Editor:
This presidential election, that is coming to an end next week, is the most monumental and important of my 60 plus years. Not only is this the first time that we have ever had a minority candidate nominated by and running on the ticket of one of the two major parties, but it also a “perfect storm” of events facing the incoming president, no matter who wins. We have one candidate representing our history and our past while the other represents our future.
We started the 21st century with two separate military conflicts, Iraq and Afghanistan. Combined, the two are the beginning of the 21st century equivalent of the war in Vietnam. I was part of the Vietnam conflict in 1968-69 and returned home to find a nation divided, for and against, just as Americans today are divided over the Middle East conflicts.
The incoming president will have to decide what to do in Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly even Pakistan. How do we end the conflicts and best protect Americans? I personally think John McCain is still angry at the outcome in Vietnam and wants to rewrite its history using the Middle East as his writing pad. Like many of you, I was in Vietnam and I know from my own experience that Vietnam could not have ended any other way. For this reason, I cannot back McCain.
Barack Obama doesn’t have the baggage of Vietnam, so he can evaluate our options in the Middle East with an objective, open mind. For this reason, I am supporting Obama.
Here at home, people are losing their jobs and homes. Much of the financial industry is in ruins and must be rebuilt from the ground up. Our health care system and auto industry will probably join the financial industry in the trash heap and will also have to start over. Medicare and social security round off the list of components that make up our perfect storm. We have become a nation with people who sleep in the streets and parks and can’t afford food or medicine.
But our current situation is both good and bad. It is bad for all the obvious reasons. But it is good because now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we can start over instead of rebuilding yet again. We can start anew and build our broken systems from scratch. The only question is how we build them.
McCain is now 72 and began working in the service of our country at 17, 55 years ago. He was in government service when our health care system and Medicare were built and then, along with the financial and auto industries and Social Security, were patched back together time and time again, until there was nothing left but the bubble gum and bailing wire, which have collapsed under their own weight and poor government management.
What can we expect of John McCain, who by his own admission, does not know how to use a computer or send email? In his 55 years of government service, McCain was part of the organization that built and rebuilt the systems that no longer work. How can we expect him to come up with the new, creative ideas we need to make America #1 in the world again? We can’t because he can’t. For all these reasons, I cannot support McCain.
Obama, by McCain’s statements, is young and inexperienced. To me this is good news. Being young, inexperienced, and relatively new to Washington means that Obama was not a member of the government that created the situations that have brought us to this low point in American history.
Obama may be young and he may be inexperienced, but he is also very smart. And from working closely with his campaign and watching his team in action, I am confident that he will surround himself with other people who are also very smart. His youth and inexperience mean that his mind is not hard-wired with those ideas of the 20th century that worked in their time but that no longer work. I look at Obama and I see the 21st century: new ideas and new solutions, both for existing problems and new problems that we haven’t even considered yet.
With the Obama/Biden team we will have the youth of Obama looking forward, creating new ideas, while Biden is watching over his shoulder with his knowledge of the past to occasionally say, “Nope, that won’t work. We tried it.”
For these reasons, I am supporting Obama / Biden. I believe that they can bring new, exciting ideas and programs to our country, restore our economy and regain the respect of the other nations of the world.
Steven Rudy is an Alcalde resident and member of Vecinos del Valle, a group advocating for the preservation of the Rio Grande corridor in Velarde.