Published: October 26, 2008 12:57 am | Font Size:
Nation could be heading for a train wreck
By CHUCK GREEN
I couldnât stand it any longer. I voted last week.
It wasnât the enjoyable exercise which voting ought to be. I canât recall that Iâve ever cast a ballot with such a heavy heart and a sense of foreboding.
I voted, reluctantly, for John McCain. Yet I have a bet with a friend on who will win the election, and I put my money on Barack Obama.
Neither man, and neither ticket, is right for the times.
John McCain has run a very disappointing campaign - he either has been soft on the major issues, or he has avoided them altogether. He hardly has emerged as the bold, determined leader I expected. Barack Obama is the most-inexperienced candidate in history, the most liberal candidate in modern times, one of the biggest spenders in Congress, and he has promised to expand the American welfare state by leaps and bounds.
My choice finally came down to a simple decision.
I didnât want to support a Democratic president when it is a certainty that both the Senate and the House will be controlled by the Democrats.
I didnât want to endorse a runaway Democratic train, with absolutely no restraints on big spending and high taxation.
The prospect of a triumvirate consisting of Obama, Pelosi and Reid was too much for me.
George W. Bush is going to be recorded as one of our worst presidents ever. The Congress led by Pelosi and Reid already is worse - possibly the worst in history - and it appears only to be headed lower.
It will get worse if Obama is elected president, joining House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate President Harry Reid in forming an unstoppable one-party government.
Only John McCain stands in the way of that happening, and he stands as a very thin shield indeed.
According to the latest polls, he stands a slim - though not insurmountable - chance of being elected the 44th president of the United States.
The prospect of Obama as president, bolstered by a Congress that is belligerent, unrepentant and duplicitous, does not offer America a future of prosperity.
Obama wants to âspread the wealth aroundâ by increasing taxes on âthe wealthy,â a term that so far has defied his own attempts to define, to the absurd point that even people who donât pay income tax will get a cash refund.
Thatâs a formula that ensures a less-productive, more-dependent society at a moment when the country needs more production and less dependence.
The Democrats seek to join a multilateral association with an increasingly hostile global community that only wants to weaken - or destroy - the United States. It is as if we are on a mission to denounce our heritage as the most successful and enduring democracy in human history, only to join forces with cultures that have oppressed the freedom of their own people and meekly settled in the quicksand of economic and industrial stagnation. If the Democrats have their complete and total way, with no restraint, âspreading the wealth aroundâ will mean there will come a time when there will be little wealth to spread.
We will become a society infected by a disease of malaise, our inventive spirit and entrepreneurial energy sapped by a government that no longer is dedicated to unleash our vigorous instinct but only in sapping and extinguishing it.
If the Democrats gain absolute control of the government for four years, it wonât be easily nor quickly reversed.
Only John McCain offers a limit to the damage that can be done.
Chuck Green, veteran Colorado journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Denver Post, syndicates a statewide column and is at
chuckgreencolo@msn.com.
