Cultural Cuisinart

There's a spectacular op-ed piece up at the NY Daily News by Larry Hunter, entitled, "I'm a lifelong conservative activist and I'm backing Barack Obama."

It really cuts to the heart of the matter here. John McCain and Barack Obama are such different candidates, that it really should be easy to pick which one you want to support. For all the teeth-gnashing about Obama's compromise on FISA, I just can't believe that that one issue would be enough to override all the other positives he brings to the table, compared to McCain.

My favorite passage from the op-ed:

When I first made this decision, many colleagues were shocked. How could I support a candidate with a domestic policy platform that's antithetical to almost everything I believe in?

The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies - this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.

Taxes, economic policy and health care reform matter, of course. But how we extract ourselves from the bloody boondoggle in Iraq, how we avoid getting into a war with Iran and how we preserve our individual rights while dealing with real foreign threats - these are of greater importance.

Well said. Having a stance on policy issues is all well and good (see the FISA thing above), but at the end of the day, there are issues I feel strongly about and there are issues that I believe are of paramount importance. Being able to compromise or live with defeat on certain issues because other issues are more pressing is the key to being a politically oriented person in today's world.

Here's what I think a lot of people don't realize: when you take the oath of office as the President, you don't swear to protect the homeland, you don't swear to protect the people. Here's the exact text: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's a key point. The Constitution, and the values enshrined within, have always supposed to have been the focus. The President is not allowed to bend the law and violate the Constitution based on some abstract notion of "protecting the homeland". It's about time we got a leader in office who remembered that. John McCain is not that man.