“Financial markets are collapsing. Credit is drying up. Your savings are in danger, and your retirement is at risk. Jobs are disappearing. The cost of health care, your children’s college, gasoline and groceries are rising all the time with no end in sight, while your most important asset – your home – is losing value every day.”
“We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change.”
Precisely. Those are the reasons many Americans are going to reject the Republican presidential candidate three weeks from now. Those are the same reasons, plus the failed adventure in Iraq, among others, that I – voting for the first time in an American presidential election – am voting for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama on Nov. 4.
Republican nominee Sen. John McCain spelled them out clearly in a speech in North Carolina, a day after Republican party leaders criticized him for his aggressive negative attacks on Obama and a day after major polls showed him trailing Obama by at least 4 points and by as much as 11 points.
Those scathing assessment of what has become of the American economy in the eight years of the Bush administration were the very words of McCain in a belated attempt to turn around his sagging campaign to keep the Republicans in the White House.
McCain said it himself: “We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent much of the last eight: waiting for our luck to change.”
Americans certainly don’t want McCain or any Bush clone to take charge of the country – its economy, its foreign policy, its immigration policy, its spending policy, its health care policy, its education policy — for another eight years. Eight is enough, indeed.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden said it correctly in his acceptance speech during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado:
“And in the Senate, John sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time. Give me a break. When John McCain proposes $200 billion in new tax breaks for corporate America, $1 billion alone for just eight of the largest companies, but no relief for 100 million American families, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.
“Even today, as oil companies post the biggest profits in history – a half trillion dollars in the last five years – he wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks. But he voted time and again against incentives for renewable energy: solar, wind, biofuels. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.
“Millions of jobs have left our shores, yet John continues to support tax breaks for corporations that send them there. That’s not change; that’s more of the same.
“He voted 19 times against raising the minimum wage. For people who are struggling just to get to the next day, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.
“And when he says he will continue to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq when Iraq is sitting on a surplus of nearly $80 billion, that’s not change; that’s more of the same.
“The choice in this election is clear. These times require more than a good soldier; they require a wise leader, a leader who can deliver change — the change everybody knows we need.”
Indeed, the choice is clear – we want change, not more of the same reckless, hypocritical, anti-people policies of the Bush administration and his allies.
We do not need a hysterical leadership in Washington. What we need is a sober leader who would weigh things first before plunging into a war that has no end.
We do not need a leadership that would go an extra mile to support corporate America, and not budge an inch to support the people, as we have seen lately when the Bush administration took months to help stop foreclosures, but needed only days to plunge $700 billion of the people’s money to bail out the greedy capitalists on Wall Street.
We do not need a leadership that remains focused on exporting wars to other shores while neglecting the domestic ills that are eroding the very foundations of American life.
We do not need a leadership that binds its policies to the beliefs of the old, instead of adapting to the changing times. We do not need a leadership that believes the poor and the underprivileged should not be helped, but would go all out to support the greedy capitalists. We do not need a leadership that wants to close America’s doors to others after they themselves have gone through them. We do not need a leadership that believes every American should be armed, whose path to peace is paved with violence.
We need a fresh wind in Washington. We need change. Not more of the same.