Given how much I disagree with the policies of Republican candidate John McCain and consider the policies of Democratic candidate Barack Obama to be better, I had decided that I would be voting for Obama quite a while ago. However, recent events in the presidential campaign have prompted me to reconsider my position, and I have now decided to change my mind and vote for McCain.
Until recently, I had the impression that John McCain was a reasonable politician and would be a much better president than George Bush has been during the past eight years. I thought McCain would strive to achieve a fiscally balanced budget and would actually reflect reality in his policies. While I would prefer Obama, I thought McCain would still be a reasonable choice. In fact, I would have seriously considered him if Hillary Clinton had been nominated as the Democratic candidate, although I would still probably have ended up voting for a Democratic president in the end.
This changed with the recent behavior and policies from the McCain campaign, but it now seems that I had changed my mind unwisely and in haste. His campaign had been very erratic and desperate, changing positions far too quickly and focusing too much on dubious personal attacks on Obama. But I now realize that this is a good thing in that it appears that a McCain presidency would likely be just like the Bush presidency. An Obama presidency could turn out to be a disaster for comedy.
For the past eight years, the Bush administration has been working tirelessly to provide fodder for comedians. From mannerisms and speech patterns that invite ridicule, to stating positions that are completely contrary to what they claimed previously, comedians needed almost no work to make fun of the government. They could just play clips of government officials to get all the humor we needed. Can you imagine how much work would be required to make fun of a government headed by a competent president? It’s a whole lot more.
And it looks like a McCain presidency would be just like the Bush presidency. The McCain campaign has been reversing positions at an increasing pace, so they’re managing to generate more material that can be directly adopted for comedy. McCain has also provided us with great laughs when he did things like excusing himself from Letterman’s show because he “needed to urgently return to Washington” while going on an interview with Couric on the same network at the same time. And all of us love the memorable comedic moments when his campaign brings attention to the beam in their eyes as they try to point out the mote in Obama’s.
With the incredible comedic potential of a McCain-Palin administration, how could we afford to not elect McCain as president? We might lose our jobs and homes, almost everyone could lose healthcare, the economy could end up in complete shambles, our military stretched too thin, the federal government could go bankrupt, and we might see a dissolution of the union, but wouldn’t the comedy make it all worthwhile? We can’t expect comedians to actually work for their comedy, can we? Otherwise, what would happen to our laughs? Won’t someone think of the comedians?