Obama and the Democrats Should be Ashamed

Obama and the Democrats should be ashamed that this is even a close election.

For the past eight years, the leader of the Republican Party, George W. Bush, has been inept, to the delight of his opposition and the disappointment of conservatives.  His ineptitude has been magnified ten-fold by a relentless media assault.  We have seen eight years of a continuous daily megaphone-like shoutdown by the left.  As a result, half of a generation of youthful potential voters have heard nothing but the liberal mantra that "Bush did it" (refering to any of a number of real or imagined calamities that occurred during his Presidency, such as Hurricane Katrina, global warming, and competition from the Chinese).

Making matters worse for the Republicans, the economy and the stock market have collapsed.  It is normal for the economy to experience peaks and valleys.  Did Bush help or hurt the current trough?  A thousand economists will have a thousand and one opinions.  My own perspective is that Bush's policies probably exacerbated a tidal wave that was already destined to sweep us all away.  The wave started in the Clinton Administration as an equities bubble, then morphed into a real estate bubble, then morphed into a commodities bubble, and is now crashing on our shoreline.  Greenspan was probably the biggest culprit in creating this wave, but since the Democrats are not in the White House as the wave pummels us, they gain the benefit of the national angst against the presiding Republicans.  It really wouldn't matter whether Obama or Mickey Mouse was the Democratic candidate, people want "change" and "hope" in times like these.

There are some who give Obama street cred for blowing the Clintons away during the Democratic primaries.  The truth, however, is that the Clintons blew the Clintons away.  Their time has come and gone, and now they are reviled in many corners.  Soros and the left wing media latched onto Obama as their darling and their counterpoint to the Clintons.  All Obama had to do to be successful in this environment was to flash his winning smile, hug a few Code Pink activists, and mouth vapid slogans like the "change" and "hope" mentioned above.  Sure, he is bright, articulate, and likeable.  So are a thousand other people that Soros and the media could have carried along in a similar manner. 

John McCain and his decades of military and public service are due respect, but he is a weak candidate put forward by a wounded party presiding over a brutal economic crisis and an unpopular war in a media environment that is heavily antagonistic.  That McCain is even close in this election should be an embarrassment to the Democratic Party and perhaps an indication that their superstar candidate-who-would-be-emperor is perhaps without clothing.