[olug] OT: evil poll

[Christopher Cashell]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Will Langford <unfies at gmail.com> wrote:
> Got a pick for Pres ?

First, let me precede my thoughts with the note that I am a registered
Libertarian, so I hate both the Republicans and the Democrats,
generally equally.  I would vote Libertarian (as I have in the past),
but unfortunately, I think Bob Barr is an idiot.

A few months ago, I was very undecided on who I liked better, Obama or
McCain.  Then two things happened that pushed me to one side.

The first was McCain's appointment of Sarah Palin.  John McCain is 72
years old, and the average life expectancy in the US for men is about
75 years.  That means that statistically, McCain will most likely die
before he finishes his term as president, if elected.  And I think
Sarah Palin is so woefully underqualified for the Vice President
position, let alone the president, that this thought seriously scares
me.  As far as I'm concerned, she was a horrible selection, and the
fact that she was chosen puts his judgement in question to me.

The second was the negative campaigning.  There were a few pot shots
here and there from both sides, but the first time I saw it really
escalated was when Sarah Palin was announced.  She came out and was
immediately on the attack, and I'm so completely sick of that.  Since
then, as McCain started slipping in the polls, his campaign actually
*announced* that their new campaign strategy was to be more focused on
attacking Obama and they ramped up the negative campaigning to a new
high for this election.  They announced that.  What the hell?!?!

And this was after McCain pledged to run a clean campaign.  Heck,
early on he *did* do a great job with that.  I had a lot of respect
for him during the primaries, and early on when someone outside of his
campaign initially started some negative campaigning, and McCain
jumped in and shot them down, saying that there was no place for that
kind of negativity and attacking in his campaign.  That was integrity.
 That was impressive.  Unfortunately, that was then.

There's a lot of things I dislike about Obama, and if there was a
decent Libertarian candidate, they'd almost certainly get my vote.
But John McCain has thrown away any and all chance he had of my
support.  Due to his extremely poor choice of Sarah Palin, and his
flip-flop choice to take the (relatively) civil campaigning to a new
low for negativity, he's no longer a viable candidate to me.

> -Will

-- 
Christopher