I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am that John McCain won the Florida primary today. Perhaps we’ll have a real choice this fall, the most interesting in my adulthood, between McCain and Obama.

Once upon a time, I was a McCain supporter. I wish they had run him in 2000, instead of that boob whose friends stole the election for him. I don’t care for the Senator as much as I once did, given his truckling embrace of  Bush’s extremist evangelicals, or his silly assertion when surrounded by military and tanks and Blackhawk helicopters that a neighborhood in Baghdad was safe to “walk freely.” But I do respect his heroism and his character, at least most of it, and certainly in comparison to most of his colleagues.

And I’m interested in Obama. I was proud to make a donation in support of that South Carolina win. He’s thoughtful — imagine a thoughtful president — and he’s made every right call on foreign policy recently regarding Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and every place else we seem to be in a mess. His plan for Iraq seems reality-based:  no fake timetable, no jingoistic assertion that we’re in it ’til we win it. Looking into my crystal ball, I think that if he gets the nomination there’s a good chance he’ll ask Joe Biden to serve as vice-president or secretary of state; that would give me even more confidence. (And I fear that McCain would feel obliged to ask someone like Reverend Huckabee. I’ve got nothing against pastors, having been partly raised by a good one, except for those who want to do things like rewrite the Constitution to jibe with sacred text.) As his campaign has shown, Obama wants to unite people — but he isn’t afraid to brawl when he needs to.

I’m hoping we get to mull over this choice in November. In the meantime, it’s nice that we’re having an actual primary contest. Because, let us not forget, for the past year we were told this was a done deal:  Hillary vs. Rudy.  But as I noted here and here and most especially here when I was really mad about it, that was all mass-media hoohah, and I’m glad none of us fell for it. Now people are actually voting, and the pundits are revealed for what they really are:  showmen. Bad showmen.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 10:42 pm and is filed under On being, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.