Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Obama wins presidency

Barack Obama will be the nation's next president. John McCain ran an honorable campaign, and in September seemed to poised to surmount the toughest election conditions for the Republican Party since the post-Watergate tally in 1974.

It's an historic win for Obama: First African-American president, first commander-in-chief from his generation, one of our youngest presidents.

Obama's win comes with some costs. Public financing our our campaigns, a post-Watergate reform, is all but dead. After flip-flopping on accepting public financing, Obama, in a web video, said the current system was broken. He provided no evidence of that, but now he can--it's called the Obama-Biden '08 Campaign.

So not only did John McCain face a difficult environment for a Republican, but he had to overcome massive spending by Obama. McCain did the honorable thing--which some Republicans say was a mistake--and stood by his pledge to accept public financing, and live with the spending limits it entails.

Now Obama has to do something he has never done before. Govern. Presumably with outh the aura of the David Axelrod-invented personality cult.

The loyal opposition, that includes myself, should be respectful of the choice of the people.

But we will look towards the next election.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't part of being "respectful" of the choice of the people include dropping your half-truths and spin?

...How did Obama "flip-flop" on public financing? Please provide a quote as a fact rather than your opinion based on old McCain Camp spin. McCain even supported the concept of small-dollar donations funding a major campaign and praised Gov. Howard Dean's 2004 fundraising operation which did that... at least he did before he was losing to another campaign doing the same thing as Gov. Dean, but much better.

...For that matter, McCain had no choice but to accept public financing for the general. Simply put, his campaign was not as adept at raising money as Obama's was. Then again, in the primaries he was the one who actually flip-flopped on public financing by securing a bank loan using anticipated public financing as collateral and then going back on the public financing after he raised enough to cover the loan without it.

It's ok, John, you can stop the spin now. The election's over.

Marathon Pundit said...

This comes close.

He did flip flop.

And what about that money coming for overseas, or non-citizens?

Not true on McCain having no choice on public financing. He was getting criticized for it, in a whispering manner, at the RNC.

Anonymous said...

"OUCH"