Obama vs. McCain

To me these are the two candidates I’d most like to see become president, but I’m torn over who I’d prefer if it came down to the two of them in the general.

I’ve liked Obama for a long time, and I’ve even given him money, which is something I’ve never done for any pol before. Basically, I just like his personality, and I honestly could imagine him making a huge difference to the U.S. political scene and to the world. But, I don’t really love any of his policy positions—and I hate one of them, namely ‘pro-choice.’ This may sound lofty, but I could actually imagine him creating a political scene where it was more possible for our nation to become pro-life just by putting an end to the hard-core partisanship that we’ve currently got.

Meanwhile, you can’t help but respect John McCain for his history of service and independence. If there’s one thing you could do to fix U.S. politics, it would be campaign finance reform, and he’s been a leader on this front for a long time. Further, he’s anti-Roe v. Wade. Conservatives made a major and costly investment in the Bush Administration, and the only really good thing to come out of it was getting a few judges on the Supreme Court who might overrule Roe. But if we stop short now, it won’t happen—and we’re actually pretty close. A McCain presidency just might do it. And another issue is Iraq: I’m in the Colin Powell camp here, “you break it, you buy it.” And we definitely broke it, but now we’re actually making progress fixing it because of the Surge. McCain is a candidate, despite tremendous popular opposition (which speaks to his courage and character), who has committed to seeing through what we started in Iraq. I didn’t agree with going into Iraq, but since we did I think it’s our responsibility to stick it out.

So, I have a lot more concrete reasons to vote for McCain – but I really, really want to see an Obama presidency.