There are two books I’ve been reading this year which kept me from even seriously considering voting for McCain. Both books are about the Bush administration. The books are Fiasco and The Dark Side.

Fiasco is a history of the first year or so of the Iraq War, with a focus on the US military. Over and over, it shows how ineptly the Iraq occupation was planned and executed. I supported the war until some point after the 2004 elections, but that support was based in ignorance. If I had understood that the war could not possibly have possibly been liberating due to the complete incompetence of it, I would not have wanted it. I now doubt that any war could be one of liberation, but I am certain that the Republican party of today can not manage military affairs with any effectiveness.

The Dark Side is the story of what might be called a Bush shadow government, made up of mid-level appointees and bureaucrats, who undercut higher level government officials to create laws, regulations, and processes to increase executive power in particular, and state power in general, in almost every way. They systematically deceived other parts of government, and even other parts of the executive branch, in order to weaken traditional rights and privileges of American citizens and even non-Americans. While Bush campaigned as a conservative, he conserved almost nothing and had his underlings shred the fabric of American government. It’s not entirely clear who should be held responsible for all this (Bush or Cheney or Who Knows?), but one thing is certain: if the Republicans win in 2008, they will draw from the same groups of people to staff a new administration. McCain may diverge from some parts of the GOP, but the republican candidate for president can be only so independent from his party.

In my opinion, McCain would not fix the problems Bush caused. I’m not sure he knows what the problems are and I have a feeling he might not consider them problems at all. McCain seems like a centralizer at heart, a military-style command and control guy. But, at the same time, he also seems to frequently not bother to either command or control his own campaign, with which he frequently publicly disagrees. Which sounds like exactly the same leadership style that resulted in the problems discussed in the two books.

McCain, I think, is not a source of any hope. He would not improve anything as president. Obama, in my opinion, would probably not fix anything either. He would probably worsen many of America’s problems. But, at least Obama would be a slight repudiation of the Bush years, which I think we’ll rue for the rest of our lives.

While the very act of voting presents certain problems for liberty, I voted for Barr this year. I can’t think of any candidate or party for which a vote is a more complete repudiation of Bush. If there is anything that America needs, I think it is to put these last two presidential terms behind us.