Undecided? Just Take a Harder Look Around You

By Si Dunn

My mind was made up long ago. I wanted Hillary Clinton to win, and I wanted Barack Obama to be Vice President. I was hung up on the narrow notion that experience trumps almost everything else.

When Hillary lost, it took me a while to warm up to Barack Obama. But the more I watched him and listened to what he has to say, the more I realized that the man is the leader we need for these greatly troubled and hugely challenging times.

John McCain has served his country with honor and distinction. But now is not the time for Republican solutions, particularly narrow-minded neoconservative solutions. The Republican Party has splintered into factions and completely lost its compass. It may take years to rebuild itself, or it may spin off into two or more political parties.

At a time when Americans are fearful for their familiess, their jobs, their retirement savings, their homes and the very future of this great nation, the current Republican leadership keeps railing about tax cuts, socialism, abortion and 1960s radicals.

As a result, John McCain and Sarah Palin seem to be harping at us from other dimensions and other planets. They want us all to just sit on our little piles of money (if we still have any) and not let any of it get (horrors!) spread around.

Government? Hey, don't need it. Taxes? Evil! Don't need 'em. Change? The economy is fundamentally sound, you betcha. Especially if the wealthy get to keep their tax cuts forever and ever, amen. Iraq? There is only one victory, and that is the victory where we stay there for up to a hundred years and keep blowing up people and goats and things until somebody important says: "Okay, okay, you win! Thank you very much!"

We need experience and leadership in Washington. But more importantly, we need someone with the ability and courage to tell us that we have to make a few sacrifices and do a few things to help our nation out over the next few years. That may include paying a few taxes to help fund government services. And it may include--horror of horrors!--spreading a little of our money around to help our less-fortunate neighbors.

After 9/11, George Bush looked out over a nation angered and ready to fight back. Americans were motivated and eager to do their part for a war effort. Our fearless leader seized that moment and told us all to go out and...shop.

Huh? Fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban with American Express? Just party hardy and pretend they don't exist? Have the difficult and painful lessons of World War II already been forgotten?

Now we are in a major economic crisis, and the Republicans are raging against government spending--the very spending that they exploded to unbelievable levels. Yet government spending on infrastructure and other job-creation programs may be almost the only tool left for resuscitating the economy.

The Republicans have had their time and opportunities for economic and social experiments, and they have made an utter mess of things. Now they want four more, or even eight more, years to create an even bigger disaster.

Just look around and take a hard look this time. Our nation is in peril on several fronts, and the party that has lead us to the precipice now wants your permission to take us all over the cliff to complete ruin.

Stand up, fight back and say "Hell, no! We won't go!" to the Republican Party in its present, bastardized form.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden can lead us away from that precipice and toward better and more sensible times. And they'll ask for--and need--our help.

Many of us are ready to be be part of the solution, even if it means making some personal and financial sacrifices on behalf of our country. We are patriotic Americans, not just mindless shoppers looking for the next sale on tax cuts.

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