That’s right, Babelers. I have thrown my hat into the ring for Obama.

To preface this post: all of the candidates left will not destroy the world. I think that now that Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have run their own campaigns into the ground, the candidates who are left are reasonable enough to actually help America. But now we need to pick the best one, and I have spent the past week doing that.

So Why Not McCain?

One of the most important issues to me is that the United States should run like a business: in the black. Running in the red year after year will lead to catastrophe. In that event, it won’t matter WHAT your #1 priority is, because you won’t be able to afford it. Long-term crippling debt doesn’t work for small business, it doesn’t work for large business, and it certainly won’t work for our government.

Your views are very conservative. Why not McCain? He’s Republican.

The Republican party stopped being the Conservative party when Gerald Ford stepped into office.

I can hear your shock through the Internet. “What do you mean the Republicans are not the Conservative party? They’re better than the Democrats. Or did I mean Spendocrats?”

Before you high-five yourself, take a look at this graph. Take a look at the starting/ending deficits following Nixon. Especially fun to look at is Reagan, oft-touted as a stalwart conservative. He more than doubled the yearly deficit.

Republicans are empirically worse at money management than the Democrats, so it will take more than a party affiliation to sway me.

But You’ll Benefit From a McCain Presidency!

I considered going line-item through his website and listing the pros and cons, but suffice it to say that he came out even, and that’s if he acts on every single promise. It looks like a lot of his plans will have the opposite effect, as befalls many economic stimulus attempts. For example, the Freakonomics blog reports that McCain’s gas tax holiday will be neutralized– and potentially make gas cost more– by the increase in demand. There is, however, one dealbreaker in his economic plan:

Make it Harder to Raise Taxes

Here’s were McCain has lost my vote. It’s already hard to raise taxes. Bush Sr. is the perfect example: he ruined his political career and his reputation by raising taxes when he needed to. Reagan had to disguise his tax increases as “loophole closing” in order to avoid detection.

The opposite, lowering taxes, is all too easy to do. Our current fearless leader has fearlessly opted to fearlessly increase spending and cut taxes, an awful idea he was able to implement with no problem. The Congress and Senate have willingly gone along.

Nobody likes their taxes to be raised, least of all most of the Senators passing the tax increases: if they go over badly enough, our public servants are out of a job. We’ve already “internalized the externality” as far as raising taxes goes: it directly harms Senators when they pass a tax increase.

We should internalize the consequences (and yes, there are consequences!) of tax cuts. Doing anything else will ruin America.

Taxes are raised when they are needed: to offset the cost of a program, or to (god forbid!) try to pay off the National Debt. I see no reason to hasten the downfall of our country by making it harder to do something that is needed. If you look at it this way, Republicans make up between 40% to 60% of Congress at any one time. Even when they are at a low period, we have 40% Republican. All of these Republicans will refuse to raise taxes most (or all) of the time. After all, they don’t want to be the next Bush, Sr.

Basically, the Democrats would need to pitch a perfect game to try to get our country back on track. Needless to say, any tax increase would be doomed from the get go, no matter how much it is needed.

But McCain is running a respectful campaign!

I was relieved to see his memo calling for a respectful campaign. No longer would we have to deal with absurd patriotism “gotchas” and pictures of funny faces sent out with campaign fliers. No more B.S. groups “Swift-Boating” candidates, and no more “flip-flopping”. After all, even our fearless leader once criticized the war in Kosovo, declaring that it was foolish without an exit strategy. Our fearless vice-leader once predicted that entering Baghdad would be a quagmire. What foresight!

But all of the respectful campaigning ended when McCain’s campaign sent out a campaign email claiming that Hamas supports Obama. I can’t think of a better way to raise the level of political discourse in our country than to try to terrify voters with the words of scary scary Muslims.

His website is also bespeckled with digs at “the Democrats” as well as half-truths. For example, his economic policy page says:

John McCain will maintain the current income and investment tax rates and fight the Democrats’ plans for a crippling tax increase in 2011. Left to their devices, Democrats will impose a massive $100 billion tax hike, almost $700 per taxpayer every year.

I will let Dr. Cox of Scrubs refute this:

Where does he go wrong? He is referring to the Bush tax cuts, written by fellow Republicans. A Republican in office would also let them expire “left to their own devices.” As would Martians. Also note that the largest burden of the expiration would land on the wealthy, so the $700/person figure is misleading. Also note that leading Democratic candidate Barack Obama would only repeal the tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of households. I am not part of the wealthiest 1% of households, and I’d bet you’re not either. Our money is largely safe. In the off chance you fall in that group, you got quite a break over the past few years, and I hope you’ve invested the difference well in the meantime. In lieu of a flat tax, I feel the Clintonian tax structure is the smartest tax structure we can have (since, you know, we made money).

Security!

After that, we have the notion that we will be safest with John McCain. I question the very idea that John McCain will make us safe. At all.

In our modern combat in Iraq, McCain seems to frequently misunderstand key issues [three different links], such as which side of the Sunni/Shiite war Al Qaeda supports. “Know your enemy” is the most essential mantra of war, and the fact that McCain (and the people with whom he surrounds himself) can’t tell the difference at an instant is worrisome.

His website detailing border security, for example, is an awful mess of jingoistic B.S. and doesn’t actually list strong, specific measures as of the publish date of this article. This was one of the BIG sticking points of the 9/11 commission report, and McCain doesn’t really seem to care. I would argue that the 9/11 commission had the best chance to give a thorough shakedown of our national security, and failing to treat their recommendations seriously is a grave error.

If you consider pointing a finger at someone else, think this for one second: McCain is THE security candidate. That’s his strength. This is the one thing he is supposed to get right when everyone else fails.

Why not Hillary?

Hillary comes with Bill, which would be fantastic. He could fix foreign relations while sending Hillary emails about how to balance the budget. She has experience, having sat as a board member for Walmart in the early ’90s. She has been a Senator for a few terms now. She was the First Lady during our last golden era, and she had to pick something up during all of that time, right?

Clinton and Obama have very similar plans and very similar concerns. So why should I choose Obama over Clinton?

First, there is the Bush/Clinton dynasty problem. I was born in 1985 and a Bush/Clinton has been in office since 1989. As long as I can remember, there has been a Bush or a Clinton in office, and I literally do not know what it is like to live under another president.

This alone is not a dealbreaker! The Bill Clinton presidency was particularly successful, even in the face of adversity. He got a big budget surplus, killed terrorists before you thought it was important, and had a consistently high approval rating… all in the face of impeachment! However, Bill does not a Hillary make.

Second, everyone already has a very strong opinion of Hillary. She’s widely hated (for mostly petty reasons, I feel), so do we really need a candidate that people have to get over? Obama has momentum on his side, and everyone is forming their first opinion of him at the moment. He still has the opportunity to change minds. Hillary has lost that opportunity with some of the politically active from the mid ’90s.

Unfortunately, in the end, there are few tangible policy reasons why I shouldn’t vote for Clinton. I get a little bit of that “Mitt Romney Used Car Salesman” vibe from her, and she’s a huge fan of running on the attack instead of running on a platform. She’s jumped on both the “Obama’s Pastor” bandwagon and the “Elitist” band wagon, even though neither “scandal” really shook Obama in the long run. All of her attacks have fallen by the wayside, and she continues to lose support.

Not only that, but she is somehow managing to lose the overall fight with Obama even though she keeps winning the big wins. Why? Obama is playing Risk, and Hillary is playing Monopoly. Obama’s campaign knows exactly what it needs to win delegates in every single state, and his strategy is paying for itself over and over again: he is currently in the lead by a fair margin.

At the end of the day, I simply like Barack Obama better, believe that he has a chance to inspire the American people, and believe that he is the most calm, cool, and presidential of all of the candidates.

Why Obama

I’m going to tell you a secret. There are two presidential jobs: having a great presentation, and surrounding yourself with the right people. Obama is the supreme candidate in both of these respects. If you look at the campaign websites of all three candidates, Obama’s is by far the most effective.

To use a quick metric: websites. McCain’s website simply doesn’t wow me; something feels wrong with the presentation, and it’s hard to find specific content even if you know what you are looking for. Add in the fact that he “cites” a lot of papers without giving any hyperlinks further hurts him. Even if you want to double-check him, you have to spend an afternoon in the basement of your library. Clinton’s website suffers from small text on a lot of the details. However, Obama’s website is laid out fantastically. It is one of the best-designed websites I have ever seen.

As a person, Obama himself is very cool and collected. He sowed his political seeds with a single speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Name the last politician that you’ve seen actually inspire hope with a single speech! It was not a fluke, either, as his speech on race in America was also fantastic. I suggest you take the 45 minutes (yes, 45 minutes!) to watch the whole thing. You will experience the breath of fresh air of seeing how a politician SHOULD act. No jeers, no digs, no positioning and jockeying.

And not only that, but he is taking on the issues that affect the majority of Americans. Let’s face it, Bush’s politics gave the biggest advantage to the top 1%, whom he has called his “base.” You’ll now observe the recession that has resulted from 8 years of Bushanomics. As far as “pro growth” strategies go, I think you’ll find that Obama’s economic plan is comparable to McCain’s attitude towards corporations (funding R+D and investing in manufacturing), so it’s hard to make the argument that jobs would be much worse-off under Obama.

Let’s face it, the economic pendulum swings two ways. If employers don’t have money, they can’t hire, and if consumers don’t have money, they can’t buy. Pretending that all that is needed for economic success is entrepreneural funding misses the other half: the businesses are, some way or another, dependent on consumers with cash.

Another thing that hooks me with Obama is his attitude towards America. Primarily, he is not jingoistic. There is no room in our budget to continue to be Team America: World Police. Obama is not embarrassingly patriotic, he is amazingly realistic, and most importantly, hopeful. Obama has a dream of the future of America, and his website is a laundry list of the steps that need to be taken in order to reach this dream. McCain is starting with the false notion that America always will be the best nation in the world. This is a mistaken premise, so any conclusions drawn from this will be a comedy of errors.

Let’s make no mistake, patriotism is a good thing. Misguided extremist patriotism is a bad thing. Learn to point out the difference.

Obama also surrounds himself with the right people, his campaign be his witness. He has hired excellent web developers, he has recruited excellent campaign managers, he has recruited excellent fundraisers, and he has an all-star cast of advisors. McCain’s campaign ran into significant problems before he secured the nod (as did Rudy and Mitt.. what is it with the Republicans and not running businesses well?). Clinton’s campaign is reportedly millions of dollars in debt and has asked many workers to work for free. Obama’s campaign has had no such problems, as he has spent within his means. From a management standpoint, he is the only candidate who can successfully manage the campaign (or find the people who can!)

Like him or not, Obama has paid an extreme amount of attention to detail and run a fantastic campaign. He has surrounded himself with the right people, and the fact that he’s pretty big on the middle class (a membership I will have for the next 4 years) definitely does not hurt.

Let’s Barack and Roll!

Edit: I accidentally said that the opposite of raising taxes is raising taxes. Oops!