Barring an act of God, or an ugly racist reaction among the white middle classes, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. In full premonition of which, I am voting for the McCain ticket.

Why this exercise in futility?

Loyalty, I suppose. In September 2007, I sent John McCain a check, with a note saying that though I disagreed with him on many issues, I admired his integrity. At that time, I thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic choice, and I preferred Senator McCain to the nakedness of Mrs. Clinton’s ambition.

I am plenty mad at the Republican Party and would enjoy watching the entire double-talking leadership and its unctuous apparatus throughout the states fried in oil. I still disagree with maverick McCain plenty on the issues, and every time he says “my friends,” I wince almost as wretchedly as when George W. Bush ends his sentences with that awful moue of his upper lip, producing a smirk which in turn suggests a revolting fullness of self-satisfaction.

A major gripe about the good senator is that he has not set forth a coherent agenda. What does he plan to do about anything? What vision does he have for our country? He is running on his decency, and though we Americans admire moral virtue, in the dragpit of Washington politics, decency can be an impediment.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, for all his muddy shifting with the political winds, has made his vision clear, and it is doctrinaire Democratic left-wing socialism and therefore too depressing for words. I hew to the belief that he is also a decent man and probably politically more savvy than John McCain. He may learn. He may be knocked off his horse on the way to Damascus. But I can’t vote for the prospect of Obama’s education. So I vote McCain. Unlike the Beltway snobs (an insular pathology that now defines the East Coast from Bangor, Maine to Key West), I place my trust in Sarah Palin. Dadgummit, by golly, she speaks the American language of the plains and the frontier. I trust it, and her.  

Reid Buckley is founder of the Buckley School of Public Speaking and author, most recently, of An American Family: The Buckleys.

Peter Brimelow

John Patrick Diggins

Rod Dreher

Francis Fukuyama

Kara Hopkins

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Leonard Liggio

Daniel McCarthy

Scott McConnell

Declan McCullagh

Robert A. Pape

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Gerald J. Russello

Steve Sailer

John Schwenkler

Joseph Sobran

Peter Wood