Careful What Change You Hope For

Hello, my name is Gerald Lamb. I have absolutely no political or legal experience. I regard hope as a theological virtue that is a movement of the human appetite towards a difficult but not impossible to obtain good (chief among the things to be desired being reconciliation with God in the Beatific Vision). More generally, I regard hope as the expectation of obtaining something that is desired. I generally regard change as something that is good when something is broken and in genuine need of changing, and as something bad when the thing being changed doesn't really need fixing and the change is being sought for the sake of novelty. My qualifications for being President of the United States are close to nil. Nevertheless, today I announce that I want to be your next President of the United States.

Actually, I don't really want to be the next President of the United States. It seems to require more time than I'm ready to devote, and the number of temptations associated with the job have proven detrimental effects on the human soul. Despite these risks, I am still running for President of the United States.

Actually, I'm not really running for President of the United States. I'm only 31 years old (which according to the Constitution means I can't run for another 4 years). But hey, I just mentioned the words "hope" and "change," and I hereby mention the word "unity." I am now officially every bit as qualified to be President of the United States as Barack Obama.

Actually, that's not true either. Unlike Barack Obama, I have actually identified what is meant by hope and change. I acknowledge that a thing cannot really be hoped for unless it is known and desired (and what specific hope has Barack Obama offered in his campaign aside from the promise of four years' worth of flowery, empty platitudes and hints at the same tired leftist policies that have represented the Democrat party platform for the better part of 3 decades?), and that the pursuit of change for the sake of novelty is an unworthy pursuit. Already I have provided more substance for my ideas than Barack Obama has ever offered for his, and unless you know me personally you've only gotten the briefest of glimpses into my mindset (with more to follow). Nevertheless, in the space of a few short blog posts I have provided more context for my views and have offered a more substantial reason for being taken seriously as a Presidential contender than Barack Obama has done in the decade plus he has spent riding the color of his skin, his penchant for empty rhetoric, and the coattails of his chief benefactors to unimaginable heights. We now find ourselves with the prospect of electing to the most powerful position in the secular free world a man with no proven track record of leadership and a mountain of "off-limits" questions about his past buried under a sandhill jealously guarded by the media and the PC thought police. All he's really shown is that he will bring the same tired liberal ideas in bright, shiny new packaging.

Actually, the packaging isn't all that new, nor bright. There is nothing new under the sun, only what appears new to those with an attention span that rivals that of a goldfish. There are shades of JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and (believe it or not) Bill Clinton in the person of Barack Obama (go back and read histories of the 1992 presidential campaign, and tell me you don't see eerie similarities between the campaigns of "Clinton the new Democrat" and "Obama the new breed of politician"). And that's just within living memory. As far as bright, well...you'd think that would have been proven with a little substance to back up the rhetoric by now. But I'll give you shiny. He's definitely shiny. He relies on the glare to keep prying eyes at bay.

In 2002, when Bill McBride unsuccessfully opposed Jeb Bush's reelection bid as governor of Florida, I spoke with a gentleman who said he was voting for McBride for no other reason than that he disliked Bush. I then asked him for one concrete example of what Bill McBride stood for as a politician (other than the tiresome "decreased classroom sizes" amendment that served as the only major plank holding up his shaky campaign platform). The gentleman admitted he could think of none, but defended his support for McBride saying that McBride was the lesser of two evils. To which I replied: "How can you call one man the lesser of two evils when, by your own admission, you have absolutely no idea what level of evil that man could potentially represent?"

I now pose that same question to all the Obama supporters who can't explain their support for Obama beyond the assertion that he is the candidate of "change," "hope," and "unity."

The last time a major party Presidential candidate successfully sold himself as a candidate of change, we were rewarded for our gullibility with eight years of Bill Clinton (I'm telling you, the similarities are eerie). Judging by the way the Democrats treated Hillary this election cycle, I think it's safe to say that that was the kind of change they'd just as soon forget.

Careful what you wish for, folks. Your choice as it stands is between a stubborn question mark in Barack Obama and a proven commodity in John McCain.

Actually, I wouldn't call McCain a proven commodity...