Mommy's Official Endorsement

Yes, Mommy still has an opinion!

So it's not like I started out staying awake at night just to decide who to vote for in the upcoming presidential election. I've been woken up at odd hours 543,812 times in the three and a half years since we've had children. Uninterrupted sleep is my holy grail. But as I've been awakened three times since turning out the lights at 10:30 pm, (For those who are interested: Katie demanded room service at 11:30. Alex is on call at the fire department tonight. His earsplitting beeper has gone off twice so far, once sometime after Katie went to sleep, then again at 3am. Which requires him to groan, haul himself out of bed, get dressed - thankfully he is organized enough to lay out clothes the evening before, so it doesn't involve turning on lights in the bedroom. Alex is quick to say that bright light in the middle of the night makes me look somewhat like the hissing creature in the "Alien" movies, so his reluctance to turn on the light in the middle of the night isn't strictly altruistic.. These calls also involve a 200 lb man squeaking down the uncarpeted staircase of our house, circa 1958, closing and locking the door and starting the car in the driveway. I really do believe that Alex does this as quietly as any man possibly could, except for maybe "Grasshopper" walking over rice paper in the tv show "Kung Fu". But David Carradine wasn't available when I was husband-shopping, and Alex is the next-quietest thing.) and after lying in bed for an hour trying to get back to sleep for the third time, I am now officially awake.

And the wheels of my brain have been turning... (other Disney-soundtrack mommies will catch the reference to Gaston's song in "Beauty and the Beast") on a question posed to me by two friends today, a question that I had no answer to. "So I'm really interested in who you're going to vote for and why..." Which spawned two helpless conversations in which I repeatedly stuttered, "But I don't know, I just don't know.... When Hillary was still in, I knew, but now I just don't know... I obviously have to do some more thinking..." Which is shocking to some, because I've always had a strong opinion on the presidential race. (Just ask my father-in-law, who suffered with me through the '99 election when I was his son's new girlfriend on an extended visit over the Thanksgiving holiday from law school. We were on opposing sides, and he kept asking me to explain my position and we got into some pretty hot debates for two people who are generally as gentle as they come.. Looking back, I'm amazed he didn't set my duffel bag on the curb. After a gentle reminder from Alex's mother about never arguing with a man over politics in his own house - sage advice - I stopped attempting to answer his questions and we both just stared at the television and seethed.) Since I became old enough to vote, the choices have always been so clear to me... Clinton, Gore, Whoever doesn't go by "Dubya"... Either way, I am confident saying that whatever happens, I will be happier about the Oval Office Occupant on January 20, 2009 than I have been for the past eight years.

But still, a choice remains.

There are a lot of commentators out there exhorting us to "Look at the Issues", and although they are completely correct in that, the way I pick a presidential candidate does have a lot to do with their personalities and how they comport themselves rather than simply ticking off how many "Issues" each candidate shares my view on and awarding my vote to the one with the highest number. I've always had a knack for summing up people's character pretty quickly by plain old observation. This has served me well in my career, not to mention choice of personal relationships. (Most anyone who knows me well will tell you that my husband is an uncannily perfect "fit" for my personality, and I knew after our second date I would do whatever necessary to con him into marrying me.) So a lot of my presidential decision-making has to do with my gut feelings rather than any particular group of issues. I feel compelled to explain this because as a pretty enthusiastic Democrat, party faithful are going to have a tough time with my decision.

I love Hillary. Have complete faith in Hillary. And it's not because she is a woman and it's high time. It's because she is a GOOD candidate and I don't mind that she happens to be a woman. I still have hopes for her in the future. But as much as I hate it, she's out. She's doing the politically responsible thing in campaigning for Barack Obama, and I think that to whatever extent you can truly support a candidate whom you were months ago vehemently opposed to, she's doing it. She's being a good party Democrat, and you have to behave at the party so that everyone will come when it's your party. She has to think of the larger picture of her ability to help this country in the future. But that doesn't mean I will vote for her guy, however high my opinion is of her.

