Pre-election thoughts (E minus 2)

Comments: I was conversing with one of my sons yesterday. He will vote for Obama on Tuesday; I have already voted for McCain (by absentee ballot). My son said (and I think this is pretty profound), "since I've been alive (born in 1980) there have been three Republican presidents and 1 Democrat. And which President balanced the budget?!" The answer is Bill Clinton. I can make excuses (9/11, recession, etc) and defend (the first Bush set the stage for the Clinton budgets; Reagan's "winning" the cold war and the peace dividend that reduced defense spending. Additionally the Republicans' pushed welfare reform that saved billions and helped Clinton balance the budget. But the above aside, I find it tragic that the Republicans have lost their voice to be fiscal conservatives.

It now looks like Obama's victory may be a landslide. I pray and hope that McCain wins, but it appears that the handwriting is on the wall.

The question that will need to be addressed on Wednesday is: Who will lead the party? Who will lead the Republicans to regain "our voice". I don't think it will be Sarah Palin.

As a Christian I am not concerned by an Obama Presidency. God is sovereign and in control and His will will not be thwarted.

Meanwhile consider the following editorials:

Obama's '$4 Billion for Exxon' Myth - Why haven't the 'fact-checkers' done a better job?

Excerpt:

n the last debate, Sen. Obama said, "We both want to cut taxes, the difference is who we want to cut taxes for. . . . The centerpiece of [McCain's] economic proposal is to provide $200 billion in additional tax breaks to some of the wealthiest corporations in America. Exxon Mobil, and other oil companies, for example, would get an additional $4 billion in tax breaks."

That $200 billion figure is false. Yet FactCheck.org and most reporters never bothered to ask Mr. Obama where he came up with it. FactCheck.org did discover that Mr. Obama's claim about "$4 billion in tax breaks for energy companies" came from a two-page memo from the Center for American Progress Action Fund -- a political lobby headed by John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, with tax issues handled by two lawyers, Robert Gordon and James Kvaal, former policy directors for the John Kerry and John Edwards campaigns. Those lawyers confused average tax rates (after credits and deductions) with the 35% statutory rate on the next dollar of earnings, so that cutting the latter rate from 35% to 25% would supposedly cut big oil's $13.4 billion tax bill by 28.5%, or $3.8 billion. That is not economics; it is not even competent bookkeeping.

Comment: The media has failed to be "fact checkers".

Obama and the Runaway Train

Excerpt:

n the words of Minnesota's Gov. Tim Pawlenty, "the runaway train." The size and dimension of the likely Democratic victory seem clear. A Democratic House with a bigger, more fervent Democratic majority; a Democratic Senate with the same, and possibly with a filibuster-breaking 60 seats; a new and popular Democratic president, elected by a few points or more; a Democratic base whose anger and hunger have built for eight years; Democratic activists and operatives hungry for business and action. What will this mix produce? A runaway train with no one to put on the brakes, to claim a mandate for slowing, no one to cry "Crossing ahead"? Democrats in Congress will move for innovation when much of the country hopes only for stability. Who will tell Congress of that rest of the nation? Mr. Obama will be overwhelmed trying to placate the innovators.

America enjoyed divided government most successfully recently from 1994 to 2000, with Bill Clinton in the White House and Newt Gingrich in effect running Congress. It wasn't so bad. In fact, it yielded a great deal, including sweeping reform of the welfare system, and balanced budgets.

Whoever is elected Tuesday, his freedom in office will be limited. Mr. Obama is out of money and Mr. McCain is out of army, so what might be assumed to be the worst impulses of each -- big spender, big scrapper -- will be circumscribed by reality. In Mr. Obama's case, energy will likely be diverted to other issues. He will raise taxes, of course, but he may also feel forced to bow to a clamorous base with the nonspending items they favor: the rewriting of union law to force greater unionization of smaller shops, for instance, and a return to a "fairness doctrine" that would limit free speech on the air.

And there is this. The past few months as the campaign unfolded, I listened for Mr. Obama to speak thoughtfully about the life issues, including abortion. Our last Democratic president knew what that issue was, and knew by nature how to speak of it. Bill Clinton famously said, over and over, that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." The "rare" mattered. It set a tone, as presidents do, and made an important concession: You only want a medical practice to be rare when it isn't good. For Mr. Obama, whose mind tends, as intellectuals' minds do, toward the abstract, it all seems so . . . abstract. And cold. And rather suggestive of radical departures. "That's above my pay grade." Friend, that is your pay grade, that's where the presidency lives, in issues like that.

But let's be frank. Something new is happening in America. It is the imminent arrival of a new liberal moment. History happens, it makes its turns, you hold on for dear life. Life moves.

A fitting end for a harem-scarem, rock-'em-sock-'em shakeup of a year -- one of tumbling inevitabilities, torn coalitions, striking new personalities.

Eras end, and begin. "God is in charge of history." And so my beautiful election ends.

Comment: Peggy Noonan is correct - "God is in charge of history." And as my Brother commented today - there will be another Presidential election in 4 years!