Shade THIS In Yellow, Chuck Todd

The 2008 Presidential Campaign, for most non-junkies, has gone on roughly six months to two years too long. For me, by November 4th, it will have gone on exactly two weeks too long. For today is the day, the first day during this gauntlet, that I am undecided as to who will get my vote.

John McCain is a hero of mine. Heroic for his service to this country in the military and in the Senate. But many people have served both bodies nobly. What makes this great man a role model for me is our shared distinction as Republicans called liberals by our conservative friends and conservatives by our liberal friends. Such is the price to be paid for not acting as a partisan bobblehead.

I have said this many times this year, and I'll say it just once more to make my point clear. I really wish that I could vote for the guy retroactively to 2000 rather than prospectively until 2012. The crisis our country is currently in is not, as the Joe Bidens and Hillary Clintons would have you believe, a result of George W. Bush's Republican policies. Rather, the true father of this mess is the incompetent execution of those policies by a non-intellectually curious president. Under a McCain administration these past eight years, we would have seen a tough foreign policy and pro-business solutions just the same. But based on Senator McCain's history, these likely all would have been carried out with proper precautions and some deference towards the 45-49% of the citizens who would have voted for the other guy.

Sometime in the next two weeks, my fantasy is to see a John McCain rally during which a scream rises up from the back of the room, and an angry old man rushes the stage to attack the speaker. The angry old man looks a lot like the speaker, actually. The lunatic raises his hand to the disturbed speaker's face, tears at his skin, and the audience gasps. That's not John McCain at the podium, that's an imposter! The lunatic is the real John McCain. He's been locked away by his campaign since the summer of last year, as a prisoner of electoral war. He promptly fires his entire staff, dumps Sarah Palin, and barnstorms with Joe Lieberman around the country. The John McCain who ruffles the feathers of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The John McCain who actually inspires college students. The John McCain who lives his campaign slogan Country First. Being locked up once again leads him to greatness as he ekes out a victory on election day.

Up until now, I looked past the dangerous and divisive tactics of the paranoid nutjobs who insist they do not mean anything racist by saying the full name of Barack Hussein Obama. I've insisted that as long as those words aren't coming out of the mouth of the man himself, then that in no way provides a reason for voting against him. Well, I'm pretty sure Bush didn't make those calls in 2000 to South Carolina voters about McCain's "illegitimate black child," but he sure didn't do a lot to stop them. I don't agree with many of Barack Obama's policies, and I was hoping most of the country would agree with me and vote him down on that basis. But I'm not sure I can sit easy with the second personally noble guy of the past eight years to go down because of baseless fear about his character.

I think it silly to accuse John McCain of being a racist or a fearmonger. For him to be so now would be to repeat the same sins lobbed against him eight years ago, and he is obviously a better man than that. But while my love for the man and his policies have allowed me to overlook his surrogates' tactics, I cannot ignore the words of General Colin Powell who was so miffed by the allegations that Barack Obama is a Muslim. He's not, he's a Christian. And if he were a Muslim, so what? The icing on the cake was Limbaugh, who suggested that because he was made a general and a secretary of state by Republicans, his undying loyalty should be towards the party regardless of who he thinks is better for the job. I guess Rush didn't realize that the General was practicing "Country First," and as a necessary corollary, party second.

I also cannot reconcile the pick of the Alaskan governor as the first in line to assume the duties should the absolute worst happen. No, it's not because McCain is "old." But, c'mon, Nixon, Kennedy, FDR, Harding, McKinley, Harrison, Lincoln. That's a good fistful of guys who did not get to make their farewell addresses. And I don't think Ms. Palin is an idiot. Her state seems to love her with the sky-high approval ratings. She's obviously doing something right up there, all while juggling five children. People loved Governor George W. Bush, too. And by most reasonable accounts, of people who actually have known him, he's not an idiot either. But he is not naturally curious. So tell me how someone who just got her passport last year, who does not delve much further into foreign policy discussion than the rote party lines, how will that someone deal on the international stage? Tell me how that person has negotiating leverage with world leaders if she doesn't seem to naturally care about much more than making sure Joe Sixpack can keep his guns? And what this great nation needs to stay powerful is not someone no one on the world stage has heard of until two months ago. And I know Europeans don't get to vote, and I'm quite grateful for that, but fellow world leaders must know and respect that person with whom they are dealing.

Another inane argument put forth is that if we elect Barack Obama, the terrorists win. Sadly, I'm no longer hesitant to say that if we elect John McCain, the terrorists win. Not the kinds of terrorists who fly planes into our buildings, but those who stoke fear in the hearts of downtrodden Americans. Basically: You might have no job, no healthcare, and a foreclosed home, but that guy hates America! And if you don't hate America, vote for John McCain.

Those terrorists were enabled in 2000 and 2004. It might be time for me to set aside by admiration for a guy who I think basically deserves the presidency because of his career and life history, and instead join with my fellow Americans in sending him the message that this hate and division can no longer be tolerated. John McCain has two weeks to snap to it and clean up his campaign, or I might have to, with great pain, vote against him.

Of course, that doesn't mean I would necessarily have to vote for Obama. Mike Bloomberg would be a great write-in candidate, as would (if it were not for that pesky Constitution) Governor Schwarzenegger.