At least once a day, for the last 100 days, some wise guy will write to me with a question he’s sure is going to make me have second thoughts about not supporting John McCain for president.
The questions go something like this: “Now that Barack Obama has nationalized the auto industry, do you still believe it was better for Americans to support neither of the two leading presidential candidates?”
Or, it might be more general: “Now that Barack Obama has destroyed the U.S. economy, do you have any doubts about writing your book, “None of the Above,” in 2008?
I have received hundreds of similar questions so far this year and it looks like the pace is increasing as the Democratic Party challenges to self-government and free enterprise continue unabated.
My answer is very simple.
I have no regrets – other than the fact that there was no real choice for Americans in the 2008 presidential election.
McCain would not have offered a significantly different course for the country. He supported the bailouts during the presidential race. He might have supported smaller bailouts in 2009, had he been elected. But he would most definitely not have provided principled opposition to the fundamental takeovers of the free-enterprise system.
The economy would still be in trouble – and guess who would be getting all the blame?
That’s right. It would be the Republican president. In fact, there would be more bipartisan support for the radically unconstitutional direction the federal government is taking right now. Citizens would not be rising up attempting to reclaim their country through thousands of tea parties and other demonstrations. And, come next year, there would be no viable alternatives for voters in the midterm congressional elections.
As the economy continued to stagger through 2012, McCain would be demonized for all the problems our country experienced in his four-year term, and Barack Obama would be getting ready for his first four years in office with a Congress stacked with even more Democrats and with even less opposition.
The only real difference would be that we delayed even greater pain for the country.
I believed, and still believe, America has a chance to wake up from its political sleepwalk. We needed to be jolted awake by experiencing the consequences of these horrendous policies, and Republicans had to be forced to rediscover their roots in and commitment to limited government.
It’s probably still hard to imagine for many Americans suffering right now through Obamanomics that John McCain would have offered, through his brand of bipartisan compromise, nothing but a scapegoat for Democrats to blame for their own policies – a scapegoat they will not have in 2010 and 2012.
Oh, it’s true that Democrats will still try to blame George W. Bush in 2010 and 2012 when the elections come around and their policies have offered nothing but failure and misery.
The truth is that Bush was responsible for policies of overspending and corporate welfare. Obama and the Democrats have merely put these policies in overdrive. The solution is a complete reversal of those policies – something McCain would have made impossible for the next four years and well beyond.
On the other hand, people are waking up all over this country – in just the first 100 days of the Obama administration. They’re seeing that socialism doesn’t work. Even more will see it clearly in the days, weeks and months ahead.
With Obama and the Democrats controlling all the levers of power, we have a chance for a real break from these destructive policies in the short term – in 2010 and 2012.
Had McCain won, the suffering would just be getting started – with no end in sight.
