McCain’s concession speech
Posted on November 5th, 2008 by ecthompson
This is the John McCain that I liked in 2000. He was thoughtful and caring. We saw just a touch of this in the election but we also saw the very ugly John McCain in the election. John McCain lost this election because he was trying to be the neocon that he is NOT. He was trying to embrace Bush when in fact he needed to separate himself from Bush. He was trying to walk a tightrope that was just too thin to walk.
Let’s put the ugliness in perspective. Primaries and election times bring out the worst in people, be it the candidates and/or their supporters. I have seen lot of ugliness on both sides, and that does not include the racism and sexism I have seen in commentaries from supporters for both sides as well.
The candidates themselves do hit hard and at times fight dirty, McCain included (though he showed enough restraint not to make Rev Wright an issue, which surprises me there).
I think fighting dirty and ugly happens in just about every election.
I heard the nastiest one hands down was the 1820 election between Andrew Jackson and JQA in terms of personal attacks. On top of that, Jackson won the popular vote, but lost because of the electoral college. And he lost because of deals behind the scenes which made him and his supporters believe cheating and corruption was involved to cost him the election.
I got to do some research and look at the actual things said before, during, and after that election.
One more thing…my feeling about politicians is this: in 90 percent of the cases, where they attack each other so they can win the election, they don’t actually dislike each other. It is more along the lines of nothing’s personal, but I am going to try to beat you anyway I can, but at the end of the campaign, we both know we are playing for the cameras to get the voters to vote for either one of us. And we can still have our coffee and doughnuts and laugh at the more guillible among people who actually believe we despise each other.