Election doesn't offer real choices

What does it say when both candidates running for president have unfavorable ratings above 50 percent? Maybe we need to call a mulligan on this election and ask both political parties to reconvene their conventions and come up with better candidates.

Let's be real honest here. Barack Obama is a socialist from the ultra-left wing of the American political spectrum who portrays himself as a modern-day Robin Hood, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. We know less about him than any candidate in history.

And bless John McCain's heart but he's an aged warrior who sees defeat and tries to pander to the "middle" while abandoning the conservative roots that hold his only salvation. McCain has surrounded himself with inept handlers who have yet to make one positive move. Maybe he's too nice to tackle the rough and tumble sausage-making that we call political campaigning. And given that approach, he will surely lose.

I never would have imagined that I would yearn for a Hillary Clinton-Mike Huckabee match-up and feel comfortable with the outcome regardless. Mitt Romney perhaps would not have been the best president but he would have campaigned much more effectively that McCain.

Sarah Palin is the only shining star on the campaign trail but even her emergence falls short of saving an election unless events change drastically in the next three weeks.

I have always operated under the assumption that if the American public knew more about Barack Obama they would surely see through the polish and reluctantly embrace McCain. But increasingly it appears I was wrong.

I take pride in my conservative leanings but am disillusioned with "my" party that went on a spending spree and abandoned all pretense of favoring small government. So maybe the price we pay for this flaw is to reluctantly accept a candidate who is the polar opposite of what I believe we need.

The American public no longer cares that Obama is the architect of ACORN's efforts to inject voter fraud into this election. Nor do they care that ACORN was the driving force behind the massive failure of thousands of questionable home loans. We conservatives can shout until we're blue in the face and it just doesn't matter.

America apparently wants fresh faces regardless of the substance behind that style. Overwhelmingly we identify ourselves as moderate to conservative yet we're about to elect the most liberal force in this nation.

Barack Obama will surely lift the fortunes of the poor and oppressed at the expense of the remainder of society. And the fact is that Obama will get to identify whom he believes are poor and oppressed. And we'll just fork over the money and let him spend it as he sees fit.

John McCain is a true hero to this nation who deserves our undying gratitude. But unlike other heroes such as Dwight Eisenhower, McCain is stiff and slow and often unappealing. And in this nation we so value style over substance.

Unless the pollsters and the pundits are wrong, we'll soon get a chance to experience a new America heading in a new direction. We're going to level the playing field folks. We're going to take from the productive and give to the unproductive. In the past 40 years, we've spent trillions in a national effort to improve the plight of the less fortunate. Obviously it hasn't worked or we wouldn't be having this discussion. So we'll spend more. And that too shall fail.

The Kool-Aid served by the Obama phenomenon is a powerful tonic. And despite my frustration it appears that level-headed people of common sense have swallowed the message hook, line and sinker. In our obsession with change we appear little concerned about the direction of that change just as long as it's change.

Well hang onto your seatbelt folks. We're about to change like nothing in our lifetime.