I didn’t have a chance to note Colin Powell’s glowing endorsement of Barack Obama over the weekend. But Vara has an excellent article about it
at her place - Voices from Russia.Powell didn’t just laud Obama, he slammed McCain as this excerpt makes clear:
He criticised Senator McCain for not being able to grasp the economic woes facing the country or offer the public a clear and coherent response to the problem. He criticised Governor Palin for clearly not being qualified for the job (not to mention what this said about Mr McCain’s judgment, he added). He further criticised the negative tone of much of the McCain campaign, specifically decrying their attempts to somehow smear Mr Obama with so called associations to the likes of 1960s radical Bill Ayers, and finished off by commenting that he was uncomfortable with the way in which he felt the entire Republican Party was being taken over by the right wing.
McCain was quoted the other day speaking about the Republican control of government for the past eight years saying:
"We just let things get completely out of hand."
That is true, of course, but it should be noted that this was not just a case of incompetent governance. The Republicans didn’t screw up what they were trying to do. They did exactly what they planned and it just didn’t work the way they claimed it would. That is the most important point that is still eluding most people. It wasn’t just Bush that failed. The Republican policies failed. They would have failed regardless of who was in office pushing them forward. Bush can be blamed for not recognizing this failure sooner and changing course (instead he just stubbornly said “Full Steam Ahead!). But it is not that he was incompetent and failed to administer the policies properly. He did exactly what the Republican policies called for to a T.
Maybe people like Colin Powell are starting to understand this and change direction. We can only hope.
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