Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Spot On

Scott's Spot ran the following post:
Regardless of your opinion of John McCain’s political views, you have to regard him as an American hero and a true public servant. This was certainly evident in his concession speech, in which he pledged to work with President-Elect Barack Obama to move the country forward. This is the kind of bipartisan spirit that is necessary to move the United States beyond the disastrous 8 years of the Bush presidency.

Unfortunately, such a spirit of conciliation is nowhere to be found at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose lead editorial today is entitled “Obama wins, America loses.” This whining piece ends with the following statement:


“It is customary to wish an incoming president the best of luck. But it's the American people on whom we bestow that wish today. For they'll need all the luck that can be mustered to weather what one can only hope will be a one-term anomaly.”
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review should get out of its hate-radio-mongering rut and look to Senator John McCain for an example of how to behave when you don’t get your way.

I could not have said it better myself, I have always maintained that John McCain would have been a great president. I think he would have been better 8 years ago and that he would not have been as good as Obama will be, but he's NOT George Bush either.

I think it is also the responsibility of democrats to say, "Listen, we hold the keys to the car now, but you definitely still have a front seat. We all have the same goals, so we're more then happy to listen up if you have a certain route you like to take or need to stop for a sandwich to keep you happy." The democrats are now in a position to change policy without the republicans, but they can not change the country, at the level Obama promised by taking party-line votes.

Note: Scott's spot on a lot of the time, hope you guys are reading his blog.

4 comments:

Sherry Pasquarello said...

that was one of the nastiest newspaper articles that i have ever read.

that was no way to try to bring people together and it doesn't speak well for the trib.

me? i don't trust mccain's judgement but i never questioned his service.

i do think he did quite a lot to increase tension and hate in this country in the last few weeks of this campaign by not strongly repudiating the scare tactics of the ads by republican groups and the outright hate at his and palin's rallys.

i'm no pollyanna but we have a great opportunity to change things for the better by setting aside party politics a little and working together. working with some civility even as we disagree.

Anonymous said...

You know, I was a McCain fan about 10 years ago, when I would see him out there bucking the party line -- back when he really was "mavericky." And I swear, it was during one of his runs for the GOP presidential nominee that someone sat down with him and said, "If you're gonna run, you gotta play ball," and there was a shift in his style/politics. It was so disappointing.

However, being mad at the Trib for an editorial taking a shot at Obama? I mean, that's the same editorial writer who got blasted by Theresa Heinz-Kerry last election -- did y'all expect something more? He's a right-wing attack dog -- and that's all he does.

But, of course, in the end, the GOP's arrogance really caused them to suffer in the past few elections (and with good reason). Hopefully they'll learn cooperation, presenting good ideas and working for the good of the country (instead of the party) is the way to reform themselves, which is what they desperately need to do.

Burgher Jon said...

I think both sides got carried away in the election. McCain is a good guy who as recently as two nights ago was not "playing ball". Obama is not "a scary socialist". However there will be people from both sides who will refuse to forget the campaign rhetoric (in chicago the line "I'm your president too" drew boos). It's up to Obama to ignore people who don't want a unified America, and forge ahead with it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, just a side note ... my mom called me today, and took the opportunity to rant about this editorial. She then read to me a few of the letters that were in response to it. They all hated it. One person canceled her subscription to the newspaper because of it.

So, hopefully people really are ready for a new start, and political partisanship will begin to fall by the wayside. We can always dream, right?