And it's not that I don't like Barack Obama. He seems like a great guy, knowledgeable and engaging. I think he has a great future ahead of him, and I expect to see great things from him. But I don't know him well enough to feel able to predict what he'll be able to do in the White House. And unfortunately I don't know his ideas on what, exactly he wants to do and how he expects to accomplish it. And he doesn't have enough of a track record yet to show that he is decisive and able to translate his decisions into results. He's spent the vast majority of his short political life campaigning for president. And I appreciate that campaigns are an entirely different animal than governing. You have to bring as many people into your fold as possible, through charisma, identifying with them, making them feel hopeful, confident that you know something they don't, whatever. Not a condemnation, that's just what campaigning is. Appealing to as many people as possible to give you a chance. I can understand why he doesn't want to delve too deeply into the issues - there's always the risk of alienating some voters either way, and I believe that's why his strategy is in such broad-based appeals.

But it also strikes me as reminiscent of President Bush's first campaign. (And just look at how that turned out!) At the time I tried to comfort myself in the idea that he was just a rookie surrounding himself with experience, but that's become infighting and is doing nothing for the country. Internal debate is a good thing in government, helps you catch the stupid backfiring stuff before you trot it out for public consumption, but I believe the Bush White House has been plagued by power struggles and is "led" by a man who truly doesn't have an internal compass. I don't mean a moral one, I mean a strong idea of what he wants to accomplish and a comprehensive grasp of the ways in which that might be done. (I think few people really do have a strong one...it's not a judgment on him as a person, just a judgment of him as the leader of the free world...) Which makes it pretty difficult for him when all the grownups are bickering about what to do in the face of serious challenges to this country. His first campaign centered a lot on "I am not a nation-builder"...and that's precisely the direction in which he's moved. To be fair, some of the onus for that is not his fault, but I'd have a lot rather had McCain or Gore at the helm when Bin Laden came calling. People with an independent grasp of foreign policy.

I am done with giving rookies a chance at the Big Prize. Hoping that they surround themselves with intelligent people and somehow that becomes good governing. I have learned that lesson. Because when the proverbial byproduct hit the fan and we needed a leader, we didn't have one. We had a coalition of experienced people with Big Egos and no one to shepherd their best ideas into a cohesive strategy.

So I'm going with McCain. I certainly don't agree with all of his positions, but he is decisive, he is a leader, and he intrinsically knows the costs of war and what our position in Iraq is costing us. Just getting the heck out sure sounds nice, but I'm not sure Obama knows how to do that, or knows how to do it in such a way that we leave Iraq in worse shape than we invaded it in. That's not to say that Iraq wasn't a threat. Who is still alive who knows what the heck Saddam Hussein had planned? In the end, he went out a broken man, but that doesn't mean that he would have been impotent if left to his own devices. But we have gone into a region where despotism is the name of the game. The Middle East is held tightly together by a complex assortment of tensions, of groups and individuals who rule by strength and force. You can't expect to remove a major part of that structure and expect things to hold together. Although I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, here we are and we should not leave the Iraqis twisting in the wind. Not only for the sake of the Middle East, but for whatever World War III Jihad could result from a collapsing Middle East. Insha'Allah, but God also gave us consciences and wills us through those, too.

And the economy? Don't get me started. But McCain has a better grasp on this than his opponent, by sheer weight of experience.

I was leaning toward McCain before the VP picks came out, and that's what really stuck me back in the middle. Obviously Obama needed to add experience to his ticket and made a pretty obvious choice. McCain didn't need to add experience to his ticket, so I was interested to see where he was going to go. But then McCain picked Palin, an untested and under-qualified choice, and this seemed like an undisguised attempt to lure me over to the Republican choice - like well, if you can't have Hillary, we can still give you a woman, and a dynamic one at that. (It's like the anchors on Fox - the women all young, beautiful and busty, the men fairly average, but that's okay because at least they're smart. Sigh...) It now adds historical weight to McCain's campaign that he didn't have before and evens out the historical factor - either way the US makes history - first black President or first female VP. I like Palin, she really seems like someone I would personally like and I hope this catapults her into a political career on the national stage. But Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary Clinton. Palin is a fresh, attractive tomboy and that's all well and good - my kinda girl - but McCain had better eat his Wheaties, because I don't think "Mrs. Smith goes to the White House" is a good idea AT ALL. And frankly, John, your hand-picked window-dressing underqualified successor almost makes it look as if you're afraid of internal competetion, but where does that leave the rest of us if you stroke out? She'd better be all that you say she is, and more.

So those are my thoughts. Both sides have inexperience, and I'm aware I'm betting on the health of a 72-year old man, but I'd rather bet on that than get burned by another rookie leader surrounded by bright, ambitious and competitive staff..

And to my adored father-in-law: I know it's taken eight years, but am I finally talking sense now?