative to the well-being of our country and its future. Unlike 1960, this general election arrives at a time when the financial markets are in crisis. Unlike Eisenhower before him, Republican President Bush has approval ratings which, oddly enough, are matching depths reached on the eve of Nixon's resignation in 1974. There were public policy problems facing President-elect Kennedy in 1960 - including civil rights issues and an escalating poverty crisis. However, the economic crisis facing potential President-elect Barack Obama is a policy problem unmatched since the Great Depression. The next president will need to call upon every resource imaginable to lift the republic out of financial chaos and back into prosperity.
Our nation needs a president with the intelligence, skill, ideals, patience, and temperament to handle what is an enormous threat to our peace and prosperity in the years to come. By virtue of his public policy resemblance to current President Bush and his inability to conduct his behavior in a manner reflective of one who handles crisis with calmness and reason, John McCain has proven himself to be the wrong person to lead the country in 2008 - just as Nixon was wrong for the country in 1960. What this great nation needs is one who is calm, confident, intelligent, and not just equal but superior to the task of leading our country out of the darkness we now find ourselves in. On display last Friday night was a candidate who exhibits those characteristics every minute of his life. His will be the voice we turn to when we elect him as our next President and leader on November 4.
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