How different are McCain and Hillary?
Would a Hillary presidency be substantially different from a McCain White House?
Will she succeed in bringing health care to the uninsured? She didn’t the first time she tried. The bumbling Clinton administration set back the cause of universal coverage by a generation.
Will she reign in the power of the presidency and roll back the unconstitutional pattern of behavior blazed by the Bush administration? This is not a cause that I have heard her take up. Her inability to take a stand against torture is an implicit endorsement of its use. In this area, I think McCain may scratch my anti-torture itch more effectively than Clinton.
Will she take up the cause of the poor and fight poverty? Welfare reform under Clinton the 1st was a pure capitulation to Republican interests after taking a beating in 1994.
Will gay and lesbian Americans be made whole citizens under the law under Clinton the 2nd? “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is a politician’s answer to a moral question.
We support Obama because he will change America and Americans for the better. For Barack, becoming President is a means to an end. The end we seek is a better nation.
Winning the White House as an end in itself, exclusively for the sake of beating the Republican party, is insufficient. Winning without conscience is losing.
Dick Lugar: Hoosier Statesman
I am consistently impressed, but never surprised, by the wisdom and leadership exhibited by Indiana’s senior senator, Dick Lugar. According to restore-habeas.org, he supports the Leahy-Specter-Dodd Amendment to restore habeas corpus. Between this stance and his recent “outside the party line” take on Iraq, it is a wonder the rest of the Republican senate even lets this guy in the clubhouse anymore.
Revered for his foreign policy acumen, Lugar should be commended for having the courage to step out of line and take on his own party, and put nation above partisanship on the real issues of the day.
At another level, though, Lugar is reflecting a state that is only solidly red in the eyes of national commentators on presidential election nights. Casual observers note Indiana’s track record of supporting Republicans in presidential races (LBJ was the last Democrat to collect our electoral college votes), but fail to note the generally-functional two party system that prevails in most of our other races.
- Hoosiers routinely split the statehouse, abhorring the leadership vacuum that a one-party system inevitably creates.
- After a pair of Democrats, our current Republican governor is thought to be in jeopardy in his bid for re-election.
- Between Lugar and Evan Bayh, we’ve elected two senators who are moderates in the positive sense of the word, building consensus in Indiana and in Washington instead of exploiting easy class, social and political divisions.
Coming at the call of a moderate populace, the actions of Dick Lugar should be a source of pride for all of Indiana.
View archives for March 2008.
