Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Political Positions



Both here in Thailand and my country of origin, 2008 is a year of political upheaval. I’m physically cut off from both, but that’s probably good. Emotionally, however, I am involved in both.

Down in BKK (Bangkok), the PAD (Peoples Alliance of Democracy) continues in its third month. It started just before I arrived back from my trip across Asia. Flying back from Athens I was in BKK less than two hours at Savarnabhumi airport—just long enough to clear immigration and catch a flight north. I had been reading about the PAD take over of the Parliament Building. As a guest in this country, I can only watch from the sidelines, so I knew better than to expose my old latent war protest alter ego to even be in the vicinity of a massive sit-in. Better for me to simply follow in the daily news and sympathize with my Thai friends, most of whom support PAD.

Back on the home front my emotional involvement goes even deeper with the historic event now taking place in less than one week. An event with reverberations that will be felt round the earth.

It’s been over 40 years since I had a candidate to vote for that I really believed in. I have been voting all my life for the lesser of two evils. I had hoped to support Bobby Kennedy in 1968. Having recently returned from my first overseas adventure of almost two years, I was newly educated in global perspective. But then we all know what happened that fateful year in history.

Living in San Francisco during the primary in 1972, it was easy to be both enthusiastic and optimistic about McGovern and I put in enough hours working for his campaign that I received a Western Union “Thank You” message over his signature the June night I returned home after getting out the vote successfully for him to be rewarded with a massive win in California. Unfortunately the national election in November did not go so well, but that Western Union message was a prized possession of mine through the "Weird Watergate" years reminding me that I had done my part attempting to avoid the chaos the country went through at that time.

But this time it’s different. I developed a formula* for the Obama Kool Aid all on my own, long before Barack Hussein Obama even knew he was going to run this election cycle. The minute I heard the “skinny guy with the funny name” give the key note address at the DNC convention in Boston, ’04, I said deep in my heart…I want to vote for this man, and I want it to be in the next election. I read both his books and looked into just who he is and I liked every thing about him. He is the composite of all the best candidates I’ve watched parade before us over the course of my six decade lifetime.

So now we are less than a week away from my dream candidate being my next President. As an American who has chosen to live outside the country in my retirement due to budget constraints (affordable health care availability being a big factor), I am a nervous wreck. I can’t be there as I was in 1972 to help get out the vote, but I refuse to believe that this time the Americans will reject the smart, competent one over the erratic, bad-tempered nasty old man.

I don’t want a maverick for my President. That may be fine in the Senate with 99 other folks to stabilize things. A little cyclone activity to stir everyone up may have its benefits there, but not at the level of Commander-in-Chief. I want stable, focused, meticulous attention to detail and organized consensus after all contributing factors are analyzed. Shoot from the hip worked great in the Wild West. It’s not a working formulae in the troubled world of the 21st Century.

If you care about the future of your country and the world at large, go out and vote for the team that brings real change and hope to all of us on planet earth. OBAMA/BIDEN ‘o8!!


*1/3 work, 1/3 commitment, 1/3 sacrifice with a dash of HOPE

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