John McCain, US Senator

241 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

January 20, 2009

Dear Senator McCain:

Since this is Inauguration Day, it now seems a new era has dawned on Washington, and hopefully, the nation, I wanted to drop you a line and express my sentiments. Much has been discussed on the air, over the past week, regarding the upcoming, and hopefully, potential great legacy of our next president. Many people in the media have expressed the idea and thought that America has changed, and it has voted for a new direction. In part that is true.

Unfortunately, with a victory of approximately six percent there is little evidence that President Barack Obama has engendered a large national consensus or that the vote was even a philosophical one. Therefore, as a long-time political observer, activist, writer, part-time radio show host, (The Advocates –WVOX AM 1460, www.wvox.com ) and politically involved person, I believe that the true reason was the incredible unpopularity of George W. Bush and your failed campaign. George W. Bush should have been impeached twenty times over for complete incompetence and idiocy, but the Constitution limits any President to impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. The paradox of Bill Clinton lying about sex and the activities of George W. Bush regarding; Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Katrina, the US Attorney firings, illegal wire tapping, lying about WMDs, cooking the books on Iraq, Walter Reed scandals, under-deployment of poorly armed troops, and a plethora of other indiscretions is laughable to any sane person.

As in 1933, when conditions were much worse, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt crushed the incumbent President Herbert Hoover. President Hoover was not the cause of the Crash or the ensuing Depression, but his inability to cope with the problems that grew exponentially were correctly and electorally placed at his doorstep. Of course Roosevelt did not have the burden of race, inexperience and youthfulness. In the case of George W. Bush, he did not directly create the conditions that caused our financial collapse and possible ruin as a nation, but he is more responsible for it than any other human in the country. As to the past election, you were obviously George Bush’s stand-in, and if Obama had been named John Smith Powell, was born to two Protestant parents, was five years older, and had served a full term in the US Senate, he may have also crushed you by a similar margin.

To Obama’s undying credit, he overcame all of his surface liabilities, including a middle name like Hussein, and really cruised to a well-deserved victory. One could also say that the collapse of the economy and your “strange” campaign and ineffectual debate performances, would have opened the door to any one else is probably true. Certainly your cynical and moronic choice of Sarah Palin for your running mate sealed your fate, and I and millions of others will be eternally grateful for your poor judgment and incredible faux pas. She was incompetent then, and is certainly incompetent now. Many, many millions of words have been written about her, and most have been true, but too kind. She is, in a sense, what is terribly wrong with certain parts of America and people like you who “carry water” for the flat-earth thinkers amongst our vast population. Thankfully most of these souls reside in the dwindling number of “red states.” Sarah Palin will be forgotten in a few short years, but unfortunately the tragic legacy of George W. Bush will be burned in our memories for decades to come.

I am much, much closer to your age then I am to President Obama’s and I voted and strongly supported Hillary Clinton in the New York State primary. I am sorry she lost her bid for the nomination, but in retrospect, President Obama can relate much better than Hillary to the vast majority of Americans. Can you in your wildest imagination believe that your victory would have engendered any excitement or hope? I can just imagine your losing the popular vote and squeezing in with a small Electoral College margin. The despair that would have befallen on this country would have been too great to imagine.

My sense is that you have spent too many years supporting George W. Bush, and the Karl Rove style politics that has ruined this country. British MP Leo Amery, an adamant foe of Neville Chamberlain, who during a debate in the Commons, on May 7, and 8, 1940, indicated, “enough was enough…”  He goes on to quote Oliver Cromwell, as he said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” Therefore, in that same sense, you have sat too long and you should go into retirement with him now.

Sincerely,

Richard J. Garfunkel