Election 2008: Vote Against Bush

So, it is Election Day over the pond today. And millions of people are going to chose which man is going to lead the free world from January. Well, lead the free world and attack any country who messes with his nation.

I think a lot of people will be wanting not so much to vote for McCain or Obama as vote against George W Bush. After all, Bush’s time in the White House has come to resemble not so much a political administration as a series of biblical plagues that has befallen the United States over the past eight years. Seriously, America in 2000 was a prosperous nation with a budget surplus, largely united at home and respected abroad. In 2008, the economy has sunk beneath the waves of a crippling recession, the nation is fighting two increasingly unwinnable wars and the nation seems deeply divided between large liberal enclaves and great swathes of hysterical, Christian fundamentalists. When the flood waters hit New Orleans a few years ago, they didn’t just wreak havoc on that city and its citizens, it also washed away any residual respect and confidence that the majority of the USA had in its leaders.

So yeah, people would be well within their rights to want to vote against W. And if Dubya was running, pretty much any candidate could not so much beat his sorry ass, as bury it in an absolute avalanche of an electoral landslide.

The problem is Bush isn’t running.

In fact, both of the main candidates have made a point of not being George W Bush. Obama’s campaign is pretty much based solely around not being W. If I had to summarise Obama’s campaign, it would be with the Senator standing next to two posters, one saying “Change”, and the other depicting George W Bush. Obama would then alternate, between pointing at the poster saying “change” whilst nodding and smiling, and then pointing at the poster of Bush and shaking his head whilst looking sad. You can praise his campaign as much as you like, but when you truly break it down, it isn’t much more complicated or innovative than that summary.

McCain has also pushed himself away from being associated with George W Bush in anyway. That is no mean feat, since he tends to vote with Bush and is in the same party as the incumbent President. However, he has still managed to treat W as a radioactive lump of crap. His strategy towards Bush has been simple – he wouldn’t touch George Junior with a shitty stick.

So what is the Bush hater to do? Who can they vote against, if they want to voice their strident disapproval of the inbred, slack-jawed shaved chimp of a redneck who has being running their country for the past eight years?

The best plan is to vote against McCain. Not because of who McCain is, or what he stands for. But rather because of his choice of Vice-President.

Make no mistake, Palin represents an extension of George W Bush. A more feminine and slightly more eloquent version, to be sure, but still just an extension of W. She is the same type Christian fundamentalist, gun toting, hunting, creationist, anti-abortion redneck moron as the incumbent President. She is George W Bush’s monster; a cliché of a Republican, born of years of suckling at the teat of the Christian Right. It has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with her world view. She shares the same mindlessly simplistic outlook on the world as the person who has run the US since 2001. Frankly, she makes Dan Quayle looking like Abraham fucking Lincoln.

Americans will go to the polls today and cast their votes based on a whole host of different factors; the economy, the War on Terror, the characters of the candidates vying to be President and so on. But for anyone wishing to absolutely reject the Bush years, then I urge you to vote for Senator Obama. By rejecting McCain, you will also be rejecting a campaign that feels it is appropriate to put an ignorant, narrow minded idiot within grasping distance of the Presidency as a sop to the Christian Right. Palin represents an extension of the Bush administrations – and surely to Christ 8 years of Bush-esque leadership is enough.