Kristyne McDaniel Opinion Blog

I’m grateful for the election last week on November 4th. I hope that the Universally Available health care America has been talking about but not providing since the days Richard Nixon waved a card he said was to be the national health care system, which was to be based on the achievements begun with Social Security and Medicare.

We may not all know this, but Harry Truman spoke of universal health care for all Americans more than 50 years ago.

It is well past time that we Americans valued each other enough to commit to having each and every one of us pay into a system that guarantees everyone is covered — no matter what.

An article about a family who was forced to sell their home and leave the country in order to get health care is at the www.GuaranteedHealthCare.com. Click here for a link to the article.

The 2008 presidential race just took a wonderful turn today with John McCain’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. A poised, confident, well-spoken, earthy, known maverick politician, Sarah Palin adds an injection of youthful vigor to a ticket that was looking tired and old.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin is an outdoors-woman, mother of five, and married for 20 years to her high school sweetheart. She looks great, possibly due to the things she learned in beauty pageants on her way to becoming a Miss Alaska runner-up. Her winnings helped her fund her college education, in fact. The trimmings do tend to mask her ultra-conservative social views, and conservative policies all the way around. While I doubt her selection will entice many Hillary supporters to the Republican ticket, the choice nonetheless underlines the traits McCain is most proud of in himself.

Republicans that are pleased with George Bush will enjoy her pronunciation of the words “Iraq” and “nuclear”, as they are virtually the same as that of George Bush.

Unfortunately for me, my quick read of Sarah Palin’s positions show her to be against nearly every issue that is most important to me. The only thing I can agree with her on is her stands against superfluous projects like the bridge to nowhere.

In her first months as governor, she kicked out a number of cronies left over from the previous Republican administration, and for that I congratulate her. It shows that she does indeed have a spine. Her experiences in governing Alaska bode well for her ability to take over as president should something happen to John McCain. While her resume is a bit thin, I do believe that once she has spent some time as vice president that she could in fact handle the job. At a minimum, her experience is the right kind of experience, even though she has not held office very long at this point in time.

I”m looking forward to seeing more of Sarah Palin on the campaign trail, and to her debate against Joe Biden in the coming weeks.

Like all Americans, I have a special place in my heart for those that have served our country by putting their life on the line. Soldiers who volunteered for service are a unique lot, especially during a time of war. John McCain was one of those soldiers who is deserving of high honor due to his courage, perseverance through extreme hardship, and his exhibition of character through  tough choices. Among the millions who have served, he is among the few that rose to political prominence in his life after military service.

Sen. John McCain

There has been a fair amount of humor in recent days about McCain’s response to a query about how many houses he and his wife own. He didn’t know. In many ways, I find it heart-warming that a man that was once a long-term guest of the Hanoi Hilton can be doing so well now that he does not know how many homes he and his wife own. While the lack of knowledge concerning the number of homes he owns sounds like he’s completely out of touch with financial issues, it is understandable due to the great wealth controlled by his wife.

I had already decided that I was not going to support John McCain for the presidency due to the fact that I feel our country needs better policies with respect to tax fairness and foreign policy. The great wealth of the McCain family really does not factor into my decision. Certainly the wealthy are able to manage finances better than an average family. McCain’s tax policy, though, favors the wealthy too much and makes it just that much harder to clear the debt this country incurred over the period of time George W. Bush has been in office.

McCain’s life has changed since being released from Hanoi in 1973. I hope that soon he will be able to put the POW experience behind him, and take a closer look at the financial experiences of today’s families. He needs more awareness of the millions losing their homes to foreclosure, the millions that have lost manufacturing jobs to outsourcing to other countries, and to the millions losing ground in the financial struggle to improve the lives of their children.

Perhaps after John McCain learns to get past his POW experience he’ll realize that he is not alone in his struggle. Millions of Americans are struggling hard under the hammer of financial difficulties caused by George W. Bush. I hope he will learn to recognize that struggle as being important too, so he will learn that he can leverage his experience to help our country’s citizens with theirs.

I’ve been nervous about the idea of electing a president that does not have a lot of experience. At this point, though, having done more homework, I’ve decided that I do believe the experience issue is not going to be the deal-breaker I thought it was.

Sen. Barack Obama

Obama’s history is showing him to be a determined individual that does his homework so he can come up to speed on issues that are likely to impact us. I like knowing that he realized at one point that he was frittering away his life, that he lived an austere life at Columbia so that he could finally get a decent education, and that his early employers saw a young man that applied himself.

I’m so sick of good time party boys running the government that I can’t even describe my level of disgust.

As a 51 year old woman that is bothered by having her experience discounted in favor of youthful dreamers, I can see that I was wrong about Obama the Dreamer. Yes, he is inexperienced and is promoting ‘change’ without a lot of details. However, I do like the details I’ve seen so far. Now that I have confidence in his ability to hit the ground running I’m ready to sign on to the Obama ticket.

So what about the other guy? Well, McCain has not been impressing me lately. I had thought that because of his deeper resume that he might be a better pick even though I don’t like a lot of his politics. However, I believe now that I cannot overlook his politics. He does not appear to have the carefully cultivated superior judgment I am looking for in a president. He appears to be relying more on a shoot from the hip approach and gut feelings rather than on good research. We have lived through nearly 8 years of a president that “decides” without researching, and prior to that we lived through 8 years of a president that did in fact research issues.

I think we did a lot better with Clinton and his wonkish personality that is prone to well-researched decision making than we have done under the non-wonkish folks that rely on machismo and ‘gut’ decision making.

I’m ready to put my trust in a young man of promise over an old man of experience, and I’m surprised at myself for coming to that conclusion.