Our local retired-but-still-writing nut job weighs in

[underpants]

By ROSS MACKENZIE
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

What does not destroy me makes me stronger.
--Nietzsche

And so it is to be President Barack Obama.

His seminal victory marks a major moment in the nation's history. It is fundamentally his accomplishment -- for minorities and multi-ethnics, for the meek and humble, for the nation. He merits the highest commendation and praise. Only in the continuing experiment that is America, the great good land, could his victory in such proportion have been even imagined let alone achieved.

Many factors contributed to Obama's win: Iraq, President Bush's unpopularity (though at a favorable level well above the pitiful 9 percent of the Democratic Congress), an economy circling the drain; Republican ethical, intellectual, and political failures that left Republicans hard-pressed to present as better than Democrats. Republicans proved unable to offer a credible, coherent strategic message. The campaign of John McCain found itself insufficient and tactically overmatched.

Partly it was the economic implosion. The record shows that McCain was ahead in mid-September -- helped by the home-run, the political gold, named Sarah Palin. The financial-credit tsunami was the principal non-election event of the ensuing month, and it dramatically hurt McCain.

DOES OBAMA'S very big win mean a seismic shift in the nation's ideological alignment -- from center/right to center/left? Probably not. This election verified the long-standing breakdown: Self-described conservatives outnumber self-described liberals 2-1. In addition, both Obama and McCain ran as tax-cutters -- tax cuts hardly ranking high on the liberal agenda.

What's more, McCain's 163 electoral-vote tally slightly topped Bob Dole's four years before the incumbent Bush swept into office -- and ranked well more than Fritz Mondale's 13 and Michael Dukakis' 111. Possibly in national politics, so as in the stock market: We are arrived at a moment of vastly more volatile swings. McCain's and Dole's electoral-vote numbers may connote an irreducible Republican base.

Going forward, the fundamental fears are two: (1) that Obama will prove the redistributionist of his rhetoric, further destabilizing the economy, and (2) that he will not match President Bush's resolve in combating an Islamofascist terrorism with the United States in its crosshairs.

If reality vindicates those fears, then President Obama and his new Congress may well lead America into its twilight years -- and the end of the American experiment. If reality proves those fears unfounded and we are not destroyed (Nietzsche's word), then the election of Barack Obama may in fact make us stronger.

That must be our abiding hope.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. We have one on...

The Easton(PA) Express-Times website, who blogs and gets listed on their editorials and opinions page. The other day, he was arguing for strict Christian morality AND Objectivism.

I didn't have the heart to break it to the poor maroon that Rand thought the religious were weak idiots and that the Ojectivists were known for their rather expansive use of their genitalia. His pea brain could not process the irony.

Just another smug, smarmy, buzz-word-rich but low-information right-wing victim of terminal cognitive breakdown.

[underpants]

3. That is H.Ross to a T

BTW- Mackenzie is the basis for the grumpy unhappy editor in the cartoon strip "Shoe"

[demodonkey]

2. Obama's election WILL make us stronger...

...but not for the reasons this nut-job of a writer thinks.

[vademocrat]

4. Well, Sarah Palin IS political gold - just not in the way he thinks!

She's splitting the gop in two and may be a big part of making them a regional party - which this election showed is a real possibility.

[monmouth]

5. And let's not forget the comedians...They need comedic gold too!..n/t