Open Letter to John McCain
The Honorable John McCain
United States Senate
241 Russel Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-0303
Dear Senator McCain:
I’m thirty-five years old, and I’ve been to one political rally in my entire life. It was an overcast late winter day in the Puget Sound, and you were speaking at Pacific Lutheran University, just a few miles from where I was living at the time. I really believed in the change you were advocating, and more than that I believed in your straightforward and humble way of answering questions. It was a welcome change from the doubletalk and lies that were so common from politicians, particularly the man from the other party who was president at the time. I remember a reporter once asked you and the other Republican candidate what the biggest mistake you’d ever made was. Your reply was getting caught up with the Keating 5 scandal. George Bush said it was trading Sammy Sosa. It was clear to me who had given the better answer to that question, and who I wanted to be the next president of the United States.
Despite all of my hopes, I must admit that I left that rally with a sense of foreboding. George Bush’s campaign was spreading all sorts of nasty lies about you in South Carolina: that you were a traitor to your country and had an illegitimate black daughter. To think that a man who used his connections to avoid the war in Vietnam would call a former Prisoner of War a traitor? As much as I hated propagating the Clinton dynasty, there was no way I could vote for this man when he eventually won the Republican nomination. I ended up voting for a third party candidate that year.
Since then, I’d sworn off politics, or at least paying attention during the political primaries. It seemed as if every year the only decent human being in the race was smeared so severely by the other side that they were forced to resign before the country got a chance to learn who they really were. No, from here on out I would simply wait until the decision was made and then vote for whichever of the winners didn’t turn my stomach the most.
Until this year, that is. As much as I tried to ignore politics this year, eventually I heard about a politician running for president who had the same sort of honesty, humility, and respect for his fellow human beings that I admired so much in you eight years ago. It was Barack Obama. When the two of you ended up winning your respective parties nominations, I thought it was the greatest possible outcome imaginable: my two all time favorite politicians were running for president in a year that we so desperately need change. I was looking forward to a couple of campaigns filled with positive messages of change and focusing on the issues instead of the typical mudslinging that goes on in most presidential campaigns.
I must admit, I’ve been a bit skeptical of the changes in your approach to politics over the past four years. Some of the things you’ve been saying recently sound a bit too much like the things said by that man who beat you with dirty politics eight years ago and is now running our country into the ground. But at your acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, I remembered why I liked you so much eight years ago. I was even impressed with your vice presidential pick. It was the sort of brave political move that so few politicians are willing to make. If John Kerry had been braver in his pick four years ago, we might be in a different place now. As much as I thought I’d already decided to vote for the other party this year, now I must reconsider.
That all changed last week when I saw your ad accusing Barack Obama of promoting sex education in kindergarten, when he was promoting education to help children avoid pedophiles. This was the same dirty politics that George Bush had used against you eight years ago. And like then, I can’t now vote for someone who would so vilely smear another candidate with vicious lies. It is a base tactic that appeals to the lesser parts of who we are instead of the greater parts. The difference between now and eight years ago, is that Americans have gotten smarter. They’ve seen what they get when they vote based on fear and lies and stupidity. If that were not the case, then Barack would not have won his parties nomination. And you probably would not have won yours.
Senator, I’m asking you to please apologize for this travesty and for the remaining two months to run a campaign free from fear and lies. Focus on the important issues that face us today, and let the American people make a choice based on clear thinking instead of the tyrannical fearmongering that has oppressed them for the past eight years. I voted for you eight years ago because this is what I thought you believed in. Do the right thing and show me that I wasn’t just fooled by another politician eight years ago. It will make America a better country, and it just might make you its next president.
Sincerely,
xxxxx xxxxxxxxx,
Colorado Registered Independent Voter.