Sen. McCain said last night that he too will bring change to Washington DC.  Yet the same McCain has voted with Bush 90 percent of the time AND laid out an economic plan last night that is almost exactly the same as the economic policy of George W. Bush.  Perhaps someone should define change to Sen. McCain.  Simply entering office with a female version of Dick Cheney does not mean that your ticket represents change.  It means that it’s Bush style politics dressed in heels and a military cloak.  Guess what….George W. Bush also was a governor of a state outside of Washington DC.  Sen. McCain has been in the senate for 26 years!  After election day, with the amount of Rove and Bush cronies that are running McCain’s campaign, the Arizona senator will owe a slew of favors to lobbyists, special interests (oil companies), etc..  McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, is already involved in her second “abuse of power” investigation in only a very short political career.  If this is not a red flag indicating a Bush-Cheney style of leadership, I don’t know what is. 

In addition, Palin was an unnecessary, reckless, and impulsive political risk by McCain in a blatant political  pander to his far right conservative base.  The choice of Palin was also an arrogant, dirisive, and gratuitous risk.  There are so many female GOP candidates that would have shook up the race in terms of making history, but McCain, without conducting a proper vet, chose someone that neither he nor his campaign knew much about.  By the way, for those who say that McCain is the safer choice, McCain’s history of taking many of these types of unnecessary risks speaks against that conclusion.  As a pilot, McCain was involved in at least three crashes that may have been avoided had he bothered to read his flight manuals.  This seems like a person that not only takes unnecessary risks with his own life but risks the lives of others in the process.  How does anyone get into an airplane and wing it knowing the devastation that crashing could bring to others on the ground and in the air?  Perhaps when I was a teenager such a candidate would  have been appealing….you know……..when most of us had no sense of our own mortality.  However, as an adult member of the electorate, I am not looking for a rebel rouser making decisions regarding peace and war in the White House.  Especially a rebel rouser who has a reputation for being a war monger.  We had that with the shadow presidency of Dick Cheney.  It really takes balls to go into the White House and take a country to war based on your own personal agenda.  After the last eight years, we need a safe and steady hand on the tiller.

So, regardless of how “maverick” McCain claims that he will shake up or bring change to Washington,  it may be more of a credible argument if his party were not the party currently in power and he had not voted with Bush 90% of the time during Bush’s tenure in office and 95% of the time in this last year.  It is McCain’s policies that will be implemented in his administration, and McCain’s policy proposals are very, very, similar to the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration, especially when it comes to the economy and foreign policy.  Unfortunately for McCain, CHANGE is much more than a banner.