Soccer Dad requested that Jewish bloggers send him a two-to-three sentence endorsement for President, and has posted a roundup of them. He stipulated that bloggers submit only “positive endorsements – no disparaging of the candidate you don’t like.”
Elections are by nature comparative choices, so it is not possible to make only a positive evaluation. Each candidate is very far from perfect, and they necessarily have to be balanced against each other. So here is the three-sentence JCI endorsement:
1. One candidate has no military or foreign policy experience and no significant legislative accomplishments, has spent most of his time in office running for higher office, wanted to withdraw from a war before it was won, supported legislation to do it by fiat, opposed the military strategy that then succeeded, refused to acknowledge the success once it did, endorsed immediate negotiations with every enemy without preconditions, responded to the Russian invasion of Georgia by condemning the “violence,” suggested that the “violence” be handled by the UN, opposed the Kyl-Lieberman resolution against Iran because it was supposedly “sabre-rattling,” wants massive decreases in defense-spending, committed himself to an undivided Jerusalem in front of 7,000 Jewish activists and reneged a day later, gave four separate explanations for reneging, will impose a new set of “peace parameters” on Israel but will have neither the desire nor the ability to do the same on the Palestinians, sees Israel not as the frontline state in an Islamist war but rather part of a “sore” affecting U.S. foreign policy, will cause the country to be faced with an international crisis within six months, made public financing a major part of his “new politics” and then rejected it out of sheer self-interest, was against NAFTA before he was for it and will be against it again in due course, announced he was a “citizen of the world” in Berlin and gave a hyper-partisan acceptance speech at his convention, wants to transfer a massive amount of wealth from one group of citizens to another, considers the question of when life begins “above his pay grade” but will ban even reasonable limits on abortion, will over-regulate whole sectors of the economy, will unionize as much of the national workforce as possible, has denigrated people who cling to their religion, plans to impose the largest tax increase in U.S. history, favors steps that would bankrupt the coal industry, has a whole series of long-term troubling associations, refuses to release any records from college or law school or his state legislature service, refuses to release any medical records at all, throws dissenting journalists off his plane, and thinks the oceans started receding the night he secured the nomination.
2. The other candidate did not do or say any of these things, is indisputably qualified for the office he seeks, and knows how to lead in a time of war. 3. So JCI is endorsing John McCain